Watching the Super Bowl is good. Watching it in high definition is even better.
Here we look at the pricetags of 5 killer systems and compare what the money
will buy in your living room to what it will buy in Jacksonville.
Super Bowl time is TV buying time. January is second only to the holiday season
for home theater sales. And for less than the price of a (admittedly very
expensive) trip to Jacksonville, you can own the Super System of your dreams.
At the heart of it is high-definition television. When the New England Patriots
play the Philadelphia Eagles on Feb. 6, more people than ever will be tuning in to
the high-definition broadcast on News Corp.'s (NYSE:NWS - News) Fox
network.
"I've been in this business twenty years and there's always been a spike in
January, but with HD even more people are looking to switch out their TVs," says
Tweeter's general merchandise chief Dave Malin.
Forbes.com asked people at Best Buy (NYSE:BBY - News), Tweeter
(Nasdaq:TWTR - News) and Harvey Electronics (NYSE:HRVE - News) to put
together complete home theater systems for football fans in a range of prices--
from around $2,700 to more than $100,000--scaled to your needs.
But what to buy? Obviously, it depends on who you are, what you can spend and,
more than anything else, what you can rationalize. Our advice is to think of it this
way: not only is it about the same price as going to the game, but you can play
DVDs when you're done.
Sources: Best Buy, Tweeter, Harvey Electronics, and Acoustic Interiors. Theater
costs are approximate and do not include other necessary materials like wiring,
etc. Trip: Jacksonville Convention and Visitors' Bureau, Stagefronttickets.com,
ebay.com, alphatickets.com, clippercruise.com.