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