It's not easy to find a silver lining to the economic meltdown, but here's one: cheap high-definition televisions.
Bargains on consumer electronics goods, especially TVs, have become a tradition for the holiday shopping season. But this year prices for HDTVs are expected to plunge as fast as ratings for the new "Knight Rider."
Analyst Riddhi Patel of ISupply forecasts that prices of 47-inch liquid crystal display models will go as low as $800, 42-inch plasma sets to $500 and 32-inch LCDs to $400.
Those are examples of sleek, flat-panel models. If you don't mind some depth on your HDTV, the bargains get even more fetching. You might be able to pick up a 64-inch, rear-projection, digital light processing (DLP) model, for example, for less than $1,000.
"It's a buyer's market," said analyst Richard Doherty of Envisioneering Group.
The very best prices probably will be available only during the traditional door-buster sale of the season -- on the day after Thanksgiving, known as Black Friday.
It's usually a day of jam-packed parking lots, limited stock of the best bargains and traumatized children in front of you in long lines.
The one-day specials are indeed often gone in a day, but HDTV prices probably will take a big dip for the entire holiday season. Patient shoppers might even get a second shot at Black Friday lows; if holiday sales are weak, as many analysts predict, merchants desperate to clear out inventory might slash prices again.
Don't expect to find the lowest prices on name-brand, state-of-the-art models, but that's not the barrier it once was. Whereas your grandparents might have demanded Zenith or some other prominent label of the day, consumers nowadays are more than willing to wander off the name-brand ranch.
Not only is the budget label Vizio currently the country's bestseller, but some of its HDTVs have also gotten solid ratings from reviewers for CNET ( www.cnet.com) and Consumer Reports magazine.
Other budget brands haven't fared as well with reviewers, however, and consumers have complained that it can take months to obtain repairs from some of the more obscure labels, even under warranty.
As for image quality, shoppers should be aware of two important factors.
The first is resolution. The most advanced HDTVs have a resolution of 1080p. The number stands for the number of digital lines that go into making the image -- the more lines, the better the picture. The "p" stands for progressive scan, which delivers a better image than the other regimen in use, known as interlace (as in 1080i).
