It's Beginning To Look A Lot Like A HD Christmas

Black Friday, for those of you not already familiar with the term, refers to the day after Thanksgiving and the symbolic kickoff of the holiday shopping season. Retailers often offer tempting (and loss-leading) deals on Black Friday in order to get customers' feet in stores and eyeballs on websites.

My direct-view displays article from last year discussed the size-vs-resolution tug-of-war between LCD and plasma. At a given price point, plasma displays tend to give you a larger piece of "glass", but at a given glass size, LCD often delivers the higher picture resolution. And a more recent blog post highlighted LCDs' dramatic price drops of recent months.

Vizio jumped the gun on Black Friday and, in its announcement, exemplified all of these trends. The new VP42 42" widescreen plasma display delivers a 1024×768 resolution picture for just $999.99. Also at $999.99 is the VX37L 37" widescreen LCD. For more budget-conscious consumers, there's the $399.99 VX20LHDTV 20" LCD. And conversely, for those of you with looser purse strings, take a look at the $1,649.99 Gallevia GV46L 46" LCD and the $1699.99 P50HDTV 50" plasma. All five of these latter units support 1366×768 pixel native resolutions.

Products in-between the above-mentioned price points are also available from Vizio; check out the press release for all the details. And if 42" widescreen is your desired size, and you prefer a LCD, I've found an even better Black Friday deal for you; a (manufacturer-unspecified) display for $799.99 after rebate at Micro Center stores.

Happy shopping, folks….

Followup: check out Dealnews' Best-of-Black Friday recommendations….

More Followup: Here's more on the LCD-vs-plasma tug-of-war, including reiteration of a point I've made before; that past a certain dimension threshold, there is no appreciable display market so sooner or later, LCD will likely win.