Ron,
I don't know if the hub-bub is all worth it on the new HD stuff. I've compared pictures at home and in stores and to be honest, it's hard to beat a decent standard TV and standard DVD player for simplicity and
near HD enjoyment. Especially a standard 37" size like you already have.
Some of the things that go wrong with network HD are occasional dead-stop glitches in the signal that lock-up sound and pix where old channels might only flicker. I think you will find that a good economical DVD picture
appears 95% as good as HD, both much better than VCR on
any large screen. And many times, the standard channels (most programs)
look sharper on the old standard TVs. The main advantage to LCD is that it is probably the lightest of all TVs to lift and doesn't throw a lot of heat off. I think in the end, it will win the war.
I bought a 51" CRT rear projection TV a few years ago and it works fine, amazing picture and all, but they are obsolete now and very heavy. It uses the same type of tech that your 37" uses but runs three smaller tubes (one for each color) at higher intensity and shines them on the back of a screen to make the picture in front. Supposedly, the higher brightness over-drive of the smaller tubes (that must appear bright enough on the back of the enlarged front screen) makes it susceptable to burn-in, but it hasn't really been a problem since nothing is on the screen that long. The similar-replacement for my heavy TV is usually a DLP (no tubes but a chip) which are slightly smaller in weight and size now. I think that all TV's now are already good enough that even cheap ones work pretty good. Basically all TV's are throw-away now since there are virtually no local repair shops anymore. Local repair might actually consist of a couple of guys coming to pick it up for repair shipment. And no matter what you buy, it will
still be somewhat obsolete in a few years in a cost/performance ratio. Something to keep in mind when deciding what to spend.
I bought a cheap Olevia LCD for the bedroom (similar to this, only w/side speakers:
Olevia 26" LCD HDTV - 226T : Target ) and that, too, works great and has a very sharp picture, even on standard channels. It has a fast 8ms pixel recovery time which means it doesn't smear the picture. The contrast ratio is claimed to be fairly high at 1600:1 which mostly means the colors appear fairly vivid without appearing washed out. The side speakers left more installation room height-wise. It's
easy to lift and runs cool. I noted the flaw with this older Olevia model (my model 427S12) is that the tuner is very slow in changing channels. Check this out before buying any HD-TV in a store if possible. Many early HD tuners were slow but newer better ones are quicker, more like the old channel changing we are used to.
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