Black Friday tips
Farhad Manjoo has a solid list of “don’ts” over at Slate. Don’t pick up a ridiculously expensive HDMI cables from Monster, for example (which I’ve written about before). But I would like to take issue with one of his points:
What’s more, buying any e-book reader now is a gamble. Every model has access to a different catalog of books, some of which are restricted by copy-protection schemes. This leads to a classic early-adopter format dilemma: Say you’ve got 30 e-books on the Kindle you purchased two years ago. Now you’re in the market for a new reader, and you’re leaning toward the Nook because it lets you share books with your friends. Tough luck—those Kindle books won’t work on your Nook. Or imagine you buy the Nook today, but by 2012 Barnes & Noble decides to quit the e-book business because it can’t compete with Amazon. Too bad—your Nook will be about as useful as an HD-DVD player. (For this same reason, I cautioned against buying Blu-ray players last year, and I’m sticking with the same advice this year.)
I don’t know enough about e-readers to say whether or not his advice there is sound, but it seems like a good idea to keep all that in mind. With regard to Blu-ray players, however, I think he’s way off. The Blu-ray/HD-DVD format war is over. HD-DVD lost. (I should know, I bought a HD-DVD player two years ago during a black Friday sale.) Blu-ray is the only hi def home video format left, and it will be the only hi def home video format going forward. (The next step is hi def streaming from the Internet/cable, but that’s still a little ways off.)
If you have a high definition television (1080p resolution or higher) and you enjoy movies you should consider picking up a Blu-ray player. Not only will it play the high definition Blu-ray discs (which look stunning and are the single best way to show off a home theater system), it will also “upscale” your standard DVD library to a 1080-like picture. It’s not quite high def, but it’s a significant uptick in quality. Certainly an upgrade over a standard def picture. I haven’t checked out all the Black Friday sales yet, but my understanding is that you can get a Blu-ray player for around $100.