Regarding hd gaming on non-sfp hd tubes, it seems like a lot of horizontal resolution is lost due to there only being like 800 or so lines on the screen. Does this bother you enough that you feel like replacing your set with newer tech? Or do you feel the picture is fine as is?

I use my xbox360 on my 34XBR970. Looks great. It's my first (and only) HDTV and my first and only HD gaming console, so I guess I can't say whether I'm actually missing any detail, but I sure don't feel like I'm missing anything.

As a matter of fact, I personally think the vertical phosphor lines or aperture grill lines or whatever you want to call them are actually less distracting when I'm using the xbox than they are when I'm watching TV or movies.

Do I feel like replacing my set with newer tech? No. Not if I'd have to pay for it, anyway - I suppose the only viable alternative would be a big HD plasma, but the cost outweighs the potential benefit for me. I wouldn't want to use a LCD for video games (motion-blur / streaking), and a rear projo just wouldn't work in my living room (too much off-center seating).

After being calibrated yeah..it looks pretty detailed to me.

Heck my friends say they like the PQ on my sony 34" 34hs420 more than their LCD's.

Xbox360 looks awesome on this set!

I've had my 360 hooked up to a SD set and my XBR970 and the detail on the XBR970 clearly blows away SD. So yeah, it does look really good to me. However, I do wonder how much better it might look if the full 1920 horizontal resolution was there.

I use my PS3 with 30HS420, and I don't think I'd have it any other way. The colors look wonderful and the "lower than real" 720p resolution actually helps with antialiasing, and will continue to do so until we have consoles that can display 720p or 1080p with 16x FSAA.

I've had my 360 hooked up to a SD set and my XBR970 and the detail on the XBR970 clearly blows away SD. So yeah, it does look really good to me. However, I do wonder how much better it might look if the full 1920 horizontal resolution was there.
On a 1080p screen most games would almost certainly look worse. Very few X360 games render natively in 1080p (I know of only 1 that does that for sure actually - NBA Street Homecourt, where the resolution is done at the expense of framerate...), so all you'll be getting would be 720p (or slightly lower res in some games) upscaled to 1080p, which never looks good IMO. With PS3, there's more 1080p native games, but they still almost always still look better in 720p due to better antialiasing or better framerate.

I play X360 on a Toshiba 26HF84 and while It looks good for the most part I definitely know that I'm missing a lot of detail. I have a the VGA cables for my 360 and when I use them with my 19" LCD monitor the difference in detail is litteraly like night and day. I can see a LOT more detail in the textures and even the smallest of text(battle gague text during multiplayer in Lost Planet) is perfectly crystal clear.

I would definitely like to upgrade to a nice LCD set for gaming but to get something good would cost too much. If I were to look at LCDs in the price range of my CRT($650CDN) then they would all be crap with washed out blacks and innacurate colors. Something good would probably be in the $1500 range and thats more than I'm able to spend on a TV at the moment. :(

Regarding hd gaming on non-sfp hd tubes, it seems like a lot of horizontal resolution is lost due to there only being like 800 or so lines on the screen. Does this bother you enough that you feel like replacing your set with newer tech? Or do you feel the picture is fine as is?

Don't sweat it the XBR970 is 853x1080 = 921,240 pixels. Most LCDs are 1366x768 = 1,049,088 pixels.

The best bet for most 720p games is the first. Most Xbox360 games are rendered 720p as many know. Remember 720p is 1280x720 = 921,600 pixels. Thats only a 360 pixel difference between 720p and most CRTs, which is not notieable.

There are some displays that do 720p natively, like a few Samsungs DLP models. Some argue the picture quality beats most LCDs, even the more expensive models. But if picture quality concerns you most, the CRT will satisfy that hungry no doubt. I say that with a CRTs picture quality and its HD pixel count, It just can't be beat for the price......yet.

CRT was the only way to experience the awesome visuals of the Atari 2600!! Back then the only thing to worry about was if the TV was B&W or color :).

I play my XBox360 on my XBR970, so I thought that I would comment.

In my opinion, none super fine pitch tubes like XBR970 are actually better for video games this generation (XBOX360, PS3).

Most of Xbox 360 and PS3 games will be in 720p. I only heard of two games that run in full 1080p naively namely Lair, NBA Street. Most game developers seem to think that 1080p resolution isn't worth it this generation. For example, Insomniac’s Ted Price said that they decided to make "Resistance Fall of Man" to run at 720p instead of 1080p as it was originally intended, so they can put more stuff on screen.

Previous posters mentioned. 720p is 921,600 pixels. General consensus seems to be that XBR 970 has 921,240pixels. 360 difference in pixels is really negligible considering the fact that one line of horizontal resolution has 1080 pixels. Therefore; I think that super fine pitch resolution advantage is moot for 720p sources like games. For 1080p sources like HD-DVD or Blue Ray, super fine pitch tubes will pull ahead in resolution of cause, but we are talking about gaming here.

The reason, I think that none super fine pitch tubes are better for gaming, is they are brighter than super fine pitch ones. I saw XBR960 and XBR970 side by side at Best Buy store. Out of these two, none super fine pitch model was considerably brighter. I even went as far as adjusting XBR960 picture to mode pro, color temperature warm, and monitor settings. After that, I played with picture setting for a bit, but no matter that I did, I was unable to achieve the brightness level, I desired. Keep in mind, I realize that properly calibrated TV will appear dimmer to average person, and I have already calibrated my XBR970 set at home few times beforehand. After I calibrated my XBR970 with Digital Video Essentials, I thought that the picture was too dark also at first. I got used to it after a few days, but I still think, it is a bit darker than I would want it to be when I play my XBox360 games like "Gears of War" or "Oblivion". I could, of course, increase contrast and brightness on my TV, but I would loose black level and some detail then.

In my opinion, super fine pitch tubes even lower brightness than none superfine pitch tubes like XBR970 is a disadvantage and will make many games harder to enjoy unless one wants to sacrifice black level and detail by bumping up contrast and brightness settings. 360 more pixels superfine pitch tubes give in return on 720p games or any 720p source are too negligible to consider being an advantage. On 1080i or 1080p sources, increased detail is probably worth sacrifice in brightness, so super fine pitch tube is better for these in my opinion, but we are talking about strictly gaming here.

I play my XBox360 on my XBR970, so I thought that I would comment.

In my opinion, none super fine pitch tubes like XBR970 are actually better for video games this generation (XBOX360, PS3).

Most of Xbox 360 and PS3 games will be in 720p. I only heard of two games that run in full 1080p naively namely Lair, NBA Street. Most game developers seem to think that 1080p resolution isn't worth it this generation. For example, Insomniac’s Ted Price said that they decided to make "Resistance Fall of Man" to run at 720p instead of 1080p as it was originally intended, so they can put more stuff on screen.

Previous posters mentioned. 720p is 921,600 pixels. General consensus seems to be that XBR 970 has 921,240pixels. 360 difference in pixels is really negligible considering the fact that one line of horizontal resolution has 1080 pixels. Therefore; I think that super fine pitch resolution advantage is moot for 720p sources like games. For 1080p sources like HD-DVD or Blue Ray, super fine pitch tubes will pull ahead in resolution of cause, but we are talking about gaming here.

The reason, I think that none super fine pitch tubes are better for gaming, is they are brighter than super fine pitch ones. I saw XBR960 and XBR970 side by side at Best Buy store. Out of these two, none super fine pitch model was considerably brighter. I even went as far as adjusting XBR960 picture to mode pro, color temperature warm, and monitor settings. After that, I played with picture setting for a bit, but no matter that I did, I was unable to achieve the brightness level, I desired. Keep in mind, I realize that properly calibrated TV will appear dimmer to average person, and I have already calibrated my XBR970 set at home few times beforehand. After I calibrated my XBR970 with Digital Video Essentials, I thought that the picture was too dark also at first. I got used to it after a few days, but I still think, it is a bit darker than I would want it to be when I play my XBox360 games like "Gears of War" or "Oblivion". I could, of course, increase contrast and brightness on my TV, but I would loose black level and some detail then.

In my opinion, super fine pitch tubes even lower brightness than none superfine pitch tubes like XBR970 is a disadvantage and will make many games harder to enjoy unless one wants to sacrifice black level and detail by bumping up contrast and brightness settings. 360 more pixels superfine pitch tubes give in return on 720p games or any 720p source are too negligible to consider being an advantage. On 1080i or 1080p sources, increased detail is probably worth sacrifice in brightness, so super fine pitch tube is better for these in my opinion, but we are talking about strictly gaming here.

Gears of War is a dark game and it's default black levels in the game settings are off considerably. I recommend you turn ingame brightness for GOW to max it shows all the shadow detail that you were missing with the default settings and the image still remains black and not overly washed out.

I play my XBox360 on my XBR970, so I thought that I would comment.

In my opinion, none super fine pitch tubes like XBR970 are actually better for video games this generation (XBOX360, PS3).

Most of Xbox 360 and PS3 games will be in 720p. I only heard of two games that run in full 1080p naively namely Lair, NBA Street. Most game developers seem to think that 1080p resolution isn't worth it this generation. For example, Insomniac’s Ted Price said that they decided to make "Resistance Fall of Man" to run at 720p instead of 1080p as it was originally intended, so they can put more stuff on screen.

Previous posters mentioned. 720p is 921,600 pixels. General consensus seems to be that XBR 970 has 921,240pixels. 360 difference in pixels is really negligible considering the fact that one line of horizontal resolution has 1080 pixels. Therefore; I think that super fine pitch resolution advantage is moot for 720p sources like games. For 1080p sources like HD-DVD or Blue Ray, super fine pitch tubes will pull ahead in resolution of cause, but we are talking about gaming here.

The reason, I think that none super fine pitch tubes are better for gaming, is they are brighter than super fine pitch ones. I saw XBR960 and XBR970 side by side at Best Buy store. Out of these two, none super fine pitch model was considerably brighter. I even went as far as adjusting XBR960 picture to mode pro, color temperature warm, and monitor settings. After that, I played with picture setting for a bit, but no matter that I did, I was unable to achieve the brightness level, I desired. Keep in mind, I realize that properly calibrated TV will appear dimmer to average person, and I have already calibrated my XBR970 set at home few times beforehand. After I calibrated my XBR970 with Digital Video Essentials, I thought that the picture was too dark also at first. I got used to it after a few days, but I still think, it is a bit darker than I would want it to be when I play my XBox360 games like "Gears of War" or "Oblivion". I could, of course, increase contrast and brightness on my TV, but I would loose black level and some detail then.

In my opinion, super fine pitch tubes even lower brightness than none superfine pitch tubes like XBR970 is a disadvantage and will make many games harder to enjoy unless one wants to sacrifice black level and detail by bumping up contrast and brightness settings. 360 more pixels superfine pitch tubes give in return on 720p games or any 720p source are too negligible to consider being an advantage. On 1080i or 1080p sources, increased detail is probably worth sacrifice in brightness, so super fine pitch tube is better for these in my opinion, but we are talking about strictly gaming here.

Hmmm...my XBR960 has been ISF calibrated a couple of times and I have 3 friends who own the XBR970. This brightness issue you speak of is irrelevant as all CRTs will vary from sample to sample. You merely compared one 960 display model to a 970 display model, neither of which were ISF calibrated. The XBR960 looks just as good as any XBR970 after ISF calibration. In fact, it has the edge up on the 970 due to the super fine pitch tube, which resolves more lines of resolution. Just so you know...If I hadn't stumbled across my 960, I would have bought the 970. Both sets are fantastic for gaming.