Q. Some time ago you said in your column you paid $29 for a SanDisk 4GB high speed SD card, including a card reader. Where did you find the $29 bargain?
A. I got that particular deal at Best Buy after seeing it in a Sunday newspaper ad circular. If you are buying memory cards, the only time to buy them is on sale and the difference between the regular price and a promotional price is often 50% or more. You have to keep your eyes open to find the best deals, and the Sunday paper is a good place to start.
It's also useful to sign up for newsletters from online retailers such as onecall.com, outpost.com, inetvideo.com, and tigerdirect.com. I've purchased new Blu-ray Disc movies for as little as $9.95 from newsletter offers, as well as regular speed 2GB SD cards for under $7.00 and portable GPS navigation systems for under $80.00. Keep your eyes open and the deals will find you!
Q. I have been shopping to get some audio/video equipment installed and one of the quotes was from a team I really liked, and the price seems fair. They use nothing but Monster Cable HDMI cables in their installations and seemed horrified when I said I would prefer cheap HDMI cables from one of the sites you recommend, such as monoprice.com. I was told HDMI cable quality is critical. Am I really going to run into problems with inexpensive HDMI cables?
A. Of course they were horrified - cables are a big source of profit for A/V retailers, and they sure don't want to lose that or have the expensive cable mystique exposed for the snake oil scam that it is. If you are paying for a complete install though, they have the right to use the products they prefer and they are entitled to make a buck too. If you think you are getting a fair deal overall, I'd just pay for the install and consider it a done.
However, if you are buying a cable in a blister pack and hooking things up yourself, paying big bucks for HDMI cables is like filling your toilet tank with expensive bottled water. Tap water flushes just as well, and a $5 3-foot HDMI cable will work just as well as a $150 3-foot HDMI cable.
Case in point: The Criterion Collection. For the uninitiated, The Criterion Collection masters some of the best-looking, best-sounding DVDs in the world and they are known to be meticulous in everything they do. Criterion has started production of films on Blu-ray and remodeled their screening room. Some of their choices were a top-of-the-line speaker system from Axiom Audio, a $10,000 Samsung SP-A800B video projector, and (drumroll, please) an HDMI cable from DVI Gear that sells for more than $100 less than the Monster Cable equivalent.
If modest HDMI cables are good enough for The Criterion Collection's high-end screening room, I'll bet they are good enough for your home, too. For those of you who love good film and appreciate quality, you owe it to yourself to check out Criterion's Web site at
http://www.criterion.com and Image Entertainment, their distributor, at
http://www.image-entertainment.com . "The Last Emperor" on Blu-ray should prove to be nothing short of amazing!
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(Read past columns and product reviews by Don Lindich at
http://www.soundadviceblog.com , and contact him using the "submit question" link on that site.)
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© 2008, McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.