What's the Best General Purpose Display?

Who Man asks: "There are many options when buying a display today: Direct-View CRT, CRT-Based Rear Projection, CRT-Based Front Projection, Direct-View LCD, LCD-Based Rear Projection, LCD-based Front Projection, DLP-based Rear Projection, DLP-based Front Projection, Plasma, lcos-based front projection, and lcos-based rear projection. Did I leave anything out? Each of these seems to have a distinct trade-off, and it gets especially confusing when the display is intended for multiple purposes--watching analog 4:3 video, watching hi-def 16:9 video, watching DVDs (in several different aspect ratios), playing PC games, and playing console games. A particularly sticky area seems to be getting a display that handles analog and digital signals equally well. Seems that the newer digital displays are great at displaying hi-def signals but make an analog TV show look horrible. Is there a display that's adept at handling multiple inputs? Has anyone had specific experience, good or bad, with any particular displays? What about using an external processor with a digital display?"

Comments

Re:My experience with HT displays

[Gangis]

I agree wholeheartedly. A DLP with S-Video, Composite, VGA and BNC input will cost just a couple of thousand dollars (USD). Like this fellow said, though, you'd need a computer or a tuner connected to it to be able to switch channels. If you have Digital Cable service in your area along with HDTV support, you could theoretically plug that into the projector just fine. A ceiling-mount projector would be excellent too.