Originally Posted by UTR

I'm not a guru on HD video but I have discussed the differences with the salesmen at a local high end video/audio store. They showed me video back to back of 1080i and 1080p and I couldn't tell any difference between them. They basically said the differences are very subtle and most people would not be able to discern it. Any more there it seems that 1080p is very common and doesn't have a huge price penalty associated with it. It is probably better to have it than not.

I have one TV in the house that can display HD signals and it only goes up to 1080i. It is a tube TV that is small (27") and with an upscaling DVD player it does have a better picture than our 36" SD Sony TV but I can see absolutely no difference between 1080i and 720p. With an HD signal maybe I could but since the screen is small I doubt it.

I have noticed a drop in HDTV prices lately so maybe next year I'll make the move and get a decent sized set. The trouble is there are so may models that use LCD, plasma and projection that I don't have a clue as to which one is better than the other. In some ways I think the projection TVs have a better picture but they are big and have viewing angle problems. The plasma TV's pixels seem too large for a fine detail picture. From what I understand they also dim over time. The LCDs seem grainy (pixilated?) to me. Especially with a lot of motion. Then I've heard of this new CRT based flat screen that is supposed to be the best of them all. Maybe the old Sony will see another year of service after all.