Black Friday Sales early at Wal-Mart

[Hoopz]

WalMart will have 5 items on sale starting tomorrow at 8:00 AM.  Acer laptop for $350, 50" Plasma HDTV for $999 and a couple of others.

Here is the LINK

[ChadTower]

50" plasma... sheesh.

[Hoopz]

Not the best variety of products but a laptop for $350 is probably a good deal. 

Interesting switch on the sales technique.  Walmart got pissy about the web sites showing their sales ahead of time.  Now it looks like they are going to have some special items on sale between now and then.

[polaris]

i saw a 120" plasma the other day, it was nuts, the stand had a motor built in. just wanted to share

[ahofle]

Wow that HD DVD player for $98 is a deal.  It's selling elsewhere for $200 - $500.

[ChadTower]

Pair it with a 50" plasma... hey look, there's one!

[boykster]

I think that's the first time I've seen a 50" plasma (or any other thin panel display) drop below $1000.

It's a sanyo, but heck, who cares

[ChadTower]

It definitely bodes well for those of us looking for a good LCD in the $700 range.  If the 50" are going to drop that far down on this type of sale, the 46" and 42" will probably be attainable for me.

[shardian]

I would venture a guess that this is the tv:
http://www.walmart.com/catalog/product.do?product_id=5652238

They probably figured this would be a good idea to clearance some leftover stock in their warehouses. Works alot better than random clearance tags huh?

[boykster]

Looks like the right model; Not much info on AVS about it

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=837764

[ChadTower]

At that price range, the specs are pretty much all you need... 8000:1... 720p... built in tuner...  HDMI...  it's an older model but that's all very worth $1000 if you want to pay that much for a TV.

[psik0tik]

Leave it up to wallyworld to start black Friday sales early..it's bad enough they already have Christmas crap out. Next year you'll be able to start Christmas shopping in July. I love black Friday...except the rabid women stealing stuff out of eachothers carts and fighting in the aisles..but I guess that's another reason I love it.

[shardian]

Leave it up to wallyworld to start black Friday sales early..it's bad enough they already have Christmas crap out. Next year you'll be able to start Christmas shopping in July. I love black Friday...except the rabid women stealing stuff out of eachothers carts and fighting in the aisles..but I guess that's another reason I love it.

I think it is a good idea from Wal-mart. I'd rather see sales days now than the eventual Thanksgiving day super sales. Oh wait, they already do that at several stores...

[shmokes]

This sort of thing is tough.  That's unquestionably a phenomenal deal.  But $1000 is $1000, and 50" is starting to get pretty big to not support 1080i, IMHO.  I've got an HD TV that's still going strong after 6, maybe 7 years.  When you lay down a grand on a TV (or at least when I do), it's not something you want to be shopping for again two years down the road.  I think if I only wanted to spend $1000 on a TV I would wait one more year.  I think 1080p is going to be the realistic ceiling for consumer sets for many years.  This late in the game, I don't think I would consider a 720p set unless it was for something around 30" or less.  It's just too far behind the curve.

[SavannahLion]

I love black Friday...except the rabid women stealing stuff out of eachothers carts and fighting in the aisles..but I guess that's another reason I love it.

That is precisely the reason I don't even leave the house on Black Friday. When you venture out, you need to have a competent tag team going. One protecting the cart and the other pulling stuff off of shelves. And no matter what, both of you need to be able to throw a few punches.

[ChadTower]

Eh, I don't see the big difference between 720p and 1080i/p.  It's just not big enough to wait another year or two or spend another 40%.

[shardian]

In most cases that i've seen, 1080i looks worse than native 720p.

[shmokes]

A 720p signal will look better on a native 720p set than a 1080i/p signal on the same set.  But a 1080i/p signal will look better on a native 1080i/p set than a 720p signal will look on a similar quality native 720p set.  And the signals being broadcast are going to be 1080i/p by and large.  In a year I doubt there will be TVs limited to 720p still on the market.

Like I say, if you need a TV right now, this is a good deal (though I'd still probably say that you should just settle on a DLP projection screen).  But if you've just been wanting to get a big flat panel TV, and have been waiting for them to drop below $1000, I would wait another year.  I just think that if you buy this TV you'll be dissatisfied with it a couple years down the road, where if you wait for a similar-sized 1080i/p set to drop below $1000 you'll be happy with it for 2 or 3 times as long.  I know that there's always going to be bigger and better things around the corner, but that doesn't mean that any time is as good as any other to jump on a technology.

My $.02

[ChadTower]

It's reasonable... but I'm looking for small form factor too, as I don't want to have to replace my solid oak entertainment center.  I could easily put a flatscreen up on top and move the components to where the TV is now... but I couldn't put a DLP projection TV up on top.  I don't have any plans to move to HD in the near future.  50" may be pushing the reasonable limits for staying with SD stuff, though, and my price limit is a lot closer to $750 than it is $1000.

Oh, and I kind of do need a new TV.  Our SD 27" is dying.  Needs at least a cap kit and it's not really worth doing.  It has warmup issues that are getting worse.

[shmokes]

Are you sure about that DLP thing?  I commonly mistake DLP sets for flat panels when I see them at peoples' houses or at Costco, etc..  I mean, they're substantially deeper or thicker or whatever than a flat panel, but not nearly so much as traditional rear-projection sets.  it's really easy to mistake them for a flat panel if you aren't actually looking at it from the side.  My rear-projection HD TV is a freaking monster.  The thing is enormous (for a 42" TV), but the DLP sets are relatively little things, meant to be set on top of a table or entertainment center or stand of some kind.  If you set it on the floor, you'd be looking down at it, just like if you set a flat panel monitor on the floor.  They also have a great picture -- considerably better than any sub-$1000 flat panel of the same resolution.  And no screen burn-in worries like you have with older-tech projection TVs.  That's probably what I'd be doing if I were in the market for a large, sub-$1000 TV right now.

[Ken Layton]

To me a tv is a tv is a tv is a tv. I'm perfectly happy with my 15 year old Emerson 19" set. I had a 30 year old Sony Trinitron set that still worked great when I gave it to a friend.

[ChadTower]

Are you sure about that DLP thing? 

Yes.  It will be about 4' off the ground on top of the entertainment center.  A TV with a cabinet of its own doesn't fit there.  Audio is unimportant since I haven't used TV speakers in that room for 6 years, it has a 5.1 setup integrated into the walls.  A good flat panel monitor is what we need there.

[boykster]

Even if you're looking for a decent HD set, don't discount 720p vs 1080p (there is no such thing as a 1080i "tv" - a display with 1080 lines of resolution is capable of 1080p).  Both Chad and Shmokes are right; there isn't a huge diference between 1080i and 720p, but 1080p does bring a bit more detail to the table for some types of programming.  And yep, 720p looks better than 1080i on a 720p display, and 1080i programming looks nicer on a 1080p display. 

I have an 85" front projection setup that is "only" 720p, and I'm very happy with it.  At 50", the visible difference between 1080 and 720 will be negligible for nearly anything you watch.  Heck, I have an old(er) 480p ED 42" plasma on which HD broadcasts look nearly as good, if not as good as on my 42" 720p HD plasma.

For $1000 for a flat form factor display, that's a killer deal.  My first plasma back in 2002 cost me $3500; my second one cost me just under $2k, and the most recent one (the best one) was $1500.  All 42" panasonic panels.

[shmokes]

And yep, 720p looks better than 1080i on a 720p display, and 1080i programming looks nicer on a 1080p display. 

This is key for me, as I think that the vast majority of HD signals going forward will be 1080, though, I admit that this is based mainly on my gut instinct. 

[boykster]

And yep, 720p looks better than 1080i on a 720p display, and 1080i programming looks nicer on a 1080p display. 

This is key for me, as I think that the vast majority of HD signals going forward will be 1080, though, I admit that this is based mainly on my gut instinct. 

Don't hold your breath waiting for broadcast HD to move to 1080p anytime soon.  Cable and satellite are bandwidth constrained and will be under pressure to offer more channels vs higher bandwidth on the existing channels.  There's already some debate as to how much compression is acceptible when it comes to re-broadcast by the carriers vs what's available OTA.

If you're waiting for the holy grail set, its never going to come....might as well pick a price point and jump in.

[ChadTower]

If you're waiting for the holy grail set, its never going to come....might as well pick a price point and jump in.

That's my strategy... last year I jumped in with a 32" LCD at $540 shipped... this year, for the living room, it's probably $750 or so max and I'd like to go 42" if possible.  If not I can chill until the next sales rounds.