Sony Bravia 40″ XBR5.

Ordered for delivery from Tweeter. After consulting the both living and “stone” (written, online) oracles, I bought a 5 year extended warranty. Tweeter’s service/delivery is said to be decent. This seemed to me wiser than buying for less from Amazon and letting UPS knock the TV around some before dropping on my doorstep to get stolen.

I still intend to look into both an improved sound system (but the built-in speakers will do for now), as well as intend to get at least the XBox 360 if not also the PS3 soonish.

But first the delivery, which should be Friday, 12/7.

It’s not entirely committed, but today I may go out and order that HDTV I’ve been going on about. And some accessories.

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I talked with my boss today. He’s an HDTV owner, who bought his probably 6 months ago, and is already experiencing “buyer’s remorse” (because of how quickly technology moves).

He thinks that since there may be deals that appeal to me and my purchasing priorities, I should just take advantage of them if I get a close match to what I’m looking for buying anyway. I’m a bit on the fence with that. I’ve been checking Amazon for various prices, of both bundles and of the actual HDTV model I’m looking at, and the price very recently dropped by $300, probably within the last week. I noticed this almost as I was strongly thinking about going for a bundle deal from Sony that would have cost in total probably $500 or so more than just buying the TV via Amazon and buying the bundled product alone from Amazon as well.

My boss thinks that you don’t normally see a large price drops except in increments of 6 months or more, and thinks I probably won’t see prices go any lower than they already are right now sooner than that.

I remain skeptical, but I also don’t really want to wait needlessly. I guess without knowing industry insiders I’m not going to know any better than I do now, but if anyone’s got any opinions to share, I’d love to have them.

I figure I can talk about this a little bit more.

I asked misia to help me evaluate the new Samsung 81F series (the 120 Hz refresh LCD flat-panel HDTVs with the new LED backlight technology) in contrast to the ones she already picked out as liking in our last window-shopping event, the Sony Bravia XBR4/XBR5 (another 120 Hz refresh LCD flat-panel, but without LED backlighting) HDTVs. This all boils down most of the research I’ve done, which is that with HDTVs, after all’s said and done, and all research i’s are dotted and t’s are crossed, and you’ve totally geeked out on specs and features, what really ends up mattering is how the image looks, personally, to you, and the primary consumers of the images (so in my case, me and misia).

A couple of months ago, misia identified the Sony Bravia XBR4/XBR5 line as best looking among that stage’s lineup (without the Samsung 81Fs in the picture), and after due consideration, I agreed. These are top of the line TV sets. After this weekend comparing the Samsung LED backlight (promises a higher contrast ratio, i.e. deeper blacks), we both still think the Bravias look better.

Current prices are well over my initial estimate of investment in these techs, not quite 100% higher, but definitely up there. Still, after thinking about it, weighing the impact on our savings, etc., I think I’ll probably go for it.

We’re not buying immediately. There are some decent package deals up and available (toward my priority of getting some decent audio out of the deal as well) to encourage holiday buying, but I’ve resolved to stick it out and buy after this holiday season, per my original schedule.