Big retailers announce Black Friday electronics deals

And they’re off! Some stores are now giving consumers an official sneak peek (if a sneak peek can be considered official) at their Black Friday deals, days ahead of the newspaper ads and circulars that will showcase their holiday specials.

Walmart, for example, e-mailed a list of specials to past customers, and its Web site lets you browse through the upcoming circular. You can even access a map of your local Walmart store so you can make a beeline to the items on your shopping list.

Best Buy, too, has already posted its official Black Friday circular online. You can leaf through it, virtually at least, though you can’t get these deals in stores until the doors open Friday at 5 a.m.. But you can hit BestBuy.com on Turkey Day, when Best Buy will start offering its Black Friday deals online.

If you’re revving up for a store run, it pays to be an early bird. In a move to control the expected crowds, Best Buy employees will hand out tickets to customers queued up outside stores starting at 3 a.m. Tickets grant the customer the ability to buy select front cover and other limited quantity items before a specified deadline. According to Best Buy, “Ticketing will help to ensure the safety of both Best Buy customers and employees when the stores open. Tickets also help to ensure that those customers who arrive first can purchase the products they want.”

Web scam alert: Don’t shop online until you read this

A list of companies that have profited from a scam exposed by a U.S. Senate committee. (Click to enlarge.) [Source: US Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation]

If you’re shopping online this holiday season, beware: The United States Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation has just exposed a massive Web scam that has cost online shoppers more than $1.4 billion.

The revelation is all the more shocking because the con was carried out with the knowledge and support of hundreds of sites and online retailers, including some household names found in the Committee's list shown to the right, who profited handsomely from it. According to a statement by Committee Chairman Senator John D. Rockefeller IV (D-WV), here’s how the scam worked:

After shoppers made online purchases and were going through sites’ usual “check out” process, three Internet companies tricked them into signing up for what Sen. Rockefeller termed “useless membership clubs” with names like Reservation Rewards or ValueMax Shopping Service. (Such clubs can charge an unwitting member’s credit card $10 to $20 per month.)

According to the committee’s 30-page investigative report [PDF], during check out, consumers are shown offers promising cash back rewards that appear to be related to the transaction they are trying to complete. The committee’s investigators found that, “Misleading ‘Yes’ and ‘Continue’ buttons cause consumers to reasonably think they are completing the original transaction, rather than entering into a new, ongoing financial relationship with a membership club.”

New Ratings of LCD and plasma TVs

Just in time for holiday shoppers heading out on Black Friday: our new Ratings of LCD TVs and plasma TVs, with reviews and test results for more than 100 TVs.

Our testers found TVs offering great performance at bargain prices, including 55-inch LCD TVs selling for $1,500 to $2,000, 46-inch LCDs for about $1,000, and 42-inchers for less than $700. There are also TV deals on the plasma side. We recommend a number of 54-inch to 60-inch TVs selling in the $1,500 to $2,000 range, several 50-inch models for less than $1,000, and 42-inchers for $700 or less. (Ratings and full reviews available to subscribers. Any visitor, subscriber or not, can get TV specs and other information by using our Price & Shop tool.)

Among the recommended TVs are models from bigger names such as JVC, LG, Panasonic, Samsung, Sharp, Sony, and Toshiba, as well as brands such as Insignia, Sanyo, and Vizio.

Many of the LCD sets have 120Hz or 240Hz refresh rates, which we have found to reduce motion blur in many instances. There are also a growing number of Internet-enabled LCD and plasma TVs that can directly access online content, including streaming movies services from providers such as Amazon Video On Demand, Blockbuster On Demand, Netflix and Vudu. More than a third of the sets 37 inches and larger in our Ratings are Internet-capable models.

Standout GPS deals for Black Friday

The folks at the Consumer Reports Cars Blog have compiled a list of Black Friday GPS deals they've found from various retailers. 

Check it out: "Countdown to Black Friday: Best GPS deals"

Also see our GPS buying tips and Ratings (available to subscribers).

Daily electronics deals

Today's electronics deals, courtesy of The Consumerist:

• Sony Style: Sony Bravia 46" 120Hz 1080p LCD HDTV w/ Sony PS3 Console for $1,000 + free shipping
• Walmart : Samsung 40'' LCD 1080p HDTV for $598 + $0.97 Shipping
• 6ave.com: Sharp Aquos LCC4677UN 46-inch 1080p 120Hz LCD HDTV $888 + free shipping
• Apple Store: 120GB iPod Classic in Silver or Black $189 Shipped
• Newegg: Olympus FE-46 12 Megapixel Digital Camera $80
• BestBuy: TomTom XL 330S GPS Package for $99.99 w/ Free shipping
• Boscov's: LG Blu-Ray Disc Player for $99.97 w/ Free shipping
• Office Depot: Lexar JumpDrive TwistTurn 4GB Flash Drive $7.99 Free Overnight Shipping
• NewEgg: Seagate 2TB External Hard Drive $149.99 + free shipping
• Buy.com: "Monty Python And Now For Something Completely Hilarious" box set for $17.00
• Amazon: EA Sports Active for Wii $39.99 + free shipping

Related: TV buying tips and Ratings; Digital camera buying tips and Ratings; Blu-ray player buying tips and Ratings; MP3 player buying tips and Ratings.

Kindle is holiday e-book king after Sony and Nook hit snags

The Amazon Kindle

This is turning into the season of the new e-book readers that never were—and, by default, the season of the Amazon Kindle, the sales leader that no-shows like the Barnes and Noble Nook and Sony Daily Edition were supposed to challenge.

To be fair, the Nook did appear briefly, but has now sold out for the holiday season, before the first orders have even shipped. If ordered now, according to Barnes and Noble's Web site, a Nook would reach you or your gift recipient early in the new year—on January 4, to be precise.

The Daily Edition, Sony's first e-book reader with wireless access to content, remains available. But it will ship "on or about December 18," according to Sony's online store today. ChannelWeb quotes a Sony spokesman as saying there's "no guarantee" that orders will arrive by December 25.

Two other would-be Kindle killers—wireless e-book readers priced at below $400—are also no-shows, at least so far. The iRex DR800SG, originally promised for late October or early November, has yet to appear. And there's no sign, either, of the Alex, which will boast a second, color LCD screen like the Nook. The Web site for its manufacturer says the device is "coming and the latest news about it is the October 19 release announcing the device would be sold through "selected strategic partners" by "the end of this year."

New digital camera Ratings include a projection model and a full-frame SLR

Sony's full-frame Alpha A850 digital SLR, now in our digital camera Ratings. (Click to enlarge.)

Sixteen percent of consumers we recently polled said they were interested in buying a point-and-shoot or SLR digital camera during the Thanksgiving weekend. If you're one of them, here's good news: We've just updated our comprehensive digital camera Ratings (available to subscribers) to include some of the season's newest cameras.

Here are some intriguing new models:

Full-frame SLRs. It's the first time we've included an SLR in our Ratings that has a large, full-frame sensor. Sony's 24.6-megapixel Alpha A850, introduced late this past summer, is the first full-frame SLR priced at $2000 or less. Full-frame models have been available at much higher prices for many years. This price breakthrough is one of the reasons we're including the A850 in our Ratings. Why the big deal over full-frame sensors? Among other things, they tend to handle a wider variety of lighting situations more accurately, while limiting the amount of visual noise that can distort and degrade an image.

Nikon's projecting point-and-shoot. As we've written in previous posts, Nikon's Coolpix S1000pj is the first point-and-shoot that can project images and video clips onto a wall or any surface. Our Ratings tell you how well it performed as a digital camera.

Fujifilm's EXR superzoom. Fujifilm got a lot of buzz earlier this year when it introduced a subcompact, the FinePix F200EXR, which included a very flexible sensor that adapts to the subject you're shooting. In fact, it will automatically set the camera in one of three modes: high sensitivity and low noise; wide dynamic range; and high resolution. Now the company has put this technology into a superzoom, the FinePix F70EXR. To see how this model and those above did in our tests, check our new Ratings.—Terry Sullivan

Daily Dispatch: Create PDFs with your phone; next Flip video to feature Wi-Fi

The Daily Dispatch is a collection of interesting news about computing, consumer electronics, and other technology gathered from around the Web by Dirk Klingner, our technology-trend watcher, and other staffers. If you have a tip on news you want to share, leave a comment below.

Adobe's Upgrades Acrobat.com, Launches New Mobile App (ReadWriteWeb)

...Also new are 35 user-requested features, including file searching capabilities and integrations with web services like Flickr and Google Image Search. However, one of the most exciting pieces to the upgraded service is the newly launched mobile component. With Acrobat.com's smartphone application, users won't just have access to their files on the go - they can also scan in new documents with their phone's camera.

Next-gen Flip camcorder to boast Wi-Fi (Pocket-lint)

Cisco will launch a new Wi-Fi-enabled Flip digital camcorder to go on sale in the early half of 2010, Pocket-lint has learnt.

Survey shows more consumers to buy bigger TVs

Source: Consumer Reports National Research Center Holiday Poll 2009

It may sound trite, but it’s true: TV buyers are embracing the concept that bigger really is better. About 57% of the consumers planning to buy a TV intend to get one with a 40-inch or larger screen, and many of those buyers (22%) have their sights set on a 50-inch or larger TV.

That’s what we discovered in our latest holiday survey, in which 21% of the 1,000 consumers surveyed said they’d be buying a TV during or after the holidays. Last year, shoppers had more modest aspirations—only 47% were looking at 40-inch and bigger TVs. The steady drop in big-screen prices over the past year could well be the reason more viewers aspire to live larger.

Screen size isn’t the only thing driving purchases, though. Better picture quality with high-def resolution was the biggest reason buyers are willing to spring for a new TV, cited by 77% of those planning to buy a TV. The appearance of the TV also comes into play: 71% want a set that takes up less space than the one they have now or that can be wall-mounted, and just over half said they were looking for a more attractive design.

Where will these new TVs fit into the household? About 70% of buyers are replacing an older TV that is not a flat panel, 36% are buying an additional flat screen for another room, and 20% are upgrading an older flat-panel set.

In some cases, envy is the motivating factor: 37% of the respondents said they want a new TV because their family or friends have one. (The men surveyed were more likely than the women to keep up with the Joneses, 42% vs. 32%. Gee, that’s a surprise.) There was even more of a gender gap in another case: 38% of men polled want a new TV for a sporting event such as the SuperBowl, while only 24% of women voiced the same sentiment.

Motorola Droid's strange camera bug

I have been seeing a lot of blog posts, discussions, and tweets about a bug in the Motorola Droid phone that causes autofocus to fail on certain dates and work on others.

I decided to talk to Mike Gikas, a Senior Electronics editor here at Consumer Reports to see if he could replicate the problem. I brought along my pocket video camera to record the action.

Mike's findings confirm that the autofocus bug is somehow date related. Images taken with the camera set to November 11th, were very blurry. Images taken with the camera set to November 17th were much more in focus. (Click on the images to see examples.)

Many blogs are reporting that the bug cycles every 24.5 days. Since the camera currently appears to be working correctly, users may be able to coast until December 11, when a patch for the Droid is expected to fix this problem.

We'll check back with Mike and other Consumer Reports experts after December 11th to see if a permanent fix has been released. —Dirk Klingner