I'm hoping to finally upgrade my TV in the next few months, but am a little concerned about how my old analog stuff is going to look on it. Yes, I plan to get a Blu-Ray player on the same day, but I have a lot of stuff on VHS, Beta, CED and laserdisc, many things which will probably never be issued in any format ever again, and I'd like to be able to watch them on the new TV looking at least as good as they do on my current one (a 1995 model 40-inch Mitsubishi picture tube). I've noticed some CRT-based rear-projection sets make this stuff look horrible, making the 'fuzz' in the picture more pronounced than on a regular set. The worst effect I remember is it seems to add some sort of "enhancement" to the edges, losing a lot of what little detail was there in the first place. I've seen some VHS tapes played on a LCD set though and those looked OK. I want a DLP since you can get a bigger screen for less money, plus my last TV has worked so well that I want to give Mitsubishi my business again, but if I can't watch my old stuff in its analog glory I might just have to settle for an LCD.

I have the same tv and laserdisc player,and am also interested in the answer.

SD material does not look very good on HD tvs. As you go larger, the poor quality of the SD becomes more apparent.

You will need an HD cable/satellite box for broadcast viewing. Some upconverting dvd players are OK, but I would just use what you have, go into the dvd's set up menu and adjust it for widescreen and the tv will upconvert the image. But there is just so much you can do with 480 lines of resolution being expanded to 1080 lines. So, save up for a bluray, skip an upconverting dvd and it will look excellent. Blurays also play regular dvds and upconvert them very well.

Getting an LCD won't make watching sd material any better. If the tv is smaller, the pics will look better, but why buy a smaller tv for old stuff.

Buy the larger tv, do they best you can with your current SD material, and upgrade as you can. But don't forget to upgrade to HD tv service.

Just ran across this post. As a fan of "legacy" formats, I have a nice selection of Beta, VHS, CED and Laserdiscs as well. And yes, I do watch them, but not all the time. I can tell you that you can get a passable picture with tweaking but don't expect miracles. I have a 3 chip DLP and I have actually viewed some scope letterboxed LD's at 16 foot wide! That is far beyond their capabilities, but as I posted in another thread, watching LD's on your digital setup will make your SD-DVD's look perfect by comparison ;)

Chris White