A week ago a few of us were discussing HD television sets.
In the meantime my mom's older Sears 27" is starting to act up & I was
trying to convince her to buy a LCD version.
Yesterday, my JVC 27" went south. I've had a bad solder connection for
years....since just after the 3 year warranty expired.
All I had to do was slap it upside the case and it straightened out.
Now, after a few minutes, all I have is about a half inch high picture
stretched across the middle of the screen. I'm guessing it's the
horizontal hold control.
Anyway the TV is 8 years old and I'm anxious to upgrade to HD so I dug
out my Consumer Reports magazines and started reading.
To my surprise, they say the newer HD CRT sets have the best picture,
give the best black contrast, better viewing from any angle and have a
proven reliability record...... plus they are half the price of LED sets.
I called a local SONY store and the salesperson confirmed that this is
true...she stated that the best HD CRT set was better than their new
Bravia LCD model...which is darn good.
The downside of course is the size of the unit (depth) and the
substantial weight.
That store is sold out of the 30" wide screen model I want until the end
of the month. I'll start shopping around.

I am a Sony man.

Wega Trinitron tubes are indeed the best out there. My 3 main sets are
an older (480i) KV36, which is a 4:3 set, but has an option to
"sharpen" its resolution when watching 16:9 DVD, by setting it up that
way. This set in now in the basement, running an Play Station and an
xBox for the kids, along with an older Sony single-disk DVD player.

All the Trinitron set are very heavy, due to the lead used in the
front of the tube, however, this is how Sony gets its great blacks and
contrast. My set above is over 225lbs.

I also have a Sony KD (I think) 34 XBR set residing in the rec room.
What a sweet set that thing is...it was my main set prior to my last
purchase. Its plumbed to a high end Phillips DVD/AM/FM/MP3/CD/JPEG
player/amp with 5+1 surround sound.

My most recent purchase fore the family room, is a Sony KDS50 HD Grand
Wega XRB SXRD. It has the absolute best blacks and contrast I've seen
in any non-tube. I ve got it patched to a Bose Life Style 28 II for
absolute stunning sound.

And don't waste your time with expensive HDMI cable just yet. While
the have more bandwidth, they are designed for future inter-device
communications, and can not enhance an any better picture quality than
component RGB cables can, at 1080i.
__

"It's just about going fast...that's all..."

http://home.columbus.rr.com/ckg/