Black Friday’s just days away, but we wanted to give you a little pre-Black Friday madness. We don’t scour the web or the circulars for deals, but when one of the editors here stumbles upon a good one we like to let you know. So here’s a goodie from Best Buy.

The big blue box has a sale going on right now through Nov. 24 (Note: this has been changed on bestbuy.com to reflect the sale ending Nov. 20) for Hitachi’s 50-inch P50H401 plasma. The regularly priced $1,996 TV is being cut in half to $996. Not too shabby for a 50-inch set not made by an off brand fixated on price over performance.

Sure, it’s only “1080i” and not the full HD 1080p, but that should suffice plenty since broadcasters aren’t exactly sprinting to transmit signal at greater than 720p or 1080i. Our editor Bob Archer also reported that he added a Toshiba HD-A3 HD DVD player and had another $100 subtracted to the plasma sale price—with zero percent financing for 18 months.

Three HDMI inputs on the Hitachi will let you connect enough high-def source content to keep you happy too. Native resolution is 1280 x 1080.

We’re not saying it’s a Runco or Pioneer Kuro here, just a solid deal for those who may not have an HDTV yet or maybe were early adopters looking to upgrade or perhaps phasing out an extra TV around the house.

Arlen Schweiger - Managing editor of Electronic House Magazine

Arlen contributes product news items to electronichouse.com along with his role on the print publication. Got a tip? Send it along!