ESPN’s Sports Guy, columnist Bill Simmons, recently picked the DirectTV Sat-Go portable satellite TV as his top pick of available Christmas gadgets for men.
Judging by the other possibilities that can easily replace the Sat-Go at a cheaper price, we think Mr. Simmons should have consulted his own VP of Common Sense before making such a recommendation.
The DirectTV Satellite-to-Go is an all-in-one rig that comes packed with a 17-inch LCD, a DirectTV receiver and antenna, and folds into a single briefcase. The idea of the gadget is actually quite great if you want DirectTV available to you at all times, especially during stadium tailgate parties before a game.
But it has two huge negatives that make it impossible to recommend: The rig is almost thirty lbs. (27.2 to be exact), and costs $1000. I’m the owner of a 10 lb., 17-inch laptop and I can hardly use it as a portable device without hurting my back, and I’m healthy. I can’t imagine carrying something three times as heavy more than a few times a year.
This brings me to the other reason why it’s a bad choice: The Sat-Go is a mainly a tailgate gadget and unless you tailgate every weekend, the price isn’t worth it. You can get the biggest monster package DirectTV offers (over 200 channels in high-def) for about $500 a year, and then use a Sling (~ $200) to send the signal over to your laptop anywhere in the world. And you won’t have to pay your physical therapist and you’ll be able to surf the web as well.
If you’re a huge NBA or NFL fan, you can also pick up nice subscription plans that allow you to see every single game you want on your laptop while traveling. The NBA’s League Pass Broadband gives you 900 games a season for only $100, is PC and Mac compatible, and won’t take up too much of your computer’s memory.
So waybe if the Sat-Go was an all-in-one PC, with a slide out keyboard, I might think about . . . nah, I still wouldn’t get it.
Thankfully, Simmons didn’t blow it completely with his full Christmas wish list. He also picked the Netflix Roku Player (one of Wired’s favorites this year), cheap Blu-ray players (from $200-250), the complete set of The Wire ($140), and some quality books like Steve Martin’s Born Standing Up (~$15).
For those not familiar with Simmons, he is known mainly for an irreverent comedy style that mixes detailed Boston homerism with strange shorthand memes. Such memes include the VP of Common Sense (with the idea that the average fan can make better management decisions than closed-off executives), and The (Mike) Tyson Zone (when someone reaches a status of such absurdity that anything they decide to do, like hatching purple baby dinosaurs, is deemed ultimately possible). Michael Jackson and Britney Spears are other characters in the Tyson Zone.
So maybe Simmons will give us a call next year before adding gadgets to his Christmas wish list. That way, we’ll save the poor housewives of America from giving their husbands a wholly unnecessary item. What do you say Bill?
In the meantime, I’m going to spend the Christmas holiday making irreverent predictions about sports. Here’s one: In 2009, no one will watch the N.E. Patriots or the Boston Celtics win a championship on a DirectTV Sat-Go.
B.S. Photo: David Shankbone/Wikipedia
See also:
Gadget Lab 2.0: Jose Fermoso’s Twitter feed; Gadget Lab on Facebook.
For 11 years, 
