A web interface positions you various little ones on a map marked with your custom "safety zones." But the most enticing feature, if we're studying the GPS tracking page properly, is that you can assign your children with various barnyard animal iconography. That'll teach little piggy the consequences of being late.
The Little Buddy will be on sale at Best Buy shortly, and we assume the service could come with some sort of monthly cost. [Best Buy via navigadget]

Insignia, Best Buy's house brand, offers the NS-BRDVD3 at $180, with the NS-WBRDVD adding Wi-Fi to the mix for $20 more (seems worth the upgrade to us). All it takes is a firmware upgrade and you can start streaming Netflix. It's great to see Netflix invading our homes, one gadget at a time. Here's hoping smartphones are next! [Netflix via Engadget]

The major brands, like Samsung, Sony, Toshiba, and Panasonic, may have higher prices, but they back it up with service, especially in warranty and repair. After all, they've got the integrity of their name to protect. But the lesser-known brands (often just rebadged, unidentifiable Chinese models) often have repair options to match their low prices. Almost all of these brands researched require the customer to ship the HDTV out, which usually costs a few hundred dollars. If any warranty is included, it's invariably meager (90 days), but many simply have no option for repair.

Considering a certain flammable Insignia set, extended warranties seem more pressing now than ever. Maybe spending a few more bucks now isn't such a bad idea. [HDGuru]

[Note: Zing!]

The 26-inch sets, of which more than 13,000 units were sold, was priced between $900 and $1,000 at Best Buy, yet the US Consumer Product Safety Commission allows Best Buy to get away with exchanging a mere $500 gift card for the defective product. That means the customer is screwed out of either half or nearly half of the original price through no fault of their own, and they'll have to pay sales tax yet again if they want to replace the TV. Gift cards, unlike store credit, are still subject to said sales tax, which on a large purchase like this can be a significant chunk of change.

HDGuru recommends immediately replacing the set (model number IS-LCTV26), as it has already caused one injury and cannot be repaired. Give Best Buy a call at (800) 233-0462 to return it.

We also concur that calling the US CPSC at 800-638-2772 to give 'em a piece of your mind is warranted. At the very least, we invite all readers to load the Best Buy website and shake your fists angrily toward it. Update: I've neglected to add that $500 will be able to replace a TV of this size with today's prices. Most of Best Buy's 26" HDTVs can be bought for $500 today. [HDGuru, Image: bdjsb7/Flickr]

To find out, we grabbed five HDTVs you can find on the street for under $900—some require a little snooping to find that price, but they're out there. We've got four LCDs and one plasma, with four of them were discount brands, while one was from a pretty top name brand. We're looking at a few things: are any sub-$900 TVs actually watchable? Are any lower-tier brands as good as big name brands? And finally, which TV delivers the most bang for the buck?

The HD Guru Gary Merson and Cnet senior editor for TVs David Katzmaier—two guys who know more about HDTVs than I know about my mom—graciously came by to help us calibrate the sets, in order to coax the absolute best picture out of them and give us some insights on what we should look for.

Here's how we set up the tests: Every set was calibrated with a THX Optimizer disc, with an emphasis on getting the darkest possible blacks while maintaining detail and acceptable brightness, since blacks are LCDs' big weakness, and the most likely attribute to suffer in cheaper sets—in more expensive sets, like Sony's LED-backlit Bravia XBR8, a lot of what you're paying for are deep, detailed blacks. From there, we tested the sets playoff style—two at a time with a 2-way HDMI splitter using The Dark Knight on Blu-ray as the test disc because it's a beautifully shot film with all kinds of perfect HDTV test scenes, and its excellent master makes it solid source material. Plus, it's the one Blu-ray movie everyone will own. And it's awesome. So, two may enter, only one may leave: The set that wins the showdown advances to the next round. Here are the five cheap HDTVS:

•Insiginia NS-LCD42HD-09 1080p LCD$800 (Note: We actually tested the 52-inch version because Best Buy didn't have the 42-inch model, but they assured that the guts are the same, so we assume that the results would be the same)
•Toshiba Regza 42RV535 1080p LCD $875-$930
•Vizio VO42LF 1080p LCD $830 MSRP-$880
•Vizio VP423 720p Plasma $830 MSRP
•Westinghouse VK-40F580D 1080p LCD$850-$899

Round 1: Toshiba Regza vs. Vizio LCD

It's pretty much a blow-out: The Regza wowed us against the Vizio with blacks that weren't just deeper, but more detailed with a much cleaner contrast. In night-time skyscraper shots, you could make out windows and other smaller details much more clearly. The Vizio's viewing angle was not nearly as wide as the Toshiba, and it had a more noticeable color distortion at a 45-degree angle. Color wise, the Vizio might be a bit more appealing, because even after calibration, they tend to be more saturated. The Toshiba had noticeable instances of showing shiny moire pattern when panning down a building that was essentially a set of verticals lines—in other words, they got kind of warped. But dialing down the sharpness, as David suggested, reduced this quite a bit. Both sets have below-par motion resolution, one of Gary's favorite picking points. If you watch text as the camera zooms by, it gets mad blurry, but as Gary himself admits, most people don't notice this kind of thing unless it's super egregious.

Winner: Toshiba

Round 2: Westinghouse vs. Vizio LCD

This was a really tough one. We went ahead and slotted the Westinghouse against the loser of the first LCD battle because we noticed it had a really obnoxious backlight issue during calibration: It's much brighter on the right than on the left, a problem that gets worse when you view it off-angle. The picture exaggerates how bad it is, but it's definitely noticeable.
That aside, it performed favorably against the Vizio. It has a better viewing angle with less distortion as you swing to the side. But it also has some of the moire problems we noticed with the Toshiba. Motion isn't fantastic on either set. What did the Vizio in was how badly it crushed the blacks vs. the Westinghouse. In other words, at the brightest black level we considered acceptable, a lot of detail was lost. Gary pointed out the problem there—which you'll see again in the plasma: Its settings don't have fine enough gradations for picture fine-tuning. It got brighter or darker in huge leaps, preventing us from finding a happy medium with solid blacks that have detail. So, as we said, it's a tough one. If the Westinghouse didn't have the backlight issue, it would've won hands down.

Winner: Tie.

Round 3: Vizio vs. Insignia
The Insignia is the worst set we tested. It's just bad. The blacks are really crushed, the details are mushy, the colors don't pop—we even tried tweaking post-calibration to bring them up, but it just made them look unnatural—and the few aspect-ratio options all resulted in a noticeable portion of the picture being cut off, even as it displayed perfectly on the Vizio LCD next to it. If you buy the 42-inch version for $800, you're getting hosed. If you buy the $1500 52-inch version, you're just screwed. It made the Vizio, the loser in previous rounds, look almost amazing.

Winner: Vizio

Final Round: Toshiba Regza vs. Vizio Plasma
This was the hardest fought battle of the competition. We gave the plasma a bye to skip to the final, because we rightly figured plasma's inherently better picture qualities suited it for a boss battle, the Sagat to LCD's Ryu.

One of plasma's greatest strengths against LCDs is that, unless you're talking about super-high-end LED-backlit LCD, plasma will beat LCDs with darker, richer blacks every time, simply because of the technological differences. So it was stunning that the Vizio essentially forfeited this advantage by crushing them. Hard. They were darker than the Toshiba's, obviously, but bringing the brightness up to a level where you could make out the same dark details seen on the Toshiba without washing out the picture was impossible because of the controls. Gary says he routinely advocates that TV makers build in finer gradations in adjustments, and in this case, the ability of the user to more finely adjust the picture. Better controls would have been to the Vizio plasma's tremendous advantage.

The Vizio plasma maintained its other inherent strengths though. It had zero viewing-angle trouble, looking essentially perfect from all angles. Motion was better, with more details preserved, in signs for instance, as the camera passed by. Like the other Vizio set, the LCD, colors were verrry saturated, especially out of the box, with a lot of red in the picture. Calibration helped, but the Toshiba still seemed to provide more accurate color. A few people in our office who passed by said they preferred the extra pop of the Vizio plasma's color and saturation, so this might come down to a personal preference.

At our viewing distance of six feet, the difference in detail between the 1080p LCD and 720p plasma was noticeable, particularly when we examined facial details and hair. The 1080p Toshiba was, well, more detailed than the 720p Vizio plasma. From nine or more feet away though, most viewers would be hard pressed to discern a difference in screen resolution.

In the end, we, along with Gary, came down on the side of the Toshiba. Its picture has a clarity that the plasma didn't quite touch, both in dark scenes and its colors were truer to life. Overall, we feel it's the best buy for the money, though it will take a bit of gumshoeing to buy it for under $900.

Winner: Toshiba

Other Considerations
There are a few larger points to take one. First and foremost, any of these sets will be more amazing than your standard-def set, and none of them, except perhaps the Insignia, are a total waste of money. Another important point, one that David stresses, is that we were able to make the picture on each one worlds better than it was out of the box—if you calibrate your TV, you will get more out of it, no matter who you buy it from. Finally, Gary notes that the lower-tiered brands can have worse warranty and customer support terms, so while the Toshiba might run the highest price initially, its overall cost of ownership may possibly be lower. If you haven't bought an HDTV yet, we hope this little test-bed has served you in making this very important step.

In other words, the only reason why you would use this TV is if you really like watching TV on the go and you want to be prepared when analog broadcasts get shut down in 2009. – Jason Chen

Product Page [Insignia]

If it weren't only around $99, we'd say screw it. But your grandparents aren't going to know the difference between this and an iPod anyway. – Jason Chen

Product Page [Best Buy]

Insigna 2 GB Sport [Crunchgear]

Best Buy has partnered up with Rhapsody and Napster for content download, and the player will also be able to download games that will compete with Apple's games services. But it's kind of a cheap-looking player, isn't it? Pricing wasn't announced, but it should be available by the end of October. – Charlie White

Best Buy rolls out a new MP3P to counter Apple's iPod [AVing.net]

The Amigo is both PC and Mac compatible, for the person who has a Mac but not an iPod. Yes, we're looking at you, Tony.

The 1GB retails for $99 and the 2GB for $129. – Jason Chen

Product Page [Insignia via DAPreview]

Insignia: Mark of the Least

I trust I'm not alone in dreading my semi-regular trips to Best Buy. The haphazard selection of products can be truly maddening, and many of the blue-shirted sales clerks need to get with the program. Don't get me started on the nightmare that was Christmas 2003, when I ordered my girlfriend's digicam online then tried to pick it up at a Best Buy outlet. In the time it took three different "sales associates" to locate my Sony DSC-P32, I could've built my own. Out of toothpicks and bubblegum, MacGyver-style.

Best Buy's been suffering the consequences of its skeeviness as of late, however, as it scrambles to keep pace with Target, Wal-Mart, and Costco. Let's face it, America's a pretty lazy nation, and if we can pick up a progressive scan DVD player while simultaneously purchasing a five-pound bag of Doritos, heck, we'll do it. So Best Buy has to compete on price, and that means pushing its low-end, in-house Insignia brand ever harder. Just last week, the chain announced a whole slew of new Insignia dreck that'll be ready for the holidays.

The upshot? If you've got a cheapskate uncle who knows you're into gadgets, expect some of the following goodies come December. Should you curse your fate, or is "Insignia" synonymous with "low-end quality"? An answer (of sorts) after the jump. PLUS: More surplus goodness!

Before I sat down to tap out this column, I did the requisite check of what the Gizmodo-ers have previously written about Insignia. Turns out that it hasn't exactly been a favorite topic of discussion; there was a matter-of-fact news item when the brand debuted last October, then nothing really since (except for a brief shout-out in a previous Low End Theory). Makes sense, as the brand isn't designed to excite us gadget nerds. As Best Buy vice chairman Brad Anderson quipped when introducing the brand, "We're trying to go wherever there is a value proposition." In non-execspeak, that means, "Yeah, it's cheap-ass stuff made by contract factories. You wanna fight about it?"

Some of the most touted Insignia products are flat-panel TVs, which obviously fall beyond Low End Theory's purview. (Note to first-time readers of this space: If it costs more than two bills, it ain't low-end enough for Low End Theory.) But there are also some cheaper units to be peeped, starting with the Sports Armband AM/FM Radio (pictured above). Not a bad looking product, but I don't get the $26.99 price tag. It's a shade too expensive to be an impulse buy, and there's not much of a price difference when compared to last-gen Samsung YEPPs (now Froggleable for around $30). True, the YEPPs don't offer the AM band on their tuners, but I refuse to believe there's that many folks who jog along to bad talk radio.

Slightly more impressive are Insignia's 10-mile, 22-channel radios. True, you'll need an FCC license to operate on GMRS channels, and I sorta doubt the typical Insignia customer possesses that level of radio nerdiness. But at $69.99 for a two-handset pack, this is a much tastier deal than the armband radio. And that stated 10-mile range is a lot better than what a comparable amount of scratch will buy you at Radio Shack.

The latest additions to the Insignia lineup are a range of portable DVD players, including a basic model with an impressively large seven-inch screen. It's currently on sale for just $119.99, which sounds like a nice deal until you check out the specs. Progressive scan? Nope. Playback time? A piddling three hours, if you're lucky. S-Video output? You're kidding me, right?

Okay, granted, cruddy specs are the norm for low-end merchandise. And I'll give Insignia some mild props for their PCs, which at least have the decency to feature Pentium 4 chips instead of eMachines' lousy Celerons. But if Best Buy thinks that Insignia's gonna help it compete with Wal-Mart and Costco, they could have another thing coming. They don't seem to get that the future of bargain hunting isn't in specialty stores; consumers see Cobys and jWins everyday at the local CVS or Rite-Aid, after all, and I'd bet the farm that neither of those budget brands is any worse (or better) than Insignia. Heck, I bet some of their products are even made in the same factories.

I get what Best Buy is doing here: they're trying to snag those customers who walk into the store, realize that they can't afford the name-brand product, and then are relived to discover that, hey, there's an equivalent Insignia product available for 40 percent less. But will that be enough to save Best Buy over the long haul? Already, the company seems to be making some dicey, possibly desperate moves to shake itself out of its funk, like partnering with Geek Squad and AuctionDrop.com. Here's a better idea: how about dealing with your customer-service woes instead? (Even better ideas to fix Best Buy? Lemme know, champ.)

Obviously, I'm all for low-end merchandise. But I'd much rather buy my $15 radios from the Gem Gem Gem Value Store on 125th Street than descend into the chaotic bowels of the nearest Best Buy. Unless, of course, Insignia starts a Willy Wonka-inspired "golden ticket" promotion. I'm sure the factory that makes those cheap-ass portable DVD players is a magic place, indeed.

A SURPLUS OF COMMENTS: Gigantic reaction to last week's column on Army surplus stores. Most folks wrote in to chastise me for not understanding that "Japanese watch movement" simply means "Japanese gears are inside the watch." A few kinder, gentler souls, however, sent along recommendations on other surplus options. The most popular suggestion, by a country mile, was American Science & Surplus—not military stuff, by and large, but how can you not love a site that sels 3,200 RPM motors for $15 each?

Also, one vote was cast for Col. Bubbie's, based in Galveston, Texas. Couldn't locate any good electronics on the site, but "the Colonel" apparently accepts faxed wish lists. Oh, and if you've been looking for a World War One practice sword, he's got you covered.

Brendan I. Koerner is a contributing editor at Wired and a columnist for both The New York Times and Slate. His Low End Theory column appears every Thursday on Gizmodo.