Holiday Guide 2007 - GPS and HD

GPS

From what I have heard, the GPS is going to be one of the hottest must-have gadgets this year. Look for some really good Christmas holiday specials. You should be able to find units in the $100 - $150 range. The best selling units are from Magellan, Tom Tom, and Garmin. All these devices come with driving directions, route calculations, and recalculations for when you take a wrong turn. The low end GPSes will take a little longer to recalculate routes and may give you inefficient redirects compared to the more expensive models. The higher end GPSes also have text-to-speech functionality, integrated Bluetooth, and multimedia capabilities.

High Definition Video Players

We have already had a chance to see some HD movie craze. Wal-mart recently had an HD-DVD player for $99. We still don't have a standard format. The movie industry is still up in arms over Blu-Ray and HD-DVD. Blu-Ray had been dominating until recently when HD-DVD really dropped in price. Look for more cheap HD-DVD players this holiday season. With most players, you can get a few free movies. I've seen up to 8 or 9 free movies when you buy the player. The prices of movies are coming down too. The HD format tends to run $5- $10 more than your standard DVD prices. We may see the lowest price for HD-DVD players during this holiday season, at least until next year.

In 2009 we will see analog televisions officially go bye-bye. If you are still running an older TV, a new TV might be in your future. Now might be the time to upgrade the TV and DVD player too.

If you want to go Blu-Ray, expect to pay more for your player. Movies are still being produced in a single HD format, so your favorite movies might not be available in the same format. You will be able to get great deals on players and free movies, but the future is uncertain about which format is going to win. You could end up with a great player at a cheap price that will last years, or have to buy a new one next year if that format doesn't win out.

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