Confessions of a CRT zealot (me):
For perspective, note that most of the time I have spent in this domain is at work designing flight simulators - I have not really had a lot of time to spend (at least recently) in the home theater. I think I once told you the story about when I went to Barco's rollout of the Sim6 that was supposed to be the final CRT killer (probably about 7 or 8 years ago). When they continued to insist that the very notable artifacts on the screen were caused by the image generator they were using, I asked that they drag out a CRT and prove it. Needless to say, what they proved when they hooked up an old CRT is that the image generator was pristine and it was the Sim6 that was the culprit (much to the relief of the IG rep that was sweating bullet as hoards of his potential customers were taking copiuos notes). I was of course politely asked to stop talking and asking questions.
I have been watching close in subsequent years and now it really is getting close - and I am sure I am about as solid on CRTs as anybody has ever been. When my home CRT went down a couple of weeks ago, I took a new LCOS home to play with and now have the CRT running again. As you have pointed out, I don't have the NEC tweaked very much, but, after about 20 years of CRT and regular monitoring of new tech (which had thus far fallen far short), I am swaying. While there are still a couple of noticable problems with LCOS (and A/B tests of LCOS vs pretty much all other light valves leaves LCOS as a nearly indisuptable winner) it is now to the point where I can seriously consider leaving CRT. The few notable artifacts that remain (most notably blur/smear and texeliztion issues, only really significant on panning shots - and some minor transport delay) are now on par with convergence issues on the CRT - it is kinda of nice to have every pizel wide line on the screen exactly white (with LCOS) with no red or blue haze due to less than perfect focus or convergence on a gun (with CRT). Even with consistent and serious tweaking, the CRT is always going to have some imperfections in that regard. The noise from the SONY I am using is nearly imperceptable (the CRT is of course horrible in this regard). I can nearly velcro the LCOS to the ceiling, all by myself. CRT take 4 strong men and a lot of steel tubing to hang. I had the LCOS set up and running pretty dang well in probably less than 5 minutes from the time I carried it into the room. I have gotten pretty good at setting up a CRT over the last 20 years, but it still takes me a couple of hours, even if I am matching the previous throw distance and relative screen position.
So, being certainly one of the most staunch CRT holdouts, I have to say, my transition is close. All that is slowing me down now is cost. $15K for a suitable LCOS LED PJ is still too steep - especially when the CRT is still working. When LCOS LED gets below $3k, I am probably there. The machine I am playing with at home now I can get for $2500 (and as just another advantage, it is ready to do 3D - without an $1000 external processor as would be requried for my CRT) but, it still has a lamp that I know is degrading by the minute while I use it and would probably cost me $500 per year to keep viable. I am guessing that in the next couple of years, LED will pretty much replace incandecants and the prices will plunge - and in the meantime, the last few artifacts remaining in LCOS will likely disappear as well (it has already improved immensely just in the last 2 years). So, now I am just holding out for affordable LED illumination...
And, for the record - all of sims we are building now will be using LCOS. The one we are putting together now uses 30 of them - you want some video induced goose bumps, you should see the proof of concepts we have done with just a few channels - I may literally pass out when all 30 are going.
In case you are wondering which LCOS , we are using SXRD in the sims - Although DILA has proven just as good - pretty much just a cost issue as we found SXRDs much cheaper (that is the unit I have been testing at home against the NEC CRT). We are using DILA in a sim theater - couldn't resist, so we put a bluray up on the screen (about a 15 foot high screen) and it was incredible. Probably not practical for most homes - it was around $160k and is driven by 6 video channels (and a lot of pre-processing).
kb