I have had DirecTV for 10 years and love it, especially the NFL Sunday Ticket that allows me to watch all of my Miami Dolphins games. But it costs about $80 a month, including high-def fees, DVR service, additional receivers and taxes (but not including the separate NFL subscription). Oakland couple Debra and Mervin James paid even more for their satellite service, $115 a month, so it was one of the first things they looked to cut to save money in tough times. So they ditched Dish, connected a new media PC to their TV, patched in to over-the-air broadcasts and signed up with Netflix. The result? A savings of about $93 a month after startup costs, such as the PC. CNET has all the details on how they did it.

Of course, you can cut your TV-watching costs to $0 by going solely to over-the-air broadcasts. You also gut your choices, if they are important to you. The Jameses made decisions that maintained the variety of programming they wanted while cutting costs. Even if the article doesn’t address some of the drawbacks — inconsistent audio-video quality from Internet broadcasts, early-termination fees from a satellite provider, not all programs being available online — it does offer interesting food for thought.

Wal-Mart’s posting today of its Black Friday sale is a clear sign that deals await people looking for electronics on the day after Thanksgiving, 5 to 11 a.m. They also are available online. Some samples:

* Xbox 360 Arcade bundle, plus Guitar Hero III and wireless guitar - $199
* Magnavox Blu-ray player (not BD-Live capable) - $128
* Blu-ray movies (selection includes Transformers, Iron Man, Kung Fu Panda and Indy IV) - $15 each
* Samsung 50-inch plasma TV - $798
* Madden 09 and other EA Sports games - $30 each

Scope out Wal-Mart’s and other retailers’ Black Friday deals at Dealnews and Black Friday 2008.

With Circuit City filing for bankruptcy and closing 20 percent of its stores, Dealnews offers an important reminder to avoid deals that include a mail-in rebate from the retailer (as opposed to a manufacturer) and to avoid buying the store’s gift cards. The struggling retailer is bound to offer lots of deals on electronics, video games and DVDs (although its selection on the last two has never been stellar) as the holidays approach, but be wary of ones that don’t have an immediate payoff. By the way, based on this list of Circuit City store closings, none appears to be occuring in Minnesota.

I’ve had DirecTV for 10 years, so I thought I wouldn’t be affected by the DTV transition. I was wrong.

It turns out that the crush of new viewers switching to DirecTV in advance of the federally mandated transition to digital television on Feb. 17 has created a huge backlog of orders for installers. (I would imagine the same is true for Dish and cable TV.) How long? It took more than four weeks for an installer to come to my house to upgrade my setup to high-def. When I asked the tech if the DTV switchover was the reason for the delay, he said yes — but not for the reason I thought, sheer numbers. He said that DirecTV is giving those new customers priority and that longtime customers who “just need upgrades” are being sent to the back of the line. The reason is obvious: DirecTV wants to cater to new customers because it knows the old customers aren’t going anywhere.

The news isn’t all bad for loyal customers like me. Normally, an upgrade to a high-def setup costs $200 for DirecTV’s HD receiver with DVR. When I ordered it, I told the customer service rep that I thought that was too high, especially for a longtime customer. She said, “You’re right. How about $19.99?” I quickly said, “Sure!” That included installation, and I got her to throw in an HD add-on programming package free for six months, instead of $5.99 per month, with the option to get it free for six more months after that. That was a decent trade-off for the inconvenience of having to wait.

UPDATE: My deal was actually better. After I wrote this, I called DirecTV to confirm the services I was offered more than a month ago because I couldn’t view the HD Extra package I was offered. The friendly rep quickly fixed that problem. Then she threw in Showtime and Starz, which total 23 movie channels (some in high-def), for free for six months. They also gave me NFL Sunday Ticket’s SuperFan package, which is required for high-def games and normally costs $100 for the season, free for the remaining half of the season. Sweet!

If you’re wondering why CodeWeavers’ website has no details of the free software I wrote about, the site will be updated later this morning. Basically, CodeWeavers is a small company that makes a handful of products for a niche audience. Giving it all away will surely affect the bottom line, so the company understandably is trying to minimize the impact of its promotional gimmick — the Great American Lame Duck Presidential Challenge — by limiting the exposure of the giveaway. (My article seriously undermined that effort.)

Some other questions that have come up:

What does CodeWeavers’ software do?
First, if you have a PC running Windows, as most people do, the software is of no use to you. But if you use a Mac or a Linux system, CodeWeavers’ products will let you run Windows applications, including games, using those operating systems. You can learn more about how it does that here.

OK, but is it any good?
As a longtime PC user, I have never used CodeWeavers’ products. Reviews are generally favorable online (do a Google search), but some are mixed, such as these comments at Amazon. Basically, it seems to come down to whether the programs you want to use are supported. For free, it’s fairly painless to try it out.

Isn’t this just a promotional gimmick?
Of course it is. While CodeWeavers is giving away its core product for a day, it also is getting a lot of publicity and exposure for the professional proprietary services it offers to corporations. But if you look at the list of rules in the Lame Duck Presidential Challenge, it clearly didn’t make the terms easy. And it is living up to its promise by making the free stuff available.

When will it be given away?
As I noted in my write-up, the giveaway happens on Tuesday. Some people haven’t seemed to grasp this fact. The deal is supposed to start at midnight (Central time) and run for 24 hours.

Finally, you have to love the cheeky attitude and promotional chutzpah of CodeWeavers CEO Jeremy White: “I launched the campaign to inspire President Bush to make the most of his final days in office. Who knew that our Challenge would have this kind of impact on the country?” he said. “On the other hand, who knew that the economy would implode, causing oil demand to drop into the abyss and gas prices to plummet as well. Clearly, investigating Bear Stearns, AIG and those guys is misplaced – CodeWeavers is responsible for this mess. So it’s free software for all!”

Several readers have replied in the wake of my article on the Cooper Theatre and Cinerama that there were more than two feature films made in the Cinerama format, as I noted, besides travelogues and documentaries. They cited such classic films as 2001: A Space Odyssey, It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, The Blue Max and Custer of the West. They’re wrong. Oh, yes, they might have seen those films “in Cinerama” at the Cooper or elsewhere, but they were not Cinerama films.

There were indeed only two feature-length movies filmed in three-strip Cinerama, How the West Was Won and The Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm. The rest were documentaries, travelogues and hodgepodge films such as This Is Cinerama, which had scene after scene of material to demonstrate the immensity of the format, such as a first-person roller-coaster ride. These films were shot using three cameras and shown using three projectors, creating the three-strip Cinerama film I wrote about — one that has created problems for DVD releases.

That doesn’t mean regular films weren’t shown at Cinerama theaters such as the Cooper. But they were faux Cinerama. For example, Custer of the West was filmed in a widescreen 70mm format called Super Technirama (aspect ratio of 2.21:1 instead of Cinerama’s 2.89:1). Such a film was shown at the Cooper using one projector (instead of Cinerama’s three) with a special lens to adapt the image to the huge curved screen. The same goes for the other films, which were made in various one-camera widescreen formats and shown at the Cooper using a single projector with a special adaptive lens.

They weren’t “real” Cinerama, but surely they still looked impressive on the Cooper’s huge screen.