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Today's Show:
Each year at this time we stop to give thanks for everything we have in our lives. Home electronics is pretty far down the list in the bigger picture. It goes without saying that we are thankful for our families, our health, our friends, and our wonderful listeners. With that said, there are a few things that we are thankful for in the home electronics area. As is tradition over the last four Thanksgivings, on today's show we give you our list of things we are thankful for.

What We're Thankful For '08

Ara:

Affordable mass storage - whether you download podcasts, movies, or music you need a place to store everything. In my case, I have a video server that houses over 150 movies. Mass storage is essential. Not only do you need to store the content but you need to back it up. Today you can buy a 2 TB external hard drive for around $350.

More HD Content than I can watch - DirecTV, Dish Network, FiOS, and U-Verse are bringing more HD into our homes everyday! Now we can finally chose our HD based on quality programming instead of the fact that its in HD so I have to watch it. And this year Survivor finally went HD! Too bad its not what I was hoping for.

Netflix - Netflix has put their content on their own player made by Roku and recently the Xbox 360. Finding something to watch with the service is easy, especially if you like older TV shows. They have begun to add HD content which is a step in the right direction. What would make me a lot happier is if they would include 5.1 audio and newer movie releases. Maybe they'll push Apple to make their online store an all you can eat proposition?

Boxee - A very nice Media Center application on its own, but what I like about it is that it turns the AppleTV into what it should be!

Affordable Blu Ray - Good Blu Ray discs let your TVs perform the way they were meant to! No compression artifacts and great color. That is of course if the discs are mastered properly. Blu Ray discs also have something for the audiophile, lossless audio! As more studios start including next generation audio on their discs, our receivers will also have something to cheer about. We hope you picked up a great deal on a Blu Ray player on Black Friday!

Braden:

High Definition Television - Sounds obvious, right? After all, this is a show all about HDTV. Sometimes the biggest and most important things are staring you in the face and you just start to take them for granted. When was the last time you tried to watch a prime time drama in standard definition? Painful huh? How about a football game? I can't believe we actually used to watch TV like that and enjoy it.

The Escalating HD Arms Race - Initially it was DirecTV and Dish Network. Then Cable realized they couldn't just sit back and hope subscribers wouldn't leave. Throw in the new IPTV players like Verizon and AT&T and it's starting to get interesting. New HD channels are announced daily and most shows we watch are in HD. Huge things have happened in the last couple years and it doesn't look like things are slowing down.

Downloaded/Streamed Movies - First there was CinemaNow and MovieLink. They were good, but maybe a little before their time. And they lacked a "plug and play" solution for the home theater. Along comes XBox360, Vudu, then AppleTV, the Sony Video store, Netflix and the Roku box, and probably a few more we forgot about. Sure it isn't there yet, but we're getting closer every day. Vudu HDX is the best proof of that to date.

One HD Disc Format - Like it or not, Blu-ray won the war this year and HD-DVD is officially a collector's item. It doesn't matter which side of the fence you were on, we can all agree that one format is best. Less confusion, less fragmentation and hopefully quicker adoption. And the movies are great, too.

The DVR - Sure, this is an "old standard" on the list of things we're thankful for, but this wouldn't be an honest list if it wasn't included. We can now try out just about any show on TV for a few episodes to see if we like it, completely hassle free. Braden's family has picked up several new shows this season they probably never would have seen had it not been for the DVR.

And of course we have our listeners to be thankful for. Thank you for your news leads, story ideas, email, and voicemail. Thank you for supporting us through our store and for buying us coffee through our Paypal donation link! You all make the show worthwhile!