which isn't true.

For the money, the Denon 1910 is the best around. (for it's price range, which is only $250, there are a ton that are waaaay better, but their prices reflect it.)

the Sony rear LCDs are great, REALLY light and easy to move, and they look fantastic. Really deep dark rich blacks are all they fall short in, and really i haven't noticed. The DLP rainbow effect is a whole lot more apparent to me than the LCD's mediocre blacks.

in order, I prefer front projection, then LCD, Rear Projection LCD, and then Rear projection DLP.

People will argue LCD versus DLP, but that's more or less personal taste.

Plasma is only good for the "wow, big and thin" factor, and has very little other merits.

All modern display technologies have fixed display resolutions. I think this is a big deal and almost no one mentions it. With plasma screens the resolution is almost always 720p, though occasionally it's 1024X768 in a 16x9 image. This means that for almost *any* video you want to view the television has to scale it. The *only* time you are viewing video the way it was meant to be seen is when you are watching 720p HD content. This affects the quality of the image. How much? It all depends on the unit. Some TVs simply discard 1//2 of a 1080i image (every other line.) I think that sucks. Frudjia is supposed to make the best scalers.

So, if you want to be able to view all of your content without having to scale or stretch anything you should buy a CRT projection TV. Make sure that it plays all major formats, has a cable-card slot, and an extended warranty.

Cable-card is an expansion slot that allows you to plug in a cable tuner (in card form-duh) so that instead of having a separate box/remote you can simply use the remote that came with the TV (like cable ready TVs back in the day.)

Now HDMI. HDMI is DVI plus audio & DRM. Bad stuff if you value your fair use rights. I suppose good to have onboard, but I'd rather have a TV with DVI instead. You won't need to replace your DVD player as long as your TV has component/composite video inputs, which every one sold should. HDMI is on the TV to make way for things like HD-DVD where they lock down the signal chain so that you have no hope of using the content that you've paid for in the manor that you see fit. I'm guessing, if the content industry has any say in the matter, that you won't be able to buy an HD-DVD player without an HDMI output. If we are really unlucky those of us with HDTVs that only have DVI inputs will have to buy new TVs just to use an HD-DVD player.

Anyway, that's my 2 cents, good luck.

Pat

With the side-mounted speakers, we couldn't fit the 46" Toshiba into the horizontal space we had available. With the bottom-mounted speakers, we were able to scale up the the 56" Samsung.

Looking at the Sony, it appears that the speakers are side-mounted. No idea what your TV corner looks like, but the additional width might require the TV to be further from the wall.

Just a thought.

There are a few really good sites if you want to check out what problems people are having with their sets:

http://www.hometheaterspot.com/

http://www.avsforum.com/

http://www.keohi.com/keohihdtv/

These sites also list tweaks and improvements that you can make to your set to make it better.

One thing about RPTVs is that they require a bit of upkeep to insure that they have their best picture. About once a month or so I recalibrate my set, whick takes me only about two minutes now. When I first got the set it took me about an hour the first time. Each time it gets easier as the set is burned in and remembers your settings.

If you like to tinker with things (as most programmer types do) then an RPTV is a fun thing to have.

Oh, my set is a Toshiba 46H84. 46' widescreen RPTV. The H84 is the series. Great set. Has HDMI input and many other inputs. Easy to get to "hidden" menus for color adjustments. Some sets have a minor problem with a faint light line down the middle of the screen that can really only be seen when watching hockey (or the Discovery Channel specials about Antarctica). As far as I know it is covered under warranty. Best Buy and Sears usually have this set for around $1300. The 51' is basically the same set, just bigger. You can probably get that for only a hundred or som more bucks...probably a better deal if you have the space for it.