Amazon is running their ‘Amazon Customers Vote‘ specials again this year. Just hit the link and you can vote in six rounds for the product you’d like to see reduced in price as a holiday special.

As you can see, the TiVo HD is in Round 4. It currently has 35% of the votes, which puts it in second place behind the Toshiba HD DVD deck, which has 42% - the Samsung has 23%. The TiVo has actually been gaining ground, so if enough people vote it could win.

Personally I voted on the PS3 (currently in 2nd place with 29% to the Wii’s 57%, the Xbox has 14%), the SD-1 (in the lead with 50%, to the FX-30’s 39% and L1’s 11%), the EyeClops (dead last with 12%, beat by the ClickStart’s 24% and Razor’s 64% - none of these really interested me, I voted for the EyeClops because it looks funky), the TiVo HD (of course), the HP (leading with 62% to the Maestro’s 28% and earrings 10%), and the HDTV (leading with 59% to the mixer’s 20% and Roomba’s 21%). I think the PS3 is a lost cause, the Wii is just too popular for the PS3 to catch up. But I think it is still possible for the TiVo to rally!

The good news is, even the ‘losing’ products will get a discount, to the Runner-up Price. So even the losers win a bit.

The quantities are limited, basically on the day for each round the winner is selected and voters are randomly selected and offered the product at the special price. So even if you product wins you may not be able to get it at the special price - in fact, considering the quantities and the number of users, the odds aren’t good - but you also don’t have anything to lose. There is no commitment, you don’t have to buy it even if it does win. It is a chance. So have some fun and vote. Worst case you save someone else some money on the winning item.

And while I’m talking about Amazon deals, on Friday this page will show their Black Friday Deals.

I don’t want to get preachy on this, but do you have a carbon monoxide detector in your home? If not, why not?

I ask because I very likely would have died Monday night if I didn’t have one in my home.

I was in LA working Pacific Media Expo over the weekend and I returned late Monday night, getting home around 2AM Tuesday. I’d turned the heat down while I was away, so one of the first things I did when I got home was to turn it back up. I have a steam radiator system with a boiler in my basement, and I heard it kick in and start warming the house. I went about unpacking and nuking a quick dinner so I could crash and get some sleep before work in the morning. At one point I thought I smelled something odd, but I couldn’t place it so I wrote it off as probably being something outside. I was getting a headache, which I figured was due to the long day and the travel, so I was just about to turn in for the night when the CO detector went off.

It turns out the auto-fill on the boiler failed and it cooked itself dry. And then the low-water cutoff also failed, so it continued to fire full blast with no water. This cracked the boiler, allowing combustion products to enter the steam system, and thereby to enter the house via the vents on the radiators. If I didn’t have the detector it is very likely that I would’ve gone to sleep, and just never woke up. And the house probably would’ve burned down as the boiler was way, way overheated and still firing when I hit the emergency shut-off.

These days most people wouldn’t think of not having a smoke/fire detector, if not several, in their home. But a lot of people don’t have CO detectors. Any source of combustion can produce CO - a fireplace, furnace, hot water heater, stove - even a car accidentally left running in an attached garage. If you have no combustion devices in your home (all electric), maybe you can go without - but it isn’t a major expense for the added safety.

So I’m just saying, it is something to think about. On the downside, I’m facing a major unplanned expense replacing my boiler, but on the upside, I’m not dead.

There are a couple of Best Buy promos running through 11/3 that I thought I’d share. One just because it is an amusing promotional tie-in, the other is actually more useful.

So, you’re thinking of buying a nice Samsung HDTV? What would go great with that? Well, it seems Best Buy thinks a $400 massage chair would be just the thing! Free massage chair (shipping extra) with select Samsung HDTVs at BestBuy.com. Now through 11/3. Yep, buy one of 28 different Samsung HDTV models, ranging from 32″ to 63″ in LCD, DLP, and Plasma models, and get a free massage chair. I personally endorse the Samsung HDTVs - at least the DLPs, I have an HL-S6187W and it is fantastic. If I were buying today I’d probably get the HL-T6187S, which is basically a newer version of my set with an LED light source instead of a lamp. But, in any case, I was just amused by the unusual promotional pairing and felt the need to share. It is certainly different from the usual TV stand or Blu-ray/HD DVD/DVD player bundle promos.

On a more useful note, they’re also offering 10% off a wide assortment of DVD players and recorders, and portable DVD players. There are a number of good upscaling DVD players in the list, fairly cheap, and a few DVD recorders. Those may be useful for those of you who want to dump shows off your TiVo to DVD, without messing with TiVoToGo and PC burning software. It seems that as DVRs grow in popularity, standalone DVD burners are getting thinner on the ground. But they have a handful of models on sale: 10% off select DVD players, portables and recorders at BestBuy.com. Now through 11/3.

See this week’s sale events at BestBuy.com

Well, TiVo seems to be diving into sponsorship head-first. We just heard about their sponsorship of the STA, and now they’re sponsoring the launch of TheDailyShow.com - along with AT&T and Hyundai.

TheDailyShow.com is, of course, devoted to The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. The site features video clips from every episode, dating back to 1999 when Jon took over the show. The collection will be expanded to include the show’s entire history - over 13,000 clips. It is quite the site for TDS fans.

I suppose it makes sense for TiVo to sponsor the site - Jon, and his guests, have certainly mentioned TiVo enough over the years.

Here’s the full press release:
Read the rest of this entry »

Veering away from tech for a moment, into acquiring tech. I like Best Buy well enough to have made them an affiliate for the site, but I know they’re generally not the cheapest place to buy from. Personally I love Froogle.com (yeah, I know it is ‘Google Product Search’ now - that’s a mouthful, I still call it Froogle), PriceGrabber.com, and PriceWatch.com for finding good deals on whatever I’m looking for. But there is a Best Buy five minutes from my office and from my house, and I have to drive past both of them on my commute. So I will sometimes run in there to pick something up when they have a sale (I got a stack of nice APC UPSes on sale real cheap which I use to keep my AV stack happy, among other things), or if I need something quick and can’t wait for online shipping. Or if I just must have something now! So I end up getting Reward Zone certificates - and sometimes they end up rotting in my wallet until they expire, because I don’t go into the stores that often.

Unfortunately, you can’t redeem the Reward Zone points online at BestBuy.com. which would be convenient. At least you couldn’t, until now.

They hit me with an affiliate email last night announcing that “Best Buy Reward Zone Now Redeemable Online” Just enter the certificate number during checkout. Also, if you redeem a Reward Zone certificate online during the month of October, you’ll earn an extra 100 points on the purchase.

I’ve had a $5 certificate rotting in my wallet for a couple of months, expiring on 11/10/07 - guess I should use it now.

Hot on the heels of the Paramount/DreamWorks HD DVD announcement, in which they were careful to specifically except Steven Spielberg’s films from the HD DVD exclusivity, comes this article on MSNBC.

Could Paramount Pictures (VIA) lose Steven Spielberg and the DreamWorks (DWA) studio it bought just 20 months ago for $1.53 billion? It’s entirely possible. People close to Spielberg say he is vexed that Paramount has treated his team shabbily and grabbed credit for DreamWorks productions. If Spielberg were to leave, says a person familiar with the situation, he could take several of his hitmakers and the DreamWorks name with him.

Spielberg has, thus far, refused to allow any of his films to be released on HD DVD - yet he is personally supporting the Sony release of Close Encounters on Blu-ray.