I've recently embarked on a mission to educate myself about HD so that I can make a decision about which television to purchase. What I'm finding is that the Retail people use the worst presentation possible to try and sell product and that they are largely under-educated about HD. I'm also finding that there are many unanswered questions or conflicting arguments about format, best technology per given application etc.

1) Is HD really worth the expense? Every HD tv I've seen has left me underwhelmed with it's picture quality, or lack thereof. Many have great color or contrast but none seem to have the "definition" that I'm expecting to see. I'm continually amazed at the amount of visible distortion, pixelization, motion break up etc found on ALL of the HD set I've viewed. This includes anything at CC, BB, Tweeter, high end showrooms etc and most other random places I've encountered it (bars etc). I tells me that either the HD experience isn't all that great OR that all of the places I've viewed it at have poor signal, zoomed screen, lack of power supply etc. I find it hard to believe that all, say 75, of the sets I've viewed are suffering from feed problems which leaves me wondering if it's really worth all the hype or just that easy to screw up.

2) Which technology? All the research I've done for the segment I'm interested in ($2-2.5K about 42-46") points me toward DLP as opposed to LCD or CRT RPTV, or LCD/Plasma direct view. I watch al ot of fast motion and a lot of 4:3 with sidebars and that seems to exlude the other technologies pretty quickly. What if I'm prone to rainbow effect? HD2+ seems the clear choice of chip so at least that narrows it down.

3) Which native resolution? All of the HD sets I've considered are either 1080i or 720p. If I buy 1080i, every time I watch 720p (fox espn etc) I'm seeing a converted signal which degrades PQ. Conversely, if I go with a 720p set every time I watch 1080i (cbs dischd etc) I'm also getting a converted signal which suffers the same fate. I'm not really concerned about 480i SD input being converted, as it can't get any worse than it already is. I just have a hard time paying a few grand for a given format, only to discover that 1/2 the time I'm watching HD it's a manipulated signal with some distortion added. To add to the confusion, in two different showrooms I found that the best looking PQ came from an EDTV (480p plasma I believe) that was fed a signal the salesperson stated was the same 1080i all the other sets were getting. What gives? Of course, he also stated that only 1080i is HD, and that 720p and lower are EDTV. I had thought 1080i AND 720p were both considered HD.

4) Built in tuner or no? At least one salesperson told me that the best possible PQ I could achieve would come from OTA and rabbit ears, as opposed to cable company etc. I had thought that digital was digital, meaning no room for error. Its either there or it isn't. Then came the scenario about multi signal broadcast on same frequency (or something like that) which degrades signal quality considerably. I thought I understood this to be more affected by cable and less affected by OTA signal. Anyone know? Could just be a ploy to sell the more expensive TV with built in tuner and a fancy $100 amplified antenna?

5) Inputs, HDMI vs component? Is HDMI really better PQ or just convenience of added audio? I'm not sure I would use this as criteria for my search unless there were a PQ difference.

That's all for now. More to come later I'm sure. Thanks for listening.