Engadget's Holiday Gift Guide: HDTVs and home theater
Welcome to the Engadget Holiday Gift Guide! The team here is well aware of the heartbreaking difficulties of the seasonal shopping experience, and we want to help you sort through the trash and come up with the treasures this year. Below is today's bevy of hand curated picks, and you can head back to the Gift Guide hub to see the rest of the product guides as they're added throughout the holiday season.
A brand new HDTV is a gift that can get plenty of use throughout the year, but it's also one of the more expensive items on Santa's list. If you're shopping for the home theater enthusiast who has everything, there's always room in the cabinet for another streamer or demo disc. From 3DTV to network connected to throwback disc-based media, there's a lot of new options on deck for the 2010 holiday season - let's see if we can narrow the list a bit and make sure your gift scores a ten out of ten even if your budget is more like a two.
Stocking stuffers
Nothing brings more smiles than Netflix streaming, and at this price, there should be more than a few to go around. The Roku HD streamer has shrunken in size, while offering even more channels of content, with WiFi built-in, and a multitude of channels including Amazon VOD, Hulu Plus, MLB, NHL and more there's no doubt you'll get the most for your money here. |
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Oh, you shouldn't have
Digital delivery is hot sure, but for the highest audio and picture quality and easy content availability we're not ready to ditch discs just yet, and that's where LG's BD570 Blu-ray player comes in. It continues the lines reputation of high quality efforts and includes access to digital streams from Netflix, VUDU, CinemaNow, YouTube and Pandora, plus DLNA browsing to play your own stuff from a connected PC and even DivX TV to watch the Engadget Show. Built in WiFi N and a sale price under two bills put this directly in our sweet spot, and yours. |
Sony BDP-S570 - $169.99 & up |
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Boxee Box - $199 |
We can't afford the rent now, can we?
When you're spending this kind of money there's no sense in buying anything but the best, and Panasonic's VT25 series plasma HDTVs fit the bill. Reviews peg the set for high quality on 2D and 3D video, and a pack-in of the year's most exclusive demo material doesn't hurt one bit. For the top TV of 2010, look no further than the 65-inch. |
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