Super Bowl Sunday is one of the biggest TV events of the year, and people are always interested in buying a new set for their house party, recession or not.

They are just more careful about the value of their dollar this year. As a result, retailers and manufacturers are getting together to bring plenty of good last-minute offers, including sales by as much as 45% off, like a couple of Sharp TVs we found online. Most of the sales we’ve monitored this week, however, are coming in between 20% and 30%. That’s not too bad.

According to TV company reps, part of the motivation to pick up a new set this week is to also avoid problems with the upcoming DTV transition, but we don’t believe that at all. A big sports event supercedes any sort of concern people might have about that, and most people who are buying a TV for a SB party have previously upgraded to an HD feed. Often, they’re just trying to man up to something bigger and better.

Samsung, in particular, is trying to take all of the attention during the run up to the Super Bowl. Having paid a huge chunk of change to have the honor of being known as the "Official Sponsor" of this Super Bowl, they’re offering a $200 gift certificate on any TV bought over $1000 at Amazon.com.

This deal (and others online) might prove to be a Shipping Impossible Mission, what with the game coming in only 48 hours, but we’ve heard that many of the retailers are honoring online deals at their bricks & mortars. Even against offers of their competitors. So that means you should take your iPhone, G1, or Netbook with you to show the salespeople the competing offers and hassle with them for 15 minutes until they give you the appropriate discount. Believe me, they want to sell you that TV. This is not the time to turn away customers.

Check out some of the top TV deals we found that are available right now (above), and then check out our Google Docs spreadsheet with the larger list, right here. That one includes more big box retailers (so you don’t have to deal with the shipping nightmares) and we’ll update it throughout the day. Also, please let us know if you find out about any deals that are better than these in the comments below or by email, to jferm80@gmail.com. 

And here are a few important tips you should keep in mind before making a purchase:

• Do account for the number of people attending your party. If it will be less than ten people, consider buying a set at 40 inches of less. You don’t need a monster set, just sit a bit closer together.

• Do consider the viewing angle of the set. The larger the angle, the more people should be able to crowd beside the set. But the angle should not be a priority ahead of resolution, brightness, and image processing speed.
• Do stick with LCDs for their durability and power savings. That is, unless you pick up one of the ‘Ultimate Black‘ Kuros from Pioneer (with their ridiculous contrast ratios), or one of the Mitsubishi Laser TVs. In that case, you probably shouldn’t be checking out any posts that feature ‘deals’. But if you are really sticking to your price points and want to maximize size, there will be some, older good Plasmas available.
• Do try to pay for your TV straight-up, without buying into any interest deals. As the Wall Street Journal recently noted, many of the ‘no interest’ multi-year payment plans become horribly one-sided against customers the moment you send in one late payment. Please don’t be that guy.
• Don’t buy any high-end HDMI cables while at the store. They will pitch them to you, with ridiculous, cross-eyed, teeth-shattering lies. You don’t need any Monsters in da house, just the TV. And some some chips. And guacamole. Skip the peanuts this year.
• Do figure out the best seating arrangements before the game starts. HDGuru came up with a great list that defines the optimal viewing distance for each size of a television. The main rule is that you should measure the distance in feet that you (and your friends) prefer to sit away from the set. Then, multiply that number by four to get the number of (diagonal) inches of screen you need. Check out the full (PDF) list of distance measurements right here, or after the jump.
• Do calibrate the TV to produce the best picture quality possible. Associate Editor Joe Brown recently noted during a video of his winter outing at the Wired Store that calibrating displays is a key to get the best out of any TV. Often, big box retailers will amp up the contrast, brightness, and color levels on in-store TVs in order to stand out in the high-ambient light conditions.

See also:

• Thanksgiving Update: We Rank the Best Early Black Friday TV Deals

Gadget Lab 2.0: Jose Fermoso’s Twitter feed; Gadget Lab on Facebook.

Microsoft’s Media Center product is a great DVR, and a neat all-around way to enjoy your media…if you live in the United States, that is. But if you’re thousands of miles away in the remote country known only as Canada, you’re weirdly out of luck. That’s right, Microsoft hasn’t allowed Canadians access to ATSC broadcast–that’s over the air high-def TV, for those who don’t read tech acronym speak. But thanks to some fancy coding from the folks over at SiliconDust (the manufacturer of the popular HDHomeRun external tuner), the high-def dry spell looks to be coming to an end. That’s right: The latest drivers support ATSC broadcasts for Canadians.

A post on the manufacturer’s Web site highlights the quirkiness of it all: “Run through the TV Setup wizard in WMC… set your location to Canada. The tuner will detect as a ClearQAM tuner and the channel scan should pick up all the antenna channels.” In other words, the HDHomeRun pretends to be a QAM tuner (QAM is encrypted digital cable content) in order to get ATSC content into Windows Media Center. Pretty clever! And apparently, you’ve got enthusiast Peter Near to thank for it all.

LAS VEGAS — A jungle of cables dangling from the back of a television detracts from the beauty of any home entertainment system. That’s why some manufacturers are making some of their premium TV sets wirelessly interact with other entertainment devices.

At the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Panasonic and LG both showcased flat-panel, high-definition TVs bundled with wireless systems.

Both companies’ wireless systems appear very similar. Panasonic’s TC-P54Z1 television is sold with a SCZT1 wireless receiver box. You’d connect devices such as your Blu-Ray Player or Xbox 360 to the receiver, and on top of the receiver is a transmitter that wirelessly outputs to another receiver on the TV.

LG’s 47LH85 wireless system (above) works the same way. And both companies say their wireless systems transfer perfectly uncompressed data up to 30 feet away from the TV.

Neither company provided a price estimate, but since these are 47 to 55-inch TVs we’re talking about, I’d guess somewhere around $3,000.

Panasonic said its wireless home entertainment system is shipping June or July. LG did not have a ship date but said sometime 2009.

Photos: Brian X. Chen/Wired.com

LAS VEGAS — At its CES 2009 pres conference today, Samsung showed off its rather stunning new LCD TV, the Series 7, comprising several different sized but equally good looking sets.

The problem with LCDs is that they get blurry when the on-screen action hots up. Samsung has solved this by upping the refresh rate of the display to 240Hz, or four times faster than the standard 60Hz rate. This is coupled with what Samsung calls Auto Motion Plus, an interpolation trick which guesses where a pixel would be if the source refreshed fast enough to send it and uses the excess of cycles to put it in its place.

I was half way back in the room when Samsung showed the TV off, but even from there the picture looked incredibly sharp and smooth, more like plasma than LCD. The bright CCFL (Cold cathode fluorescent lamp) backlight probably doesn’t hurt, either.

Photo: Jon Snyder/Wired

LAS VEGAS — Sharp on Wednesday introduced a family of new high-definition flat-panel LCDs that include a built-in Blu-Ray player.

Shipping February, Sharp’s AQUOS BD series will be available in 16 different models ranging from 26 to 52 inches diagonally. 

The three largest sizes feature a 120Hz refresh rate, meaning they refresh motion images two times faster than the normal 60Hz rate. That spells out to an "exceptionally clear and crisp picture when viewing fast-action images," said Bob Scaglione, Sharp’s senior vice president of marketing, at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.

The TVs display high-definition at 1080p resolution. The TVs also include a "dejudder" feature to reduce background motion noise.

"This product line represents the pinnacle of image quality," said Mike Troetti, Sharp’s president of marketing.

The TVs will cost between $1,650 to $5,000, depending on size.

Photo: Brian X. Chen/Wired.com