Forbidden Planet is not only one of the most famous Sci-Fi movies ever made, it launched Robby the Robot into the public consciousness. The Forbidden Planet Ultimate Collector’s edition is a great gift for both introducing the film to new viewers and giving older fans something for their collection. Not only is the classic restored and remastered in 5.1 digital audio, it also contains 6 hours of extras and comes in a beautiful metal box with a small Robby the Robot inside!
I’m a big fan of rear-projection, as it offers very large screen sizes with a high resolution at a reasonable price. This 65-inch Olevia set uses three Brillian liquid-crystal on silicon (LCOS) chips in its light engine so there is no color wheel involved. Able to handle resolutions up to 1080p, the set accepts both DVI and HDMI input.
The Canon HV10 is not only the smallest HD-resolution camcorder currently available, but it crams a lot of great features into its small frame. It has a 10x optical zoom lens with image stabilization, and can also take 3.1 Megapixel photos in 4:3 aspect ratio and 2.07 Megapixel images at 16:9, storing them on a miniSD card. (The really nice thing is that not only can you take a picture while you’re shooting video, you can also capture images from a video you’ve already shot.)
These are nice picks. Forbidden Planet is a great movie, and this gift set is perfect for us middle aged geeks. Unfortunately the frau will have to pre-approve the TV!
I bought this a month ago and the canon HV10 is a sweet camera, but there are drawbacks. You have to use their microphone because it doesn’t support your own. It also gets really really hot after about an hour of use. I’m pretty sure this sucker uses a lot of energy. The biggest issue with it though is that you need HDTV software to edit your files. Canon offers a rebate on this, but it’s a software rebate, so you have to wait for them to ship it to you. To make matters worse, their rebate vendor has a policy to wait 59 days before shipping out you software, so if you get the camera, my advice is to buy your software seperately unless you want to wait two months to do your editing.