This weekend marked the biggest game of the football season, the Super Bowl. The Steelers came out on top of the game and the commercials were decent this year as well. CEA says that the game drove 2.6 million HDTV sales as fans geared up to watch the big game in HD resolution.

Despite the economy, the CEA says that 2009 will be a record year for HDTV sales with 29.8 million HDTVs expected to ship. In 2008, 26.8 million HDTVs shipped and one of the things that have pushed sales of HDTVs in 2009 is that the average wholesale price has fallen by 50% to $849 this year.

The people from CEA are the group behind the geek fantasia that is CES. CEA is into more than putting together one of the greatest displays of geek debauchery on the planet, it also does things like predict holiday electronics sales.

You might expect this holiday season to be slow with the sluggish economy around the world. According to the CEA, despite the economy shipments for Q4 2008 are expected to grow by 3.5% compared to Q4 2007 shipments.