Q: Some time ago you said in your column you paid $29 for a SanDisk 4GB high speed SD card, including a card reader. Where did you find the $29 bargain?

A: I got that particular deal at Best Buy after seeing it in a Sunday newspaper ad circular. If you are buying memory cards, the only time to buy them is on sale and the difference between the regular price and a promotional price is often 50 percent or more. You have to keep your eyes open to find the best deals, and the Sunday paper is a good place to start.

It's also useful to sign up for newsletters from online retailers such as onecall.com, outpost.com, inetvideo.com, and tigerdirect.com. I've purchased new Blu-ray Disc movies for as little as $9.95 from newsletter offers, as well as regular speed 2GB SD cards for under $7.00 and portable GPS navigation systems for under $80.00. Keep your eyes open and the deals will find you!

Q: I have been shopping to get some audio/video equipment installed and one of the quotes was from a team I really liked, and the price seems fair. They use nothing but Monster Cable HDMI cables in their installations and seemed horrified when I said I would prefer cheap HDMI cables from one of the sites you recommend, such as monoprice.com. I was told HDMI cable quality is critical. Am I really going to run into problems with inexpensive HDMI cables?

A: Of course they were horrified -- cables are a big source of profit for A/V retailers, and they sure don't want to lose that or have the expensive cable mystique exposed for the snake oil scam that it is. If you are paying for a complete install though, they have the right to use the products they prefer and they are entitled to make a buck too. If you think you are getting a fair deal overall, I'd just pay for the install and consider it a done.

However, if you are buying a cable in a blister pack and hooking things up yourself, paying big bucks for HDMI cables is like filling your toilet tank with expensive bottled water. Tap water flushes just as well, and a $5, three-foot HDMI cable will work just as well as a $150, three-foot HDMI cable.

Case in point: the Criterion Collection. For the uninitiated, the Criterion Collection masters some of the best-looking, best-sounding DVDs in the world and they are known to be meticulous in everything they do. Criterion has started production of films on Blu-ray and remodeled their screening room. Some of their choices were a top-of-the-line speaker system from Axiom Audio, a $10,000 Samsung SP-A800B video projector, and (drumroll, please) an HDMI cable from DVI Gear that sells for more than $100 less than the Monster Cable equivalent.

If modest HDMI cables are good enough for the Criterion Collection's high-end screening room, I'll bet they are good enough for you, too.