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The woes of Black Friday
WhatToThink
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
So in the past years I have either been too broke or too lazy to snag anything on black friday. This year I will have some extra money but I can already sense that damn laziness coming...we will see.
Anyway I am tired of watching standard dvds on a crap tv so this year I think I am going to upgrade. I would really like a 1080p but not really at the price range so I am thinking about picking up this tv from target. I don't know a lot about hdtvs but what I have read, you cant really tell a difference between 720p and 1080p if its less than 40 inches. Is about right?
Now this is where the problem comes in. I am going to either get a blue ray player and xbox360 or a ps3. Most of the games I want to play are on both ps3 and 360 so that isnt really a problem. If I went with the 360 I would get a blue ray player for around $150 so in essence the ps3 would be cheaper, but is the blue ray player on the ps3 good? One last thing, does anyone know of any good bundles with the ps3 that ideally contains blue ray movies?
Anyway I am tired of watching standard dvds on a crap tv so this year I think I am going to upgrade. I would really like a 1080p but not really at the price range so I am thinking about picking up this tv from target. I don't know a lot about hdtvs but what I have read, you cant really tell a difference between 720p and 1080p if its less than 40 inches. Is about right?
Now this is where the problem comes in. I am going to either get a blue ray player and xbox360 or a ps3. Most of the games I want to play are on both ps3 and 360 so that isnt really a problem. If I went with the 360 I would get a blue ray player for around $150 so in essence the ps3 would be cheaper, but is the blue ray player on the ps3 good? One last thing, does anyone know of any good bundles with the ps3 that ideally contains blue ray movies?
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It's not just the size of the TV, it's also how far you sit from it. Look at the OP in the stickied TV thread at the top of this sub-forum. Or just read the whole OP and post the TV you linked there. The TV you linked is a Westinghouse: definitely a 3rd tier brand. The Westys I've seen have a pretty washed out picture, and my friend who has one (37" 1080p) has had no luck getting warranty work done <anecdotal>.
The blu-ray player on the PS3 is pretty good, fast load up times and firmware upgradeable. If you're mainly playing single-player then whatever, but if you're going to play multiplayer games with friends get the console they have. 2 years I've had the PS3, but I mainly used it as a blu-ray player as everyone else I know is playing multiplayer on Xbox Live.
As for the ps3, Walmart has a bundle with the slim one and a couple games along with the dark knight. I guess I will try to pick that up as well.
Seriously. Stuff yourself on turkey and get blasted the night before, and peacefully sleep all the way through it. Black Friday is a miserable morass of disappointment and a parade of the worst that humanity has to offer. It is not fun. I am fairly sure that one of the circles of hell consists of being forced to wait in a Black Friday line for a store opening that never comes. Stores have optimized the black friday process to get people into the store and spending money, meaning that the only real deals are on a small subset of (usually low quality) products. For every deal you have spotted in an ad, there are 75 other people who have cut that ad out and taped it above their beds, and they are bringing knives to the store with them. Save your money and pick up something later.
And yes, Panasonic or Samsung will make you happy.
Also, the price is supposedly going down at midnight on the 25th....not sure though.
Black Friday is just brick and mortar stores attempts to compete with everyday online prices. Sure there are exceptions, but not many.
Five + years ago before the rise of online shopping Black Friday used to be cool, especially for games & console specials. Maybe this year the stores won't be assholes have order large supplies but it's anyone's call on that. All I know is that the last Black Friday I did I spent 5 hours in line inside the store just waiting to pay for my items.
Sharp ain't bad either; their sets generally have the least delay in Game Mode, (sometimes at the expense of a worse picture.)
But it's a good idea to spend Black Friday doing anything other than going to a store. I've done it once, and I'll never do it again; I've learned.
Keep in mind that most people don't even have their TVs connected properly (using composite instead of component/HDMI) or neglected to configure their source (PS3/360) to output in something other than SD resolutions, and as such aren't going to be the best source of reviews. The latter I've seen quite often IRL, and you have the HD consoles shipping with composite
When you check out a display unit make sure it's connected properly. I still see stores that aren't running component/HDMI to their HD sets, and sometimes you have two sets next to each other and only one is hooked up correctly. That can unfairly leave a bad impression on a good TV, and make a mediocre set look better than it really is.
Can trade TF2 items or whatever else you're interested in. PM me.
I don't like waiting in long lines. The black friday sales I go to are close to my house so I can drive out an hour before openning to check out the lines. If it's less then 20 people I might stop by and see what's on sale. I do sometimes go to big black friday sales with no intention of buying anything just to people watch.
Retail might be just as shitty (if not moreso) as last holiday season, meaning you can probably score black friday type deals up through New Years sales. I got the Xbox Arcade plus gift card deal from Walmart (pre Black Friday deal). Went in right when the sale started at 8AM and was 14th of 24 available, some poor shmucks had been there for hours. There were still tickets left when I checked out at 8:45.
WhatToThink: I think you'll be a lot happier saving up for another month and paying 20-30% more to get a name brand TV, rather then waiting overnight in line trying to score a cheap deal on a TV where the only consideration of the "manufacturer" was getting the price as low as possible. Here's a writeup about off-brand tv's highlighting warranty practices (doesn't really talk about picture quality or anything like that).
When you hook up your tv up using hdmi, you're channel surfing to fascism.
-A message from the EFF
Black friday is generally preceded by carefully marking stuff up so that the net result is no lost profit. If you get a cheap thrill off of watching the depravity of the consumer masses, by all means, help yourself. Personally, I recommend you go see a movie instead.
That's
Schadenfreude
People taking pleasure in your pain :whistle:
Can trade TF2 items or whatever else you're interested in. PM me.
Last year, I had to go to walmart at like 4pm to pick up milk (we ran out, and I like to go out later on Friday to see the stores destroyed) and every single 'door buster' type thing advertise were literally still out by the pallet load. I picked up a decent dvd player for $39 for my kids. I found great pleasure it watching the news that night to see the reports of people out in the cold at 3 am for that same dvd player.
Edit: Nevermind. Saw a big thing in red on a site saying 2:00am EST on Thanksgiving Day.
I've only been out early for a couple of Black Fridays and they were completely, absolutely not worth it. There are always always always a number of crazy, desperate people at every worthwhile sale who wait outside for hours and take everything worth anything as soon as the doors open. You might get lucky, but it's just not worth going out of your way to snag a great specific deal.