[Reaper]

I think a lot of people are unnecessarily bashing EDTV's here.

I'm not going to argue that EDTV is better than HDTV or anything crazy like that but EDTV is not the waste that a lot of people are making it out to be. For my wife and I, it was smarter to buy a name brand EDTV plasma as opposed to a Prima or Norcent or "Sorny" HDTV.

For starters, we have a limited budget and we can't afford to buy a quality HDTV plasma and pay for HDTV programming. Since we would be displaying standard definition television and DVD signals it would have been a waste of money to pay 1/3 more money for the HD version of our television. We would wind up with a picture that displays more flaws of the incoming signal due to it's higher definition. In essence, we are making the lower resolution of the EDTV work for us by magnifying fewer source flaws than an HDTV would.

By purchasing a name brand EDTV plasma as opposed to an Off brand HDTV we were able to get more features in our television (number of inputs, picture in picture, better contrast and colour definition). We weighed the possibility of DLP televisions as well but we found that we desired a more consistent view no matter what the angle, the ergonomics of a flat panel television worked better for our needs and that hockey simply looked better on a plasma as opposed to a DLP. For us, buying an HDTV would have been like buying a Ferrari for daily driving on Baffin Island. Sure, it's still a Ferrari but when a snowmobile is more suited to the terrain you drive every day then you're really just paying for the status of saying "I have a Ferrari."

If we could afford to have HDTV programming, an HD-DVD player and a name brand HDTV Plasma we would have gone that route. If that option is viable for you then I wouldn't hesitate to recommend it. However, I don't feel a need to crap on your choices should the absolute best in television viewing not fit realistically into your life.