In a coincidentally similar stroke to MarkW recent desire to enter the 21st century, I too am looking at taking the HD plunge after not really knowing too much about it.

I have a healthy budget, but am getting frustrated. I spent the last two weeks looking to future proof my purchases as best I could.

I boned up on the standards, interlaced vs. progressive, DVI vs. HDMI, Plasma v. LCD v. Projector. I found a 50" Samsung Plasma that looked right, but its 780p max. Looks like 1080p requires a move into LCD. Can't help it though, I like the plasmas better than LCD from what I've seen. Rear projection is not really an option b/c of view angle issues. We were looking at projectors, but my wife had a good point when she said, "Do you really want to watch 'How I Met Your Mother' on a 110" screen? For movies it would be great but..." It does seem a little overkill.

But, then it hit me. What was going to be my source material?
Cable? My cable company, WoW, seems to be a little weak in the HD department. 10 maybe 20 channels, including premium HBO, Showtime, Starz. No CableCards. No DVI or HDMI output from STB. I had Comcast and the reliabilty was awful. Cable went out every other week. So no option there.

Dish? Tried that, and it sucked. Reliabilty, weather, trees, and latitude all conspired to make it a bust.

HD-DVD/Blu-Ray? Nice quagmire this is turning into. RCA just released an HD-DVD player with a street price of $350 but do I really want to spend $35 on Tokyo Drift? Um, no. I rented it last night (It was good if you like those kind of movies, which I do), but I don't really buy movies as it is. More of a rental junkie.

So what does that leave me with? Just doesn't seem like there is all that much HD content out there. OTA and upconverted DVDs? Is that enough to justify the expense?

So, bottom line. Are the present sources, particularly upconverted DVDs, worth it? Am I just being a little girl afraid to take the plunge?