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Filed under: GPS, Transportation

Installs gone wrong certainly aren’t all that uncommon, but the tale told by one VTECnical of the 8thcivic.com forum is undoubtedly a cut above the rest, and could well have you reconsidering that suction cup option. As VTECnical tells it, he bought a Pioneer AVIC Z2 GPS unit and some other components from Circuit City last July for more $3,000 and decided to let their installers do the installation work for him — apparently after he was told that it’d slide into his Honda Civic without any modifications.The problems then allegedly began when the installer whipped out a heat gun, which was purportedly intended to be used to mold a mounting guide for the GPS unit but instead wound up melting one of the Civic’s heating ducts. As if that wasn’t enough, the installer apparently also used tape to hold the GPS unit in place, installed the antennae on the inside of the car instead of the outside, and used a glue gun to install the speakers instead of bolting them in place. All told, that apparently not only resulted in over $12,000 worth of damages but, according to the estimate from a Honda dealership, left the car “unsafe to drive.” For its part, Circuit City apparently did eventually remove the equipment and refunded the full $3,000+, but VTECnical is now left dealing with Circuity City’s third party insurance company to recover the rest of the damages.

[Via Autoblog]

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Source: Donald Melanson

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Filed under: HDTV, Home Entertainment

It’s not like there has been any shortage of deals on HD DVD hardware over the past few months or anything, but now that Toshiba (and almost everyone else on the planet) has officially yanked support for the format, prices are beginning to plummet en masse. First on the docket is the HD-A3 at Circuit City, which now sits at just $99.99 and comes with seven free titles, two of which are 300 and Bourne Identity. So yeah, if you’ve been waiting for this moment to snap up the failed format for cheap, hop on in — but if we were betting souls, we’d say holding out just a wee bit longer would actually be in your wallet’s best interest.

[Thanks, Dustin]

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Source: Darren Murph

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Filed under: Home Entertainment

Yeah, we pretty much expected every big box retailer known to man to carry these things, but just in case you were worried about locating a TV converter box in preparation for the upcoming cutover, here’s some comforting news. Wal-Mart, Best Buy, Circuit City, Kmart, RadioShack, Target, Sears and Sam’s Club are all on the list to carry equipment necessary for analog TV owners to receive OTA programming after February 2009, and just in case one of the aforementioned giants aren’t anywhere near you, around 100 more smaller retailers have been certified to stock ‘em. Also of note, you can start the new year off right by reminding your great grandparents (or other family members, too) that they can go on and apply for up to two coupons — which should arrive around six weeks later — worth $40 apiece to purchase the required boxes. Or, of course, you could just pick them up a new television this holiday season and be done with it.

[Via BroadcastingCable]

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Source: Darren Murph

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Filed under: Displays, HDTV, Home Entertainment

Although coy with any detail, Panasonic just put the industry on notice with its Blu-ray plans for the US. In a move to double its Stateside market share, Panny will begin bundling Blu-ray players with their plasma TVs next week. The move specifically targets Circuit City and Best Buy among other big-box retailers and “may” result in a discount. This according to Masayuki Kozuka, a general manager in charge of the company’s storage device strategy. We’ll take that as a confirmed discount. After all, without a price drop, why bother — it’s not like profile 1.1 support will be the cause for that huge upsurge in sales. A Panasonic spokesman also said that they would release two new “higher-end” (read: more expensive) Blu-ray players in January. We’ll likely hear more on that little nugget at CES.

Update: Well, here you have it: Best Buy’s offering a $500 discount off their 50- or 42-inch plasmas when purchasing the DMP-BD30K.

[Thanks, Travis]

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Source: Thomas Ricker

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Filed under: Portable Audio, Portable Video

A couple of lines in a settings file does not a partnership make, but some enterprising hackers at the Archos Community Forums have discovered evidence that Archos is planning at least one large-scale content deal when the super-hot 605 launches in the US. Poking around in the unit’s provider.xml file inside the system folder, user Plissken007 discovered pointers to not one, but eight major content partners for wireless media distribution, including some with live holder pages on the Archos website. Notables include Best Buy, Cicuit City, Amazon (for Unbox, probably), MovieLink, Vongo, AOL, and, of course, YouTube. Now, we can’t see Best Buy and Circuit City sharing space like this, so Archos is probably hedging their bets a little, but if it’s true, it looks like there’s finally going to be a major competitor to Apple’s iPod / iTunes ecosystem out there, eh?

[Disclosure: AOL owns Engadget’s parent company.]

[Via Archos Fans]

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Source: Nilay Patel

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Filed under: Portable Audio, Portable Video

A couple of lines in a settings file does not a partnership make, but some enterprising hackers at the Archos Community Forums have discovered evidence that Archos is planning at least one large-scale content deal when the super-hot 605 launches in the US. Poking around in the unit’s provider.xml file inside the system folder, user Plissken007 discovered pointers to not one, but eight major content partners for wireless media distribution, including some with live holder pages on the Archos website. Notables include Best Buy, Cicuit City, Amazon (for Unbox, probably), MovieLink, Vongo, AOL, and, of course, YouTube. Now, we can’t see Best Buy and Circuit City sharing space like this, so Archos is probably hedging their bets a little, but if it’s true, it looks like there’s finally going to be a major competitor to Apple’s iPod / iTunes ecosystem out there, eh?

[Disclosure: AOL owns Engadget’s parent company.]

[Via Archos Fans]

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Source: Nilay Patel

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Filed under: Gaming

And so we’ve come full circle. After accurately predicting that $100 PS3 price drop a few weeks back, Circuit City is back in the rumor game with a flyer that seems to confirm the $50 price cut for the Xbox 360, and even tosses in some info on price breaks for the Elite and Core systems. According to the flyer, on August 12th the 360 Premium will dip to $350, and include a copy of Rockstar’s “Table Tennis,” while the Elite will raid your wallet for $450 — a $30 reduction — and include zero free games. Finally, the Xbox 360 Core will get $20 lopped off, and sell for $280, which might be the end of the road for the stripped down console once stock runs out.

[Thanks, Sam]

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Source: Paul Miller

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Filed under: Portable Audio, Portable Video

While everyone’s busy trying to figure out which particular shade of brushed metal Apple’s new iMacs are going to show up in, a few major online retailers have quietly trimmed 5.5G iPod prices. Apple, who usually keeps a pretty tight rein on its product prices throughout various retail channels, hasn’t matched the cuts on the Apple Store, but you can currently score a 30GB or 80GB iPod (with video) for about $20 off at Amazon, Best Buy, Circuit City and J&R online stores. Notable exceptions include Target’s online store, and Wal-mart, which doesn’t sell iPods online. It’s anyone’s guess as to what actually sparked these price drops. It could be a way for traditional retailers to compete with Apple’s aggressive back to school promotions, an attempt by Apple to clear away excess stock in preparation for a brand new iPod, or perhaps just a good old-fashioned price cut. Perhaps we’ll know more on August 7th?

[Thanks, Matthew]

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Source: Paul Miller

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