Picture Quality  

What you say is pretty much true. This is why I bought a projector and kept my 5 yr.old Pioneer elite. Most all sports are in 4.3 and much of my viewing is;also. The only suggestion I can give would be, go to store and watch regular (non hi def); as well.-- You know what you got at home--you're just looking for something better. Geo

Welcome to the forums, cobra427dan. If you visit hdtvgalaxy.com and check the schedules for CBS and ABC you'll see a good chunk of primetime is in HDTV. NBC is expected to join the crowd this year. If you get HBO HDTV, there's 1080i virtually 24/7, and Showtime has upconverted 1080i. HDnet via DBS fairly bristles with good HDTV. Discovery HD starts June 17, etc. etc.

I see mixed comments about DBS standard video here. There's much criticism about over compression of video signals, but others say they prefer DBS to cable. I watched NTSC on a 7-ft. 4:3 FP screen for years, but had no difficulty switching to 4:3 video stretched (more near edges) to 16:9 when I acquired a 64-in. 16:9 RPTV about two years ago. If you don't watch many DVDs, don't have access to clean, not-overly-compressed cable, or satellite signals, and can't get over the air NTSC or HDTV, then I'd agree a new HDTV set wouldn't be of much use.

Poor picture quality, I've found, depends hugely on the program originator. Time Warner Cable delivers mostly good quality video here. But some live golf last week was terrible because, it appeared, of edge-enhanced field cameras on the Golf Channel. At the same moment dozens of premium movies available looked fine, and local live news shows appeared still better fidelity wise. -- John

what i would do is buy a decent digital projector for the good sources and use a microperf screen with a good 27-36" tube TV behind it for regular TV. this way, you get a great HD/DVD presentation, but without having to look at a horribly blown-up TV picture.