Why LCD and Plasma? 37

Widescreen HD TVs satisfy an increasingly large viewership who don't watch SD programming or who don't care that upconverted SD programming on HD sets does not look as good as SD programming on a SD set.

I am not a member of that viewership, yet I am a professional in network television production. I know I am in the minority opinion.

Well, I am not sure we can compare apples to apples anymore. My new 42" TV plays a 4:3 picture at 34 inches, I am not aware of a high quality 34" SD only set to compare with. My new TV replaces a 27" tube TV and my new TV has a better picture than my tube TV when both playing SD, without question.

Either way, I suspect none of this matters, as you are settled/happy with where you are at as am I.

But as for your classifications of who buys HDTV's, I have no problem being in the latter. The programs I watch in HD are so much better than SD and I enjoy it very much.

I also have the 36" Sony XBR CRT 1080i that I bought in 2004. It was the reference set for some reviewers at the time, and I'm still constantly amazed at the picture quality and color richness. I use it with standard DVDs, I tried a Toshiba HD-DVD and was not impressed with the color (maybe it needed to be calaibrated for the Toshiba HD-DVD). I've been wondering:

1. Do the newer plasma and LCD sets have better picture quality than Sony XBR CRT?

2. Is there any benefit of using Blu-ray HD with this 36" screen, at a viewing distance of about 6 feet? Or is the screen to small to benefit from HD?

thanks.

Tonnesen
I calibrated my set with the Spyder Colorimeter. It attaches to the screen through suction and has to be used with a Laptop or nearby PC.
I originally wanted the 40" XBR(the largest direct-view made), but it wouldn't have fit through the door.

I have the 40" Sony XBR CRT and it took 4 of us to get it into the house and into the viewing room. I would love to have a large screen plasma mainly because of the space savings, but despite what the pundits say, the CRT is still a video reference monitor. I hate to think of what I'm going to do with it when it is time to be replaced, I may have to just dig a big hole in the backyard and bury it.