I'm hopefully getting a HDTV soon as my 9 year old CRT has just packed in.

One thing that's worrying me though is when I've seen standard TV pictures on a friends set up the pictures look bluured and you can see the scan lines.

Obviously it looks great when running HD material but surely everything else isn't supposed to look crap is it? What about my 300+ SD DVD's!

It's not set up correctly. HD and SD will be of different quality. But not crap.

Remember, too - "garbage in, garbage out".

My brother-in-law just got an Panasonic ED plasma, and many of the digital 480i channels (from Comcast) look pretty darned good on it - even stretched. I was actually pleasantly surprised myself when I saw it.

No worries. Just make sure your next DVD player has a DVI or HDMI port to go with that new HDTV. Upscaling DVD players with HDMI ports can be bought for less than $100 now. You'll be amazed at how great your DVDs look.