Back in November, North American electronics retailer Circuit City filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy and announced that more than a hundred of its locations would be closed, in an attempt to restructure the company’s debt load and keep the chain going until a buyer could be found.

Well, apparently that didn’t go according to plan; Circuit City announced today that it would seek permission from the bankruptcy court to switch to a straight-up liquidation of its remaining assets. The 500-plus U.S. stores that survived the November cutbacks will be closed, putting more than 30,000 people out of work. (Apparently the CC-branded stores in Canada will stay open; must be operated by a separate company.)

Circuit City joins a growing list of retail chains (Tweeter Etc., CompUSA, Office Depot) that have taken ill or bought the farm altogether in recent years, killed off by a combination of the generally failing economy, their core business moving online, and, in Circuit City’s case, monumental management screw-ups (e.g., sacking most of their actually-knowledgeable sales staff and replacing them with clueless teenage biscuits straight out of central casting). There is supposedly a nonzero chance that it may live on as an online brand, but I don’t know as I’d bet the ranch on that. It is survived by its chief (and now largely uncontested) competitor, Best Buy.

Welll, in just under 10 hours I should be on a plane to Las Vegas, NV for CES. The show properly is Thursday-Sunday, but there are press events Tuesday and Wednesday which I’ll be attending. During the show itself I’ll be splitting my time between working Sling Media’s booth and trying to visit other vendors as a blogger. As is usual for me, my first victim, er, target of the show will probably be TiVo. Since I’ll be working half the show my time for seeing the rest is cut in half, but I’ll try to do what I can.

Going into this CES I’m not sure what the big deal is going to be this year, if there is one. The economy is down and I haven’t really felt any particular buzz about any given area of the market. HDTVs get bigger while getting thinner and faster (refresh rates). We may see some interesting 3D technologies which will start to enter homes in the next few years. Palm is expected to announce Nova and new hardware, but I’m not excited. I was a die-hard Palm OS user for many years, since 1998, and still carry a Treo 680. But after five or more years of waiting for Palm OS 6 Cobalt Nova I just don’t feel that inspired. I’m already focused on Android as my next likely platform, and it would take a lot for Palm to sway me. Even if they produce an incredible OS, they have an uphill battle ahead to win over developers. I don’t think they have a real chance at this point to gain significant market share. And without that the developers won’t come - and the apps really make the platform.

Going forward I think the mobile market will effectively be, in no particular order, Windows Mobile Professional, BlackBerry, Symbian S60, iPhone, and Android. The original Palm OS is the walking dead, and I don’t see Nova/Palm OS II carving out enough market share to be viable. Symbian UIQ is effectively dead as SonyEricsson and Motorola have pulled out and the Symbian world is focused on the S60-based open source effort. Windows Mobile Standard (aka Smartphone) is rapidly dying as Professional-based touch screen devices move into the lower end of the market where Standard used to focus. I expect Android, which is basically just coming into the market, to post the biggest gains as more devices land. I think the LiMo/LIPS effort will falter and expect to see some of the vendors who have been working on it switch to Android. I think those five platforms will provide the bulk of the smartphone market, anything else will be a small niche.

We’ll probably see more tru2way devices on display from a number of vendors this year, but I don’t know that we’ll see anything revolutionary in that market. I’m hoping TiVo may be showing off their ‘Series4′ tru2way-enabled model, which they’re believed to have been working on for a while. And they may be showing their new DirecTV software, which I expect will be running on the HR20/21/22 DirecTV DVR Plus hardware. I’m not expecting anything else major, maybe some new content partnership announcements and perhaps plans to bring TiVo to more countries. (I’m surprised they haven’t re-launched in the UK yet with the DVB-T model actually.)

The past couple of years the Blu-ray vs. HD-DVD fight provided some interest. But that was effectively over with CES2008, and officially ended when Toshiba threw in the towel in February. There aren’t likely to be any big announcements in the Blu-ray world, aside from more content partnerships like LG adding CinemaNow and YouTube to Netflix on their players. Maybe someone will be showing off higher density disc or 3D content concepts.

I’m hoping to be surprised by something at the show, something just unexpected. If you know of something I should be on the look out for, do let me know. And if you’re going to CES drop by the Sling Media booth and say hello. I believe I’m on the afternoons of Thursday, Saturday, and Sunday, and on Friday morning. I’m also scheduled to present for Sling Media at CntrStg on Saturday. Frankly I’m nervous as hell about that. It has been years since I’ve done a presentation or talk at a tradeshow and never at anything as big as CES.

OK, off to finish packing.

If you need to get someone a last minute gift and you’re not sure what to get, consider Amazon gift cards. There are two instant delivery options available, so you can really shop last minute - email a digital gift card right to the recipient or print a physical gift card on your home printer to give to them.

As you might expect, I do just about all of my holiday shopping online. Better prices, better selection, no parking hassles, and no crowds. About the only thing I venture out to buy in person are the cards, I still like giving real cards (e-cards aren’t my thing) and I like browsing the selection to find the right one for each person. I’m a pretty heavy Amazon user.

We probably all have people on our gift lists that are hard to buy for. It is nice when they have Amazon Wish Lists to help us find gifts they want to receive, but when they don’t one alternative is an Amazon Gift Card.

BestBuy.com is holding their ‘Cyber Monday’ sale over two days, Sunday and Monday. There are sales in many areas of the site - televisions, home theater, movies, computers, etc. Save up to $800 on a new HDTV! Save $70 on a Panasonic DMP-DB35K Blu-ray player and get it for $229.99 or an LG BD300 Blu-ray player with built-in Netflix streaming and get it for $279.99. There are 19 Blu-ray titles on sale, with prices starting at $11.99. Lots of deals, so check out the sale.

Buy.com’s Black Friday and Cyber Monday Sale Event starts today. Look for price drops on a number of products.

PayPal is sponsoring weekly specials at Buy.com. There are some good deals, like an HP dv9819wm Notebook for just $569.99 - you save $630.00. Or a Sharp AQUOS LC-52D43U 52″ LCD HDTV for $1219.99 - you save $1279.01! Of course there are deals at the low end of the price scale as well, like a 4GB SDHC card for $12.86, or a 4GB microSDHC card for $19.99. They even have the new Sling Media SlingCatcher for $249.95, a savings of $50.04. There are 29 products as part of the specials, prices good for the next seven days.

Disclaimer: I work for Sling Media.

Not content to wait until the end of the week, Amazon has already started running Black Friday specials. There are a lot of great deals and there are new ones every day.

Amazon is also running their Amazon Customers Vote 2008 campaign, where you get to vote on which products get great deals. You vote on products, and if the products you vote win then you’ll get an email and have a limited time to claim the deal.

Sonic, the digital media company best known for their Roxio products, not the drive-in food chain, is acquiring CinemaNow. I think that leaves Netflix as the last independent digital movie rental site. Akimbo is gone, Blockbuster bought Movielink. I suppose you could count VUDU, though they’re tied to their own hardware platform - so I don’t. Sonic and CinemaNow have already been working together, with CinemaNow offering download-to-burn content for Qflix DVD drives, via Sonic’s software.

Interestingly, both companies also have relationships with TiVo. TiVo recently added downloadable content from Disney, which is provided through CinemaNow. More CinemaNow content is promised going forward. And, of course, Sonic’s Roxio Creator, Toast, and Popcorn are the only commercial products officially sanctioned for use with TiVoToGo.

Press release:

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Long-time TiVo expansion and service vendor DVRupgrade is today launching new TiVo life-extension services. While DVRupgrade has long offered pre-upgraded TiVo units, as well as drop-in replacement drives and the tools needed it to do-it-yourself, they’re now offering full TiVo repair services as well.

While DVRupgrade is best known for their TiVo related offerings, they’ve also branched out into other areas. They sell VideoReDo, a popular video editing and DVR burning package often used with TiVoToGo recordings, and a number of accessories. They also offer VUDU, HDHomeRun, Neuros MPEG-4 Recorder II, and a number of other products such as Slingboxes, Logitech remotes, and more.

I’ve used DVRupgrade’s products myself. A few years ago I used InstantCake to image a drive to recover and expand an old Series2 before I sold it to a friend. A just a few months ago I picked up a 750GB replacement drive to replace the factory 80GB drive in my Pioneer DVR-810H when it finally gave up the ghost after four and half years of constant use. I’ve always been very happy with both their products and their service, and I recommend them highly.

Press release:

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