By Eric Gwinn,Chicago Tribune

Playing Santa these days means giving cool gadgets. But you don’t have to break the bank – unless you want to – to tech the halls this season.

UNDER $50

Snap CD-size d-skins on your CDs, DVDs and video games to protect them from scratches, even while playing. Thin enough to slide into and out of your CD or DVD tray, these clear skins stay on and allow the CD or DVD laser to read the disk. Scratch up a d-skin? Replace it with another. Package of five for $5.99, d-skin.com.

CEO Billfold by Marware holds your iPod nano, credit cards and other good stuff. $34.95, Marware.com.

If you’re handy with a CD burner, download “100 Greatest TV Themes” ($39.96 from iTunes.com) and buy a ringtone-maker such as Avanquest’s Ringtone Media Studio ($14.99 at TigerDirect.com). Burn a CD of the TV theme songs, and after a little time with the Media Studio, your nostalgia-loving recipient can make his or her cell phone ring with the theme from “Green Acres.” Or take the easy road and buy an iTunes gift certificate for $40 and give a $20 check your pal can use to download a ringtone maker from Xingtone.com.

eDimensional’s Audio FX headphones ($49.99; eDimensional.com) bring PC video games to life. Hear monsters sneaking up from behind, a racecar rushing by. Nice. The headphones also rumble when explosions occur in the game, and the attached microphone clearly captures your voice during intense squad missions. Combine with the pricier TrackIR 4 Pro Head Tracker With Vector (a visor that lets your head movements control the screen; $179.99; eDimensional.com) for a cool virtual environment.

UNDER $500

The Canon PowerShot A410 ($149.99; Canon.com) is a great starting-out camera. It’s not as flat, cute or colorful as some other cameras in this price range, but it delivers 3.2x optical zoom (always better than digital zoom, though the A410 does that too, of course), captures video and has lots of easy-to-use features. Oh, and great picture quality, too.

Store your photos, music and movies on the Iomega Screenplay ($219.99; Iomega.com). Carry it – and its remote control – in your pocket to a friends’ house and it will stream popular video formats directly to TV via its S-Video or composite video connectors.

Use the MemoryFrame Digital Photo Frame ($399 for the 8×10 frame; PacificDigital.com) to show off your photos. Plug in your DirectConnect camera or your camera card reader (usually used to transfer images from your camera to your computer) or your computer’s AOL Pictures account to the MemoryFrame. Download images to the picture frame to create a slide show. Record your voice on each image to tell the story behind the picture.

Sirius S50 portable satellite radio ($329.99; Sirius.com and electronics stores) lets you pause and rewind live shows by Howard Stern and others, and record up to 50 hours of broadcasts for playback in the subway or anywhere else you can’t get a good satellite signal.

$1,000 AND UP

Motion Computing’s LS800 tablet computer ($1,899; MotionComputing.com) is less than 1-inch thick, weighs about 2 pounds and comes with wireless capabilities, an Intel Centrino processor, Microsoft Windows XP Tablet PC Edition 2005 and a fingerprint reader to painlessly recall all your Web passwords. Instead of using a keyboard, you write on the tablet computer’s screen, and the PC changes your handwriting into text.

A quick HDTV primer: DLP (digital light projection, which uses mirrors to create images on screen) gives you more screen for the money, but it’s harder to see from the sides; LCD is cheaper than plasma but tends to be smaller; microdisplays blend DLP and LCD technologies; plasma is great but kind of expensive. Whew.

Among DLPs and microdisplays, Mitsubishi’s 73-inch WD-73927 ($5,500, Mitsubishi-tv.com) delivers super-sharp, 1080p resolution and has two HD tuners and a 250 gigabyte DVR, so you can record two shows at a time; among LCDs, Samsung’s 40-inch model ($4,499, Samsung.com) is a great choice; and in plasma, take a look at Pioneer’s 50-inch HDTV ($6,500, PioneerElectronics.com).