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The 970HD was tested with 480i and 720p output over HDMI to a Panasonic AE900 720p LCD projector and over component at 480p to a Mitsubishi RPTV. Both displays have been professionally calibrated.

A full range of video adjustments are available, including saturation, hue and even three gamma settings. For testing purposes, all controls were in their "0" or "Off" positions.

The 970HD was subjected to the usual barrage of test disk patterns, including those from DVE, Faroudja, HQV and Avia Pro. Fortunately, the Mediatek chip provides motion adaptive deinterlacing, so it did well with the Faroudja pendulum and flag-waving tests. It was not so fortunate with the HQV "Jaggies" tests for directional interpolation and filtering, but in fairness, there are few players that can fully pass those tests (the 971H being one of them), especially those priced similarly to the 970HD. The 970HD flew through the Avia Pro layer change test, as was expected since fast layer changes are an advantage of the Mediatek chip. The 970HD also passes below black over both HDMI and component.

As mentioned earlier, there was no evidence of any Y/C delay problems and no ringing or other sharpness issues at the default player settings. PAL to NTSC conversion appears to be on a par with the 971H, which is quite good. However, it does not do 2:2 cadence, so if you have a lot of PAL disks, you should look to a different player.

All in all, the test disk performance of the 970HD was only a step below that of the 971H and with most DVDs and displays, the difference would be negligible.

VHS-S has been around long enough to judge the quality of HD sources: U-571 DTheater Edition . Die Hard (1080i) lists at $35. Pretty much where Blu-Ray expects to launch.

CRT projection isn't going to burn-in on you if you're even the least bit aware that it can happen

I worked in a high-end consumer electronics store at one point, and given the choice between any TV set I would definitely go with a 5 lens CRT

You should be well-familiar with the shady tactics manufacturers use to sell their sets, then. Most (all) sets on display are set to "torch mode" contrast, and often have varying degrees of "red push" (the red component is stronger, because it makes the display look more vibrant, thus drawing the consumer's eye away from competing models without). Nevermind the fact that such a jacked up contrast is the main factor in burn-in, and red push just looks awful outside of a showroom. Unfortunately, the display models are exactly the same as the for-sale models, so if the set has red push and a high contrast in the store, you can bet the set you bring home will have the same.

However, you can do something about it. Get your set professionally calibrated. For a CRT-based set, you really should let it wear in for a couple hundred hours before calibration. For non-CRTs, I'm unfamiliar with the process but that site and others like Home Theater Spot can help you determine what your set needs. Frankly, I'm surprised that salespeople don't push calibration during a sale, since any competent high-end shop will have at least one ISF-certified technician on staff, and the fee is pure labor ($300 for ~4 hours of work, not too shabby). That said, for the price you're going to pay for a good set, the calibration cost is a drop in the bucket, and will really make a difference.

Finally, so long as you live in a well-controlled home (ie, no crazy dogs, children, or drunken friends), you really should consider removing the protective screen on a RPTV set. It just adds glare, and is not really a filter of any sort (they exist for protection, nothing more). You'll get a better picture without it, at the cost of a higher chance of damage. That's where the "well-controlled home" comes in. If you have people or pets that will damage the screen, leave it on. Otherwise, take it off, throw it away, and enjoy a superior picture.

That might be great for CRT-based rear-projection TV's, but what about RPTV's that use a single light source, such as the ones with DLP, LCD and LCOS elements? I think these have to be calibrated quite a bit differently....

The ISF folks should know how to calibrate those, as well. Call a local calibrator and ask, if you don't know. Alternatively, check out the forums at Home Theater Spot or AVS Forum.

Home Theater Spot gave the unit a favorable review here . Based on their reveiw, the unit looks pretty nice.

Link to a Yahoo group, and their bandwidth is exceeded even before the story is posted. Niiiice...

The "homebrew" ones are a joke if you want something with a decent picture. And the contraption itself looks riduculous. Forget it.

There is a good deal on a refurbed DLP projector for about $3500 -- check gotapex.com (great site for deals). Read around for more info on what DLP is, but that and LCD are preferable to CRT projectors these days.

Anyway, you're more likely to get better information from someplace that deals directly with home theater equipment. The forum at Home Theater Spot has great information, despite their gestapo posting rules.

Lovely! Those links are referred right back to Slashdot. That's one way to avoid a slashdotting.

Other good home theater sites:

• AVS Forum
• Home Theater Spot (some useful reviews and links, but more importantly a great set of forums)
• Digital Connection, the place to find high-end PC/home theater equipment.
• Magnolia Hi-Fi. Okay, I only threw this one in here because it's my preferred place to buy A/V equipment.

I'll admit I didn't finish reading all the responses (I will - this subject has particular interest to me) but after plowing through ca 100 posts w/o any actual real World experience, I had to pipe up:

Slashdotters should realize that a decent (not great) PC with some free software and inexpensive hardware can be the key to nearly State-of-the-art (compared to the stuff in the retail chains) TV exceeding kilobuck HDTV sets. A spectacular home theater is within the reach of a dedicated high school fry cook working at McDonalds and living with their folks. In fact, get your folks to chip in, and it's *easy*. In Home Improvement, we call it "sweat equity": creating with work and know-how something that would cost mucho dinero to buy (plus learning a thing or two as a major benefit -- I can easily afford an HDTV at Best Buy, but that would be boring to me, or even pointless)

1) Some starting points for real-world solutions:
AV Science: where I hang out now (esp. the HTPC forum, whose Linux section could use more programmers!)
Keohi HDTV (they helped me get started, I assume they're still good)
The Home Theater Spot: Admittedly, a home for guys with more dollars than sense, but at least they experiment instead of spouting sales literature at each other. They also had some great group buys from One-Call, which is as good as it gets for both support and service (if you want to buy)

2) Only now am I retiring my original HTPC (Home Theater PC), a Celeron-466 with 256 MB, a $20 TV card, and a $45 Matrox 450 DualHead with s-video, composite and XVGA outputs - a simple system that would still wow a lot of 'retail buyers'. I can't explain how it changed my TV viewing, how great it is to have a library of 150-300MB archived eps of my favorite shows, etc. Add a few sub-$1/GB HDDs (see Anandtech Hot Deals or FatWallet for bargains), and you'll wonder how you ever tolerated clumsy VHS tape libraries. For archiving, these same forums will tell you how to get 4x DVD-R recorders for as little as $140 at major chains (epending on sales)

3) My current aging workhorse is a Athlon 1700+XP ($209, barebones, from Outpost.com a year ago). I added memory, a sub-$300 MyHD card (some other HDTV cards are as good or better) and a few minor bits like a $50 Dolby Theater Sound card, etc. It'd be much cheaper today, and many of you already run gear that's much hotter than this. The software was mostly free and/or open source.

4) My favored output device is a Toshiba TLP650 LCD projector (native 1024x768, but with a nice 1600x1200 mode) cost $900 on eBay last year - a bit pricey, but that was last year and the last-gen prices are dropping fast. On President's Day (Monday) I got my GF a nice 640x480 projector to experiment with: under $100, and it exceeds the line resolution of any 'normal TV'. You can assemble a decent HTPC/projector for about the price of a "pretty nice" normal TV if cash is tight, and you'll have far more capability, like HDTV and HDTV *recording* (which runs a few kilobucks by itself, retail). Admittedly, I'm comparing "MSRP" TV prices to bargain-hunting for HDTV, but hackers have always been scroungers, right?

To me, the learning is the biggest benefit. I'm not a big fan of most TV, but building my HTPC has been a wonderful (and not *that* pricey) hobby. I don't need cable when most of what is sold locally as "digital cable" doesn't come close to the 1080i resolution I pick up with a $20 "double bowtie" antenna from Radio Shack (As a general rule, any antenna that calls itself an HDTV antenna will be *worse* than a cheap 1950's retro-looking double bowtie)

When your videos are always on your HDD, you'll rule in Geek Debates on SF tech or plots (one-click access encourages the invaluable habit of rigorous fact-checking). You can make outrageous SF music videos or parodies, and otherwise exercise your creative and intellectual side instead of being purely a passive couch potato. Modesty prevents me from linking my own videos, but I'd gladly recommend a friend's site of example TV-SF music videos and parodies

From everything I've read (AVS Forums, Home Theater Spot), the ATI dongle seems to be a little flakey. For my money (and I know $200 >> $30), a proper VGA to Component transcoder is the way to go. Way fewer headaches. Though ATIs suck for custom resolutions, so expect to deal with a bit of overscan. It looks like the best solution right now is to pick up a WinPVR or WinPVR 250 and an nVidia GeForce-based card, a VGA->Component transcoder, and PowerStrip. I'm still dealing with my AIW 7500, though.

Now to wait for AT&T to bring HD to digital cable, and then find some way to get that into the HTPC ...

Actually the Radeon 9700 Pro comes with a standard set of component cables (feed off the TV-out) that can work at 480i/480p/720p/1040i on a TV capable of receiving HD resolutions.

Ah, yes, ATI's component convertor. Sure, it was only $30, but most people who have one have reported flakiness and problems (check out places like the Home Theater Spot or AVS Forum).

The overscan issue seems to have been from the cable conversion the AIW Radeon 8500's had & the fact your using a non-Ati device to do the same on a AIW Radeon 7500.

No, the overscan is an issue of how TVs work -- all TVs have some amount of overscan, and TV broadcasts are designed to compensate for this. Even after having my RPTV professionally calibrated, I still have the recommended ~5% overscan on all sides (anything less and you start getting into geometry and convergence issues). nVidia graphics cards support any custom resolution you can define (within their hardware capabilities, of course, but 1080i doesn't even make nVidia cards break a sweat) , and thus you can define a custom resolution that compensates for overscan (you'll need something like EnTech's PowerStrip for this, of course). ATI cards are much less flexible in terms of custom resolutions (or, at least, the 7500 was, and I believe the 8500 was as well). Thus, my wishlist is that ATI would at least come up to the level of nVidia and properly handle custom resolutions.

Unfortunately thier is still no component in though... I could make use of that as well...

Immersive's Holo3DGraph video processor card does have component inputs, but those only accept SD interlaced inputs (480i, basically), not HD or progressive scan inputs (480p, which isn't HD, or 740p or 1080i). I've heard mention of DirecTV units that can be captured from via coax input (something about the box will output whatever channel it happens to be on through channel 3 or 4 of the coax, so you'll need an HD tuner card in your PC to pick up the signal from the STB), but I haven't researched this very much, and I have no idea if AT&T will do something similar (they're bringing HDTV to digital cable in my area sometime in the next few months). If that doesn't work, then I'm SOL with my HTPC once HDTV gets here (and I'll definitely at least try the HDTV feed, because I've been pining for it for over a year).

Who in their right mind spends $2000 on a television?

Now if you don't like TV, or watching movies, or playing video games, then complaining about how people can spend $2000 on a TV is a moot point since you're not an enthusiast to begin with.

If you want to wonder about people with too much money, go see the Prada store in NYC and find someone who is casually spending $3,500.00 on a jacket. Now that's scary.

First, to answer your question:

Any modern ATI or Nvidia card should work just fine. Plasma displays are very sensitive with regards to having their exact resolution displayed, so use a program like Powerstrip to make sure Windows starts up with the exact resolution and refresh rate your plasma monitor requires.

If you haven't bought a plasma display yet, then I recommend you think twice about getting it. There are some really low cost monitors out there that can interface pretty well with a PC. Take, for example, the JVC AV-48WP30, at around $1,700 you can have a 48" HDTV that supports DVI(*). People are using this TV with their PC's at 1280x720, or 1920x540. There are also new 42" (HLM427W, I believe) and 50" (HLM507W) Samsung HDTV's that support DVI and are based on badass DLP technology (I heard this set is particularly sharp when connected to a PC). These Samsung DLP's are MUCH cheaper than other comparable sets, something like $3,000-$4,000.

Note, however, that while the theoretical HDTV resolution is 1920x1080i, very, very few HDTV's can display a discernable pixel grid at this resolution. Still, the price difference between a modern rear-projection HDTV and a plasma monitor is significant (you can buy a decent used car with the money you save).

Here are some very helpful links, I used them extensively when I was shopping around for a new set:

AV Science Forum: great forum with lots of very knowledgeable people. Many of them are into using displays like plasmas/HDTV's with their PC's.

Home Theater Spot: similar to the above, different layout. Another great, helpful site.

(*) Regarding these DVI connectors - yes, these are the new DVI connections used to transfer encrypted data to prevent people from copying future HD broadcasts. It is often documented that you can't use this DVI interface with your computer's DVI out, but more often than not this is not true and it will work just fine. However, ask around on the above sites about your particular DVI TV before buying an expensive DVI cable. :)

I am close to purchasing a new HD-ready set myself and I've been following the market closely for the past few months.

First, you'll probably want to read some of the threads on the AVS Forum in the HDTV Hardware (a lot of good set top box info here!) and HDTV programming forums. Another good source of info on specific sets is the Home Theater Spot. Finally, if you want some perspective on the industry check out Mark Schubin's Monday Memo. It's published weekly.

I think it's a pretty good time to buy because:

• Prices on sets have fallen dramatically.
• Programming is really starting to become available. Cable & Broadcasting says there is 500 hours of HD available in the US per week.
• The picture does look tremendous!

Almost none of the sets or set top boxes you can buy today have a DVI or Firewire interface. These interfaces will enable set top box to talk to the TV and decide if it is a display device that is allowed to get the full 1080i resolution of a HDCP encrypted broadcast.

This won't be a problem if your set has a built in tuner that does HD or if your manufacturer is promising to upgrade your set to meet whatever standard gets decided on (and you don't mind replacing your set top box). That's why you probably ought to check out the Mitsubishi sets before you make a final decision. I don't work for them, invest in them, etc. I just like the fact that they are promising to upgrade whatever set you buy from them today via a plug in module that they'll sell for less than $1000.

Anyway, that's my 2 bits. Good luck!

Frequently-asked questions:
http://www.avsforum.com/hdtvfaq/HDTV-FAQ.htm
http://www.nwlink.com/~rxg/hdtv.html

Reviews, tips, tweaks, etc:
http://www.hometheaterspot.com
http://www.avsforum.com
http://www.keohi.com/keohihdtv/index.htm

My $1,700 47" Panasonic also supports 1080i natively, but it still has less than 1920x1080 in actual screen resolution...

Yes, your set does support 1080i natively... and it may have 1600 lines of resolution, but are these normalized ? Here is a post by "edyee" on [Home Theater Spot] describing the resolution issue.

"Panansonic's quoted resolution is 850 lines of horizontal resolution (# of light/dark transitions horizontally that be discerned, not the number of scan lines). And further, if this is quoted as 850 lines of horizontal resolution per picture height, the total number of lines across the 16:9 screen would be 850x1.78 or approx 1500. The question is what is Mitsubishi's quote of 1200 in relation to? Is it the total across the screen or is it also lines per picture height? If it is not lines/pic height, then normalizing Mitsubishi's number gives about 674. And Panasonic has greater horizontal resolution."