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"More resolution" inherently reveals many problems previous obscured by traditional standard-resolution television sets. Stuff ued to be hidden or outright "lost between the lines". The bigger issue is many HDTV sets are made like crap. A large percentage of them skew aspect ratios (either the 4:3 or the 16:9 is not perfect), or the image is grainy naturally.
It doesn't have to be this way.
I've never been interested in HDTV, but I have long wanted better televisions for myself. When I first moved here, I picked up a JVC 27" SDTV (has an ATSC/QAM tuner pair). It's got a very clean picture, a 4:3 tube. No geometry errors, which is too common in modern 4:3 tubes.
I saved up for another year, and I recently purchased a Sony KDS-55A3000 55" HDTV set. It's a SXRD set, similar to DLP, but it projects off a specialized LCD chip (the SXRD chip) instead of the oter method (tubes, I think). It's only 18" wide, a light tv set. It's not going to get screen burn like plasma, and it won't get dead pixels or shift colors over time like a LCD panel. The Sony has a large viewing range too, as good as most early LCDs, about 150 degrees, head-on viewing. Mine sits 17" off the floor, on a stand I bought from Target for $129, and then cut off the legs to about a half inch.
The reason I got the Sony had nothing to do with HDTV. That was a nice bonus, but I wanted a large set, as I've never had one. The beauty of the "A300" Sony line is that it filters video. It has user-adjustable levels of filtering.
-- There is motion compensation, which doubles the framerate, and it's a 120Hz set (as opposed to the 60Hz sets you've always find and still usually find). The compensation filters are adjustable from OFF to NORM and HIGH
-- It has a noise reduction setting, OFF, LOW, MED, HIGH
-- It has MPEG block reduction settigns, OFF, LOW, HIGH
-- It has tons of color and geometry tweaks, if you feel so inclined.
-- The is an adjustable iris, to make the light less or more harsh.
-- Standard color, brightness filters.
-- Great stereo speakers, false surround mode, I have no need or desire for surround system
-- 1080p scaler, which does a great job of converting lower resolutions to 1080p, so it doesn't look as bad as cheaper scalers or 1080i/720p scalers, no interlace boogers either
-- perfect geometry ratios for 4:3 and 16:9, with an ability to tweak the screen image for imperfect sources (squish or un-squish up to 5%)
My set was only ~$1600 plus tax, and it's financed over 24 months. Best Buy originally had it for $2499 and $50 delivery. The match H.H. Gregg's $2184. There was a 60-day price match. A few weeks later, it was on sale for $1799 with free delivery, so they refunded my $50 delivery, and the difference of the sale. Two days before the 60 days was up, EE (a local store) had an online special through pricegrabber.com, for $1639. EE would match the online offer in stores (EE is a local Tennessee store), and therefore Best Buy would too. BB matched EE, plus 10% of the difference of that sale, bring the price to just above $1600 with free delivery.
So not only is it one of the best HDTV sets on the market today, it's also got a pretty agreeable price tag.
This is really the only television that I feel is an upgrade to my JVC 27" tube. SD and DVD video on my set looks better than HD does on many cheaper HD sets. Yes, it's that good. The resolution may be a tad softer, but the cleanliness and clean motion (no blurs!) is much nicer.
Pretty much take ATI VideoSoap, and the JVC LSI encoder chipset, cram them together, and you've got this set's filtering abilities. It even makes those really bad Panasonic discs look pretty acceptable. So it really does justice to already-clean discs, and it fixes somewhat imperfect discs. That alone was worth it. My created sets look gorgeous in here.
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