Gift GuiDe
Home 1-11 .
Tech
Shopping for a Ti; camcorder, CD player or cellular phone?
Avoid holiday meltdown with this rundown of the newest and the best.
most popular categories for
home use, you can relax. Here's
a run-down on the latest bells
and whistles, the hot sellers,
and recommended models —
courtesy of some of Detroit's top
experts in electronic sight and
sound.
Television
What will consumers in the
market for a new TV find this
holiday season?
Closed captioning for the
their capability, you'll be able
to hit a button and the TV list-
ings will be displayed on the
screen.
Another feature to look for
this holiday season is flatter
screens, explained Bruce Gor-
man, assistant manager of ABC
Warehouse in Farminton Hills.
The flatter the screen, the less
ambient light is reflected back
— say, big windows or lights in
the room.
Many big-screen TVs — 32
Photos by Craig Terkowitz
of too many
years ago,
wiring your
life for sight
and sound
was actually
quite easy.
Take televisions, for example.
They came in two versions:
black and white or color. Shop-
ping for a new set was a snap.
Alas, those days are gone.
With a nearly endless array of
features and brands, choosing
JOE SURKIEWICZ SPECIAL TO THE JEWISH NEWS
inches, some manufacturers are
offering "deep black" tinting. "It
helps to keep down the glare
from ambient light so the pic-
ture doesn't wash out as much.
At the high end of the scale,
look for two-tuner picture-in-
picture screens that display two
channels at once.
Sony offers a set that comes
with wireless headphones, so
one person can watch a picture
while listening to the speakers
as another person watches the
other picture while lis-
tening through head-
phones.
Next question: What
are some hot models this
holiday season?
For a good value with-
out a lot of options, con-
sider the Toshiba
CF26C30 with a 26-inch
screen, stereo sound,
closed captioning and a
good-looking picture.
And if you're in the
market for a set that of-
fers a lot of extras? Then
consider the Panasonic
KV2'7XBR36, a 27-inch
set featuring picture-in-
picture capability and
flat screen technology.
Want to pull out all
the stops? The Sony
KV32XBR36, a 32-inch
set, offers two-tuner, pic-
ture-in-picture capabili-
ty, wireless headphones
and closed captioning.
Camcorders
Televisions this season have a new flatter screen and are equipped with "surround sound."
big-ticket electronics such as
televisions, compact disk play-
ers, camcorders and cellular
phones has become a daunting
task. Add the pressures of com-
pleting a gift list during the hol-
idays, and you're headed for
shopping expedition meltdown.
If you're in the market for the
above high-tech electronics, the
Joe Surkiewicz is a writer in
Maryland.
hearing impaired is now re-
quired by law on TVs with
screens 13 inches in diameter
and larger. It allows the set to
display text on the screen.
While folks without a hear-
ing disability won't immediate-
ly benefit from the mandated
feature, they may at a later
date. Because of closed cap-
tioning, TVs will have a text fea-
ture. Later, as broadcasters add
inches and larger in diameter
— are equipped with "surround
sound" features built-in. All you
have to do is plug in some extra
speakers and you can hear the
airplane fly overhead from the
front of the room to the back.
Mr. Gorman noted that the
home theater systems — audio
system in conjunction with
video is an extra feature.
On screens smaller than 27
Like televisions, this
season's crop of cam-
corders offers a lot of fea-
tures. Two hot options are color
viewfinders and image stabi-
lization.
A color viewfinder lets you
see the video image in color ver-
sus black and white. However,
black and white viewfinders of-
fer sharper images, and a color
viewfinder adds between $100
and $200 to the cost of a cam-
corder.
Image stabilization is a tech-
nological attempt to solve a
common problem when shoot-
ing without a tripod: No matter
how hard you try, the video im-
age suffers from "shake" — es-
pecially when recording
through a zoom lens.
"Image stabilization is the
best feature in camcorders this
year," said Ken Dworkin own-
er of Centry Camera in Royal
Oak.
There are two styles of sta-
bilization on the market — dig-
ital and optical. Digital
stabilization electronically al-
ters the image to reduce un-
wanted motion. But there's a
drawback. It reduces the qual-
ity of the final image.
Optical stabilization, on the
other hand, physically "flats"
the lens, which compensates for
the movement of the camera be-
fore the image is recorded. It's
offered by Canon and Sony in
their 8mm lines.
Holiday shoppers looking at
camcorders will also find an-
other ne'w feature this year:
Cameras equipped with three-
to four-inch color LCD screens.
Instead of looking through a
viewfinder to see what you're
recording, you look at a small
screen.
Which are the most popular
models this season? One mod-
el sure to be a best seller is the
Sony CCDTR101, an 8mm unit
offering stereo sound, optical
stabilization, and a 10:1 zoom
lens.
Another popular camcorder
is the Canon E520. It features
a standard 8mm format that
comes with a built-in video light
that pops up when the ambient
light is too low. The Canon
E700 is similar, except it offers
optical stabilization.
LL1
CD
1 --
11
CD
Compact Disk Players
For music lovers, compact
disk technology offers pure bliss.
There are no tics, pops or nois-
es from scratches mar the mu-
sic reproduction. Why? The
data on a CD is "read" by a laser
-1
G7