i'm highly considering the toshiba 37HL86 (it's on sale at best buy canada) and noticed that it doesn't have upconverting technology. can someone tell me the implications of this? i understand that watching SD on this will be tough on the eyes because of possible pixelation...is this true, and will the picture look worse than watching on a crt tv at standard-def?

also, i plan on watching dvd movies on this using my xbox 360...does the 360 have upconverting technology, and if so, will it upconvert my dvds into 720p even though the tv doesn't have the technology? or will both sources have to have it? how will the PQ look?

and finally, will the PQ be improved if i used the VGA cable (instead of the factory 360 component cable) for movies and videogames?

thanks for the help

I promise you that this display has some sort of scaler (upconversion) technology. LCD, Plasma, DLP, HD-ILA etc. are called fixed pixel displays. This means that they do not raster (scan scan electrons) at different frequencies.

If you are to fill the entire screen, the display must scale (upconvert) the content to match the panels resolution. If they didn't, when you feed the display with a 720x480 DVD image, i would only fill the center of the display and you would have black bars above/below and left/right of the image.

Now it is possible that the Toshiba doesn't have a scaling story or it may do a poor job of scaling (I cannot judge as I have never viewed the display) but it does some sort of upconversion.... It has to.

i see what you're saying...thanks

i'm going to the store later to check out it...should how well of a job of scaling it does be a huge factor in whether to buy the tv or not?

any other opinions on this would be great

i have the tv looks okay on SD. no hd here.
update me if you find any information.