About every six months, nearly all of the televisions on display at Sears' Brand Central electronics center go on a closeout sale, to be replaced with newer models with upgraded features.

That's how fast the home entertainment and electronics landscape is changing these days, said sales associates at Sears in Salina's Central Mall.

"It's a moving train, and you've just got to get on," Sears associate Greg Stafford said.

A flat-panel television together with either a Blu-ray player or a gaming device -- such as a Nintendo Wii, Sony PlayStation or Microsoft Xbox -- has become the hub through which we consume digital content, be it movies, our digital music library or challenging a buddy to play "Call of Duty."

Thinking about sound

As a result, it takes a lot more work these days to sell home stereo equipment and speakers, said Jason Langen, a store associate at Del's Electronics, 2770 S. Ninth. Cell phones and iPods have taken over.

"CDs have become the turntable," said Langen, who jokingly says he sometimes feels like "the guy working at the last full-service gas station in town."

"I want to reintroduce to customers what good sound quality and picture quality is," Langen said.

The newest TVs these days have wireless Internet capability built in, or they can connect to your home wireless network through a Blu-ray player or gaming device.

Through that connection comes the ability to access different "apps" -- short for applications -- such as movie services Netflix and Vudu, Pandora streaming music and others.

Screen growth

Prices on televisions and components have fallen drastically as the most popular TV sizes have risen. Forty inches used to be extremely popular; now the best-sellers tend to be 46 inches up to 60-inch models, said Larry Peppers, Brand Central manager for Salina's Sears store.

He said recently a customer who visited the store said she paid $2,099 for a 40-inch LCD -- liquid crystal display -- model in 2008. She left the store with a 40-inch LED -- light emitting diode -- model for $1,129. LED technology is projected to last longer, plus it has better back lighting, making it brighter and more responsive, Stafford said.

"We have people trading off their LCDs and their plasma (sets) now for the new 3-D sets," he said. Or they get a new LED model by electronics maker Sharp, with its proprietary Quattron quad-pixel technology. Sharp added yellow to the conventional red, green and blue color filter, enabling more colors to be displayed.

"And they're trading off sizes. They bought their 37-inch ones before, now they're going up to the 46- and 50- and 52-inch sets," Peppers said.

Dose of plasma

Micah Crawford, a sales associate at The Appliance Center, 213 S. Broadway, said plasma sets remain a good choice for some applications.

Except for the highest-end LED sets, plasmas have a faster pixel refresh rate, meaning they have a clearer picture and diminished blur as images move across the screen. He said plasmas also have a higher contrast ratio, meaning the colors shown will be truer and more vibrant. Plasmas also have a plastic resin filter that screens out the sun's UV rays and protects the screen from damage by someone such as a child touching the screen or throwing an object at it. And from a budget standpoint, some larger-size plasmas sell for less than $1,000.

"If you have a limited budget, that plasma right there is a really nice TV for the money," Crawford said.

The right fit

Don't rule out any technology, because it's not what's latest or greatest, Langen said.

"Kind of like a suit that's tailor-made. A suit for one person off the rack might work for a lot of people, but it's not a perfect fit for everybody. We try to tailor what's right for the customer and for the room," he said.

Both Langen and Crawford said sets in the 42- to 46-inch range remain the most popular sellers. Additionally, Crawford said many surround-sound home theater systems that are popular now -- the so-called theater in a box -- have ports or docking stations built in that can accept iPods so you can play your iTunes digital music library through the system.

n Reporter David Clouston can be reached at 822-1403 or by e-mail at dclous ton@salina.com.