Super Bowl time is TV buying time. January is second only to the holiday season for home theater sales. And for less than the price of a (admittedly very expensive) trip to Jacksonville, you can own the Super System of your dreams.
At the heart of it is high-definition television. When the New England Patriots play the Philadelphia Eagles on Feb. 6, more people than ever will be tuning in to the high-definition broadcast on News Corp.'s Fox network.
“I've been in this business twenty years and there's always been a spike in January, but with HD even more people are looking to switch out their TVs,” says Tweeter's general merchandise chief Dave Malin.
Forbes.com asked people at Best Buy, Tweeter and Harvey Electronics to put together complete home theater systems for football fans in a range of prices — from around $2,700 to more than $100,000 — scaled to your needs.
But what to buy? Obviously, it depends on who you are, what you can spend and, more than anything else, what you can rationalize. Our advice is to think of it this way: not only is it about the same price as going to the game, but you can play DVDs when you're done.