Tue 6 Jan 2009
I have been considering getting an HDTV for about 2 years now. We had a shift in priorities a little over a year ago, with the goal of eliminating all debt except for our mortgage, so upgrading my TV was put on hold. As of last week, we are now debt free except for our house. I felt that deserved a bit of a reward, so it’s time to do some TV shopping.
Aside from knowing where to look for deals online, the biggest factor in getting a great price seems to be patience. Since I knew I would be purchasing a TV early this year, I started looking about 3 months ago. Prices have gone up and down, but I got a good feel for what is a good price and what isn’t. The easiest way of doing this is to find a product on Amazon.com, add it to your cart (or “save for later”), and check your cart every now and then. If a price has increased or decreased, you will be notified at the top of the cart page.
As for knowing where to shop, I used to rely on Froogle or PriceGrabber. However, just this week, I discovered a site that found a price that was $100 lower than any price I had seen for this TV: Bountii.com. Bountii only lists prices from reputable sellers and it lets you track price changes by RSS or email. But the real genius of the site is that it pays people to find the best deal. You can go to the “price hunt” page and if you find a better deal, they will pay you a small reward, or I suppose I should say “bounty” (between $4 and $8). While I haven’t been able to find any prices that beat theirs, it definitely gives people with time on their hands incentive to find the best deal which can be shared with others.
In the end, I got my Sharp Aquos TV from Dell and a 6′ 24AWG HDMI cable for less than $10 from Monoprice. In the coming weeks, I’ll be using Bountii to get the best deal on a Tivo HD.

Netflix is gradually rolling out its new streaming movie service. Subscribers get 1 hour of streaming movies for every $1 in their subscription price. Those with the $17.99 plan will get 18 hours every month for no additional charge. The selection is a bit limited now and you can only watch movies on your computer (XP with Internet Explorer), but it is a nice extra feature that may or may not keep people from defecting to Blockbuster’s Total Access.
Today TiVo unveiled the long-awaited Series3 DVR. It has most of the features that were promised: record 2 shows at once, HD support, 

