Written by Matt Swider  on December 20, 2008

Holiday Buyer's Guide 2008: We look at one of the most important aspects of gaming: the gadgets. Because, as much as our Guide focused on game software, we wouldn't be anywhere without hardware. Read out recommendations below.

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Video game addicts and gadget fanatics tend to be one in the same, because the cutting-edge graphics and gameplay that they love in the virtual world require a lot of real-life hardware to back it up. Here are our picks for this holiday's top tech toys:

Netflix Xbox 360 streaming
The Office. Brilliant show, but if you're four seasons behind, you're probably not going to enjoy the current episodes as much and probably won't spend $100 to get seasons 1-4. Maybe your friend's friend will let you borrow the DVD set, but it's been several months and that hasn't happened. The Solution? Stream Netflix's Instant Queue through Xbox 360. The Office is just one television hit that's available instantly if you have both a Netflix unlimited account ($8.99 a month) and Xbox Live Gold membership ($50 a year, but you probably already pay for this). That's a total of $158 a year (including the Xbox Live Gold) and you not only have access to The Office, but 12,000 other movies and television shows. Simply put, this'll completely change the way you overheat your 360 and RRoD.



HAVA Titanium HD with WiFi
We've all heard of Slingbox and its amazing ability to view and control your DVR from the Internet, but even with the debut of Slingbox PRO HD, it's still missing something: recording directly to a computer. The HAVA Titanium HD with WiFi fixes that problem and conveniently allows you to capture gameplay footage in unprecedented 480p. That quality is hard to come by in a world filled with composite capture devices and tiny preview screens; HAVA's box uses component connections and allows you to output through your HDTV for normal-sized, lag-free play while your PC records. Plus, it can do all of that DVR streaming stuff that Slingbox can do. For gamers, this is the ideal Slingbox alternative this holiday season.


Blackmagic Design Intensity Pro
480p component not good enough? Blackmagic Design has a solution for HDMI recording directly to your computer. Capturing uncompressed 1080i and 720p gameplay footage (or compressed through a much-appreciated option if you're computer can't handle it) only costs $349. And, if you run into technical trouble with PS3's copy protection encryption, the Pro model of this PCI card contains a break-out cable with 11 different inputs. We can't vouch for the cards success anymore than the few positive reviews we've read, but true HDMI is hard to turn your back on when you want to record gameplay with nothing but the best quality.


Guitar Hero World Tour instruments
We were all impressed with Rock Band's debut of video game drums last year, but Guitar Hero expands beyond its name by adding superior drums and a microphone to its instrument lineup in World Tour. The GH drum set not only includes a fifth drum pad, but provides two triangle-like cymbals pads that hang over top of the three circular drum pads. Rock Band's standard drum set just has four nondescript circular drum pads. It really doesn't give you a sense of which one's the high-hat and which one's the snare drum. Guitar Hero World Tour does that and makes the entire drum experience wireless.


TiVo HD XL
By now, everyone knows what a TiVo does (i.e. everything better than your laggy cable DVR) and it doesn't take a geek to figure out what TiVo HD is all about. Likewise, the name TiVo HD XL spells out its features: bigger and better. It records up to 150 hours HD programming, records two shows at once and is THX certified. The 1TB hard drive version also comes with the nifty blacklit remote that every standard TiVo HD owner wishes they had. Although most cable companies require that you pay a small fee (usually the price of digital cable) for a CableCard, you're saving a little money by not paying into their monthly HD or DVR fees after spending $600 on this TiVo. And, you're getting the best DVR available.


LiveScribe Pulse
You thought the Blackberry was an amazing tool for journalists and media professionals? Just as that smartphone brand changed the cellphone, the Livescribe Pulse smartpen transforms the normal ink pen. As you jot down words on specialized (but normal-looking) paper, the pen's voice recorder captures a speaker's words to an audio file. Later on, you can go back, tap anywhere on the paper and hear what was being said when you make those pen strokes on the page. Being able to write on paper, record a speaker's voice and synch up the entire experience is a game changer for almost every career and certainly every note-taking student. And, it now works with Macs, too.


You're in the Movies with Camera
You're in the Movies didn't receive high praise from critics, but it was a fun, family-oriented game when we tried it out at E3 2008. And, you have to consider the fact that it comes with the Xbox Live Vision camera, which costs $40 alone. So, while You're in the Movies is a surface deep, briefly enjoyable game worth $30, if you're already in the market for the Xbox-based webcam, why not spend the $70 on the combo and put it to good use.