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Recommendations
The dizzying array of choices available in the HDTV market makes choosing an HDTV very difficult. If you have the money, you might as well go with a huge flat panel or LCD HDTV. If you’re spending that kind of money, be sure to go with a quality manufacturer like Panasonic, Sony, or Pioneer. With newer technologies, there is a lot more to picture quality than resolution. Signal processing, interpolation, upconversion or downconversion of the source, and contrast have a lot more to do with picture quality than resolution. The higher quality (and usually higher-priced) flat panels do a much better job with these features. For the rest of us, we have to consider the tradeoffs.

If you have a small room and already have a nice entertainment center that will hold up to a 40” TV, the direct-view CRTs are a great choice. They still have the very best picture and have none of the downsides as the other technologies. Sure, they are heavy, but how often do you move your TV?

If you want a big screen and have the space but don’t want to spend a lot, a rear projection HDTV might be perfect for you. They have a great picture and don’t have some of the problems of the newer technologies. Just be sure to check that the viewing angle is satisfactory for you. Some can be really bad.

I think rear projection DLP and LCD are the sweet spot in the market. While they won’t hang on your wall like the flat panels, they are still thin and relatively light. A lot of them look like flat panels because they have a thin bezel and because they are so thin you hardly see what’s behind the screen. I’m not going to lie to you, rear projection DLPs and LCDs aren’t cheap (around $2000-$4000), but they produce a great picture and much bigger screen sizes for the money when compared to flat panels.

An ultimate home theater should have an HDTV front projector with a dedicated screen. You also need to limit the amount of light in the room so that they projected image doesn’t get washed out. In addition, you really have to pair one of these projectors with high-quality DVD players and other components because any lack of quality is magnified on such a large picture.

Do you really need an HDTV?
Enhanced definition TV (EDTV) may be a better choice for a lot of people. You can buy plasma and LCD EDTVs. They usually have a resolution of 854x480, the same resolution of a DVD. Plasma and LCDs are called fixed-pixel displays. This means that they can only display video at their native resolution. If a lower resolution signal is fed to it (like standard TV), the TV has to upconvert the signal to fit its higher native resolution. If a higher resolution signal is fed to it, an EDTV would have to downconvert it to fit its native resolution. You would think that downconverting an HD signal would really affect image quality, but it doesn’t. According to PlasmaTVBuyingGuide.com:

“There is a 10% difference in the picture quality when HD content is displayed on lower resolution (EDTV) versus high resolution (HDTV) plasma televisions- when viewing two plasmas by the same manufacturer.”

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