Gearfuse

Best Buy’s Black Friday ad has leaked, which means it’s time to do some serious itinerary planning for the big day. See, I like me and my fiancee set up a full contingency plan based on what we want the most for us, then comes gifts for others. Come on, we need to set priorities people! Strategy is the name of the game on Black Friday.

So Best Buy has some moderately cool deals, especially in the video game department, but nothing mind-blowing. Though what might be notable is that Best Buy is not going to allow for anyone to get hurt this year because of their doorbuster deals. Apparently they don’t take “death by stampede” lightly. All doorbuster sales will be handled via tickets, which will be passed out up to two hours before the 5 am door openings. Hit the jump for a full-list of Black Friday Best Buy deals. Doorbusters are followed by an asterisk.

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Who hasn’t fantasized about being a wizard? Harry Potter might have to constantly worry about the dark lord Voldemort leering over his shoulder, but my wizardly concerns are much more pedestrian, such as figuring out how to change the channel with my penis magic wand.

Thanks to the Kymera Magic Wand Universal Remote, there is no need to go to Hogwarts School of Wizardry, not even for a semester. Accelerometer technology allows this you to utilize 13 different gesture controls to navigate through your TV. The wands will ship on October 1st and you can grab your own for around $84.

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Look at this fucking thing. What’s the first thing that pops in your head? If you answered “dildo“, you are so correct. Panasonic thinks that consumers want a remote that can rest on a surface like a slug. What kind of market research went into this? Single females 22 to 45? Give me a break.

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Late night. Your girl is over. You’ve made it to first base and it’s been wonderful watching Wild Things but now you need to step it up. Grab the gel remote your cousin at Panasonic R&D sent you. Pause the movie right when Denise Richards is getting naked and look your babe right in the eye.

Take the remote, slip it in and you’re an all-star now, kid.

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LG makes every product under the sun. You name it, LG probably mass produces it. LG also enjoys marketing bizarre combination of electronic equipment. Take this 8″ portable DVD player, the LG DP889. Little excessive on the numbers, don’t you think?

Well, this portable DVD player not only works as a normal CD player but it also happens to be a digital photo-frame. Now, when you aren’t watching The Dark Knight on it, you can gawk at family photos as you dream of days past. It’s compatible with a plethora of formats, including DVD video/DVD±R/DVD±RW/Audio CD/CD-R/CD-RW, ensuring nearly any burned disc will work. It’s priced at $200, making it the most diverse digital photo-frame in existence and while, not quite as compact and portable as the Panasonic LF-P968C DVD burner, it’s certainly getting there.

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Just when you thought that the 400GB Blu-ray discs announced in early July couldn’t get any sweeter sounding, Pioneer renders it obsolete less than two months after. The standard size of a Blu-ray disc is 25 GB on a single layer and 50GB with a dual layer. Well, the fat cats at pioneer were not satisfied with even 16 layers of storage. It needed to go bigger. So, they crammed 25 layers on to the disc, with each layer containing 25GB of memory, totaling up to a whopping 500GB of storage space. Even with Buffalo’s 8x Blu-ray recorder, it’d be a difficult task to fill up 500GB.

Brendan Sheridan, Product Manager of Pioneer Europe NV, Multimedia Division: “With its strong support among the gaming, movie and PC industries, Blu-ray has become the de facto next generation storage system. …we envision the need for a technology that can support far greater capacities as HD streaming in particular becomes commonplace and users build larger files of digital content.”

With Blu-ray getting bigger and bigger, you’re going to need a player for all your friends to know how hip you are. What better than a Playstation 3 for all your media needs at a fraction of the price of other Blu-ray players.

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We love LEGOs and while we’re partial to the Mindstorms set, Anders Søborg has built and programmed his own NXT scanner comprised mostly of these bricks.  For those not familiar with NXT scanners, they’re a “standalone” scanner that can scan and save images as BMP-files.  The images scanned can be saved in either 24-bit true color, 8-bit color or gray scale.

Although the device isn’t faster than any other scanner on the market (it’s quite slow actually), cut it some slack: it’s made out of toy blocks.  Anders was also nice enough to include DIY instructions on making your own, complete with programming instructions and all, on his website.
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A new portable microphone from Blue Microphones has been released. It’s called the Snowflake due to its small frame and portability and works as a USB-powered plug-and-play device that will be compatible for both PC and Mac users.

At the base of its sleek case is a slot to hold the USB cable; the whole microphone folds up to easily fit in any laptop bag. And, because it’s from Blue, you already know the sound quality is superb. For just only $80, other microphones will be left in the dust.

To see more pictures of Snowflake, check out the jump…

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I’ve written many an opinion column on why the Playstation 3 is the best console out there. After HD DVD died, my argument was strengthened further. Ryan then put the nail in the coffin by confirming that the only BD Live-enabled player on the market right now is the PS3.

A lot of talk has gone on revolving around the price of Blu-Ray players on the market. Some argue that prices have increased since HD DVD died out. Others state that prices are going down on specific players. While each side has some truth to it, the Playstation 3 remains at $399 and gives you both the best Blu-Ray player available and the most powerful gaming console on the market. Either way, consumers shouldn’t have any second thoughts about picking up a PS3 if they’re considering an HD solution for movies.

I’m glad we had this little talk. In the end, I’m just trying to keep you informed.

Coming in October, Disney plans to release “Sleeping Beauty” on Blu-Ray disc with some remarkably exclusive features thanks to the rise of BD-Live, the internet-based feature which offers a variety of Web-enabled features. From the article:

…viewers will be able to pop “Sleeping Beauty” into their Blu-ray Disc player and get a customized version of the famed Sleeping Beauty castle that serves as a backdrop for the menu. The sky behind the castle will reflect the weather in their hometown, whether it’s a blizzard in Cleveland or a balmy day in San Diego.

It’s more or less an Xbox-live with some Sony snaz thrown in exclusively for Blu-Ray discs and Blu-Ray players. Ironically the only Blu-Ray player on the market supporting such a feature is Sony’s PS3. So, if you shelled out loads of cash for a top-notch Blu-Ray player and held off on a top-notch gaming system with no-notch games, you’ll be missing out, for now.

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