Clark's Big Book of Bargains (19 page)

CHAPTER 5
ELECTRONICS + APPLIANCES

Americans spend a lot of money on electronics and appliances, and it’s amazing that we often make these purchases with virtually no information, or with information that comes straight from a salesperson. I would rather you step back, follow a few simple steps, and make smart buying decisions that will be good for your wallet and bring you enjoyment.

With electronics, we frequently overpay for what we need. We’re too willing to pay more for a few bells and whistles we’ll probably never use. That’s even more likely if you’re listening to salespeople, who sometimes get extra under-the-table money known as “spiff” to steer you to a particular item. The choices in these stores are so confusing that shoppers have a tendency to come in intending to buy one thing and leave with something else.

Do your homework up front and figure out what you want to buy. Unless you discover an overwhelming reason why you were wrong, stick with what you intended to buy.

In this section, you’ll learn how to do that research, enjoy your purchase, and not overpay.

* CONSUMER ELECTRONICS *

People are going to the movies less and watching movies at home more, and one of the ways they’re doing that is in a home theater. Everyone is looking to duplicate the incredible sound you hear in the movie theater.

A friend of mine spent $70,000 custom designing and remodeling a room in his house as a home theater, and that’s not at all unusual. People are routinely spending $50,000 or more to build and equip home theaters.

My friend’s home theater was incredibly impressive. The screen could be lowered and raised at the push of a button. The audio and video equipment was housed in beautiful built-in cabinets. It was really neat. But you pay an awful lot for the consultants who come into your home, draw all kinds of sketches, and write formal proposals to craft a system with just the right brands and equipment.

My wife, Lane, and I put in a home theater, and as you might guess, we did it for considerably less than $70,000. We took a storage room in our basement that we didn’t really need for storage and installed new drywall and carpet. Then we equipped it with off-the-shelf rather than custom components. You can buy a “theater-in-a-box,” which contains the entire sound system, including the speakers and the amplifier, and functions as the nerve center for a home theater system. Other components, such as a DVD player, TV, and VCR, plug into the amplifier, like the receiver on a music system.

We bought a theater-in-a-box, a 60-inch television, a DVD player that holds five discs, and a stereo VCR—all for about $2,500. That didn’t include the cost of carpeting or drywall.

Most people start with the TV, but you should start with the sound system. Don’t worry about the technical specifications. Just listen to how it sounds in the store. Most people won’t be able to discern differences in quality between a good, modestly priced system and a super-expensive one.

You do have to be mindful of the room. A den usually works best. Most movie theaters are rectangular, because that’s best for the acoustics. It would be hard to create a home theater in a very open room.

People watch a movie in our home theater and they can’t get up, because the sound and the picture are just so fantastic. I get such a kick out of the fact that we spent tens of thousands of dollars less than my friend. I’m sure his is 10 percent better, but it’s not 30 times better. More important, a lot of people can afford to spend a few thousand dollars to set up a home theater but could not afford to spend $50,000 to $70,000. You can have a fantastic audio-video system in your home without spending a fortune.

If you really want to duplicate the movie experience, consider spending another $200 for a device called a Butt Kicker. It responds to the bass by shaking the floor.

DVD Players

People tend to overpay for their home-theater components, and there’s really no need to do so. We have a five-disc DVD player that cost $129, so we can be true couch potatoes and watch five movies in a row without changing discs. I saw a three-CD changer for $99.99. But you can buy a single-disc DVD player for about $60 that will give you a terrific picture and sound. You won’t get a better picture if you spend more. If a $60 DVD player breaks, you just throw it away and get a new one. But with most consumer electronics, problems either will be evident right away, or it will work beautifully for years.

If you have a high-definition television, you need a DVD player that has progressive scan, which will give you a higher-quality picture.

If you think the DVD caught on fast, you’re right. The DVD player is the most successful home entertainment device in history, according to Warren Lieberfarb, president of Warner Home Video. It went from zero to 30 million households in its first five years, faster than CDs, VCRs, home computers—even faster than the television itself.

VCRs

Some stores aren’t even renting videocassettes any more, but it still makes sense to have one in your system. Even if you have a DVD player to watch movies, you’ll need a VCR to record programs (unless you use a personal video recorder to do that) and play your old tapes. Recordable DVD units will offer another option for recording, as soon as the price comes down to reasonable levels.

You can get a very fine, four-head, stereo VCR for about $60, maybe less.

TVs

Listeners keep asking me about them, but as I write this, high-definition televisions still aren’t ready for most of us to buy. Nobody is transmitting programming that works for it, and the broadcasters and the government are still arguing over standards for transmission and reception of high-definition television. Back in 1996, the government set a deadline requiring all television be transmitted in digital form by 2006, which has since been extended to 2007. I wouldn’t be surprised if the United States doesn’t go all-digital until 2017.

The result is that people who are buying high-definition television today may end up with something that turns out to be an interim technology, something that ultimately is not how people watch television. The standards fight, which is worse than the 1980s fight over videocassette recorder technology, will go on so long that a succeeding technology may take its place.

Most high-definition TVs sold today are really “high-definition ready,” which means they come without a high-definition tuner. Even if you spend $1,500 for the TV, you’re still going to have to spend another $700 or $800 on whatever tuner the industry decides will be the standard. The picture in the store may take your breath away, but it doesn’t make sense yet to buy a high-definition TV.

That leaves two other categories of television. Traditional analog TVs continue to fall in price. As I write this, you can buy a 36-inch stereo TV for $549, a 32-inch TV for $329, a 27-inch TV for $220, or a 19-inch TV for less than $100. That’s incredible.

Flat-screen TVs provide another alternative. They have a crisper, clearer picture than traditional TVs, but they’re much cheaper than the not-ready-for-prime-time high-definition TVs. Flat screens once were three times the price of a traditional TV. Now they’re 33 percent to 50 percent more. You’ll have to decide whether you want to spend more for a better picture. Or you can get a traditional 27-inch for the same price as a flat-screen 20-inch TV. I like a bigger screen and a cheap price, so I’m still buying traditional TVs.

If you want a giant-size TV, larger than 36 inches, those are sold almost exclusively in high-definition models.

As far as features, almost all TVs now have stereo sound. You can pay extra for picture-in-picture, but people with satellite TV, like me, can’t use PIP. For what you pay extra for a PIP TV, you could put a $100 19-inch TV next to your main TV and have a better picture on the second screen. I went to a guy’s house who had gone a step beyond that. He had a big-screen TV surrounded by six smaller TVs in his media room. TVs are so cheap now that some people can afford that.

Don’t ever buy service contracts for your electronics. With prices this cheap, if something breaks you just replace it. I bought a TV for $199, and when the manufacturer’s warranty ended, I got a letter from the electronics store trying to get me to buy a five-year extended warranty on the TV. The cost of the warranty was $249—more than I paid for the TV.

Digital Cameras

Like most new consumer electronics items, digital cameras were very expensive when they first came out. But now they’re remarkably affordable. For $200 or less, you can get a quality digital camera that will do everything you want it to. Look for a camera with a resolution of 2.1 megapixels, the level of picture clarity that’s fine for most uses. A professional photographer might need a higher resolution than that, but unless you’re a pro, you won’t.

What’s really important with a digital camera is how easy it is to use. A lot of digital cameras end up collecting dust on the shelf because people get too frustrated with the owner’s manual to use them. Get a camera that a child could pick up and use.

Third, your camera should make it easy to transfer your pictures to a computer to store or print. I’ve had one for six months, but I’ve yet to print a picture because I can’t figure out how. That’s not good. The ones that people find easiest to use have a docking station that you connect to a port on your computer. Then, when you come home with your camera, you put it into the docking station and the pictures come right up on your screen. You can print them or attach them to an e-mail. The docking station is similar to the ones people use with Palm Pilots or other handheld computers. Some cameras link directly to a printer.

Memory is a “gotcha” with some digital cameras. Some come with very little memory, and buying additional memory can cost as much as the camera. My brother-in-law spent $400 on additional memory. You want a camera that will store—at the highest resolution—the equivalent of eight rolls of film, or about 200 pictures. When you get home from a trip, you can download the pictures to your computer. One thing that’s great about digital cameras is you don’t have to keep pictures you don’t like. Sometimes, with film, you’ll shoot two or three pictures just to make sure you get one you like. With a digital camera, you can look at the image right away. If somebody closed their eyes or a car drove by and ruined the shot, you can just delete it and take another. You don’t have to shoot as many images as you would with a film camera.

Camcorders

Unless you want to share videotapes with other family members, it doesn’t really matter what type of video camera you buy. Price is the main factor, and you can buy a good one now, very nicely featured, for $200 to $250.

Video cameras have shrunk dramatically in size over the years, because people don’t take big cameras with them. If you like to travel and don’t like to lug a lot of stuff with you, it’s worth paying more for a smaller camera.

Most people buy a video camera after the birth of a child, and if your main purpose is to shoot video of your child at home, any camera will do. They all provide good pictures.

There are a few basic formats for video cameras. There are two basic analog types. VHS C uses tapes that drop into an adapter, which then pops into your VCR. Hi8 uses 8-millimeter tapes.

There are several types of digital camcorders, including the super-small MiniDV camcorders, and Digital 8, which gives digital quality on Hi8 tapes. There’s also a new generation of disc-based digital camcorders. Some use DVD-R, which are compatible with DVD players but can be recorded on only once. Others use DVD-RAM, which can be recorded on again and again, but are not compatible with DVD players.

Digital cameras offer better picture quality and they allow you to transfer video to your computer. If your relatives have high-speed Internet access, you can e-mail video to them. But if they have regular dial-up Internet access, forget about doing that. Downloading the video would take hours.

Digital camcorders are still considerably more expensive than analog, so unless you plan to e-mail or edit video, which few people do, I’d stick with analog.

Personal Video Recorders

I love personal video recorders, which allow you to record television shows and movies onto a computer hard drive rather than videotape, at the same level of quality as the original program. We have one called ReplayTV, made by a company called SONICblue Inc. TiVo is the major player in the marketplace, and there are several private-label recorders.

What makes PVRs so neat is they do the thinking for you. You tell it what kind of shows you’re interested in, and it does the rest. Let’s say you love M*A*S*H, which is on at all different times of the day or night on many different channels. You just tell the PVR you like M*A*S*H and it finds the episodes and records them. Let’s say you’re a Tom Cruise fan. You tell that to the PVR and it will record anything Tom Cruise is in.

PVRs also allow you to pause a live TV show, say to answer a phone call, then resume watching the show when you want. With a VCR, you would have to wait until the show is over, then rewind the tape and watch from the point you began recording and answered the phone. A PVR will let you resume watching at any time, even as it continues to record the end of the program. They’re really remarkable.

PVRs also allow you to skip commercials more easily than a VCR, and that’s landed the manufacturers in court. As I write this, there’s been no resolution.

Lane and I took my mom to dinner during the Super Bowl—that’s a great time to go because restaurants aren’t crowded—and we recorded the game on ReplayTV. We got home two hours after kickoff, and then I started watching the game from the beginning. Some people enjoy the commercials during the Super Bowl as much as the game, but I just skipped through them. I also skipped the halftime show. And I caught up with the game—after starting two hours late—late in the third quarter.

People who have PVRs just about worship them. They consider them a mandatory appliance—something they wouldn’t do without. That says a lot.