I bought the Sony KD-30XS955 30" hdtv widescreen
I started out looking for a new TV for our living room that my wife originally didn't want one in. With small children it became almost a necessity because I don't let them mess with daddy's toys in the family room. So the journey begins, we were looking to replace a Phillips 25' with built in DVD that had quit working. So off to our favorite hated mass marketeers. First we saw a 27" Advent HD monitor for $350. I should have grabbed it an ran to the check out but then I realized it wasn't widescreen. I wonder why manufacturers would even make a square HDTV. So we saw the Samsung 26 ($699.) which was widescreen and had a built in HD tuner. We agreed it wasn't quite big enough and decided on the 30" ($999.00), well the 30 wasn't in stock. So the quest begins. I do some leg work by phone and found one. We're off again but this store also carries Sony. The Samsung also had a matching DVD player that connected via DVI and upsampled to some HD signal supposedly. The Sony does the same but via HDMI which does both audio and video. The sales person shows us the Sony 30" ($1,259.00 on sale) after we viewed the Samsung. The Samsung had a great picture but this Sony has one of the best pictures I think I have ever seen. I also bought the Sony DVD player which will upsample, or convert, which ever is proper terminology here, to 720p via the HDMI. This piece wasn't in stock at that store, so I will have to wait until one day this week to be thrilled with that. The Sony has the DRC that converts NTSC to 480p or better and it must be doing it's job because I have never seen VHS look so good. This unit is a 30" tube widescreen. When converting the 4:3 to 16:9 it looks pretty good, I was expecting to see some stretching or oblongness to things but it wasn't noticeable to me. If this TV is in your budget I highly recommend it, if it's not, DON'T LOOK AT IT!, all other viewing will be ruined for ever.
Just as a side note, if they aren't getting over on us with the TV's they sure are with these new cables, $100. for HDMI and I think that was the cheapest one. I think when I was considering the Samsung the DVI cable was $150.00. So budget some accessory money for your next purchase.