It's really a personal preference and viewing habit decision (4:3 vs 16:9) Of course if you have a large enough of 4:3 the effective screen size letterboxed can be comprable to a smaller widescreen TV... I think my wife would have been happier if I got a 4:3 as most of the content is still SDTV... and the stretch modes either give people mishapen heads or highlight the flaws in my analog cable signal or mpeg2 compression from PVR (but it still beats the pants off watching on the old SDTV set! It's still the same flaws just more noticeable on a clearer/non-interlaced set)
Although all the conflicting opinions and impressions of picture quality drove me slowly insane, I researched my CRT direct view "budget" HDTV in the AVS forum http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/forumdisplay.php?f=64 http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=564537 http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=533115 Re: the phillips: regular walmart has the black widescreen version of this, best buy the silver widescreen version. I realize you aren't supposed to go by how the sets look in the store (although I have no idea how you're supposed to shop for an HDTV then...), but the phillips just looked awful to me and I *really* wanted to like it as it's priced right and has a QAM/ATSC tuner! YMMV. I ended up spending almost twice as much on an 30" LG widescreen CRT (which has a bit of a dubious reputation in same forum). Erik -- http://www.byopvr.com -- Build Your Own PVR site On 9/12/05, Robert Denier <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > On Mon, 2005-09-12 at 02:07 -0600, Chad wrote: > > On 9/11/05, Robert Denier <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > [snip] > > My thought is that if you are going with HDTV, you probably are > > looking towards the future, or better picture; either way, 16x9 is > > probably more along the lines of either of those choices ;) > > > > Otherwise, why not just grab a 200-300 tube from Phillips and save for > > a larger, more HDTV style TV when prices get even lower? > > Well the reason for that one was it had hdmi where the cheaper ones > don't. > >*snip* _______________________________________________ mythtv-users mailing list mythtv-users@mythtv.org http://mythtv.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mythtv-users