You will get people champion each (usually the one they own).

Your best bet is to do some demoing with an AV specialist , there is nothing like letting your eyes decide with a vraiety of sources. It is often difficult to get a good side by side comparison with all fed an equally good signal. Most electrical stores will have them poorly set up with a composite signal. I spent quite a while walking around stores with a DVD player & component cable under my arm !

I'd start by looking for topics on this debate at AV forums like www.avsforum.com

In my opinion based upon a lot of in-home testing, compared to a good CRT, plasma TV's look awful. Personally, I would rate the picture quality as plasma last, LCD second and CRT best.

I have had all three types set up in my home theater fed by a pristine 1920x1080i digital source and the Sony Vega KV-34XBR910 34" 16:9 TV blew the rest away by a huge margin. However, the Sony 30" LCD looked really good, but still didn't have quite the resolution of the CRT.

I've had perhaps a dozen mid to high-end plasma TV's in here as well and, in every case, I could see the individual pixels on the display and it bugged me to no end. The guy from the store said, "well, your sitting too close." I guess I was, but sitting about 6 feet in front of the CRT, you can make out an astonishing amount of detail and see things clearly that would go completely unnoticed on a conventional NTSC. That's part of the beauty of HiDef TV, you CAN sit close. The only reason we have sat so far back from conventional TV's for so long is that they look so bad close up. This is still true for plasma TV's and that's just not right.

For one particular test, I was watching a HiDef program off of PBS, it was a show taped during the Olympics in Salt Lake City where he was conducting a huge orchestra and the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. In one fairly wide shot, you could pick out one of the women in the orchestra playing a violin and she was wearing a small analog wristwatch. On the Sony XBR910, you could actually get up to the screen and tell what time it was. On the plasma and LCD televisions playing the exact same scene, you couldn't make out the hands of the watch at all. Of course, the CRT was showing the full 1920x1080 resolution of which neither the LCD or plasma were capable. I hear that Sharp has come out with a 30" LCD with native 1920x1080 resolution. That might give a CRT a run for it's money. However, LCD's are slower than a CRT, so there is some motion blur. Also, eventually the LCD will develop at least one dead pixel and that would probably make me suicidal considering how much LCD TV's cost.

After a lot of viewing, I bought the Sony 34" XBR910 CRT for somewhere around $2,000 and have been extremely pleased with it. It costs a lot less than an LCD or plasma TV and looks light years better. It does weigh 304 pounds though...

John

Thank you all for your comments. I have heard from some people the same comments on plasma's that John Cline said. I feel sorry for the typical "Joe"
who walks into the store to buy a TV when they start throwing all of those terms at him. The best one is "HD capable" which means after you spend about 3 grand then you get to spend another 600 bucks for the HD tuner to make it work.

JJK

How does one test these things? Even a DVD isn't going to give you a true picture of a set's HD performance.

I'll soon be looking for a new set myself, but I don't have TV; only DVDs. Thus, I can live with lesser resolution, but want to keep the cost reasonable, since I'll probably need to upgrade when HD DVD becomes popular.

Also, it depends on priority. A big CRT is just too heavy & BIG for its screen size. So, DLP, LCD, and Plasma are the contenders.

Mark this down. The year 2006. That's when the NTSC world (United States) is scheduled to switch over the HDTV broadcast wise full time. Unless your TV is about to die, I'd wait till then and I bet not only will there be better technology, but more reasonable prices. I looked at the current crop of so-called HDTV offerings and I passed. While the quality is for sure better (about 5 times higher resolution is possible) the refirements aren't there yet. Just for laughs I asked some sales rep in Best Buy about their $16,000 model. I peppered him with a bunch of questions and mostly got 'I don't know' or I can get back to you responses. One thing he did know was the cost of the service contract for one of those babies.
He with a straight face said "only" $1,000 per year.

Right now Plasma is behind LCD picture quality wise. However the industry is behind Plasma and I'd bet most of R&D will go in that direction.

Unless there is another breakthrough, LCD have about reached their practial limit in size, with Plasma, ten years or so down the road I wouldn't be that surprised to see a 90 inch or larger TV on the market.

http://www.homecinemachoice.com/news/frame.html?http://www.homecinemachoice.com/cgi-bin/displaynews.php?id=4887

There you go , there is a 76" 1920x1080 one

For testing, I was using a "MyHD" card installed in one of my computers. It receives off-air HD, DTV or analog programming and feeds it at full resolution to the television via a component analog or DVI interface. It is also capable of recording the HD bitstream to the hard drive for later playback. It's like a HiDef TIVO.

MyHD 120 card - $289

John

Regarding the weight of a CRT television, I am ONLY concerned about image quality and if it weighs 304 pounds, then so be it.

Billyboy,
For me, 2006 doesn't matter, because I still won't have cable and I won't sit through commercials. So even if I can receive broadcasts (I get 3 stations here), they'll likely be replayed from a less than HD recorder. Your points about lower prices and more refined tech are well taken, but I suspect that come next summer when my wife is off (she's a teacher), something will be in the cards. Especially since we're limping along on a 25" that only has RF in at the moment! Ugh.

John:
But you can't get a 50" CRT... ;-) As far as BIG screens, I've only seen CRT based rear screens and Plasmas (and CRT, of course). I wouldn't get a CRT based rear screen. Too bulky, and too narrow a viewing angle. I liked the Plasma (from DVD source, anyway). I'm looking forward to seeing the other technologies.

I assume John was pulling our leg about the weight, I beleive it weighs closer to 200 pounds, but anything over 100, you better get some help ;^)

There was an 84" (I believe) OLED HD TV demoed in England, Oxford Labs, I think, over a year ago. They unrolled it from an 84" long mailing tube, hung it on the wall, and there it was. That was 84" TALL, not diagonal. In 16:9 format, it was over 12 feet wide, about 1/64" thick at the thickest point, where the channel selector was.. The electronics were printed on the back of the same sheet of plastic. The electrical cable and power adapter was more bulky and certainly heavier than the whole TV. They are still having production problems with this OLED technology, but it should be watched.

You can't do a proper comparison at a store like Best Buy.
They feed their signals through Video Distribution Amplifiers and splitters which totally degrade the signal.

What you should really do is contact a big AV supplier and ask to see their high end monitors.

I have been in the AV industry for about 10 years and watched the transition from CRT to LCD to PLASMA even LED...From the time I saw Plasma, I was sick. Everyone raves about the ability to hang it on the wall, but don't really care about the quality. They burn in quickly, and if you get burned out pixels, you have a problem. I would stay away from Plasma. LCD is a little better, but it lacks warmth. It looks too washed out and too DIGITAL.

CRT, to me, is still the best looking image. Granted, you can't get anything bigger than 40", but you either sacrifice image quality for size. If given the choice, even with projection, I would still go for CRT. I still love the way a Barco 808s CRT projector looks over any DLP or LCD projector on the market today.

I assume John was pulling our leg about the weight, I beleive it weighs closer to 200 pounds, but anything over 100, you better get some help ;^)

Yes, the XBR910 weighs about 200 pounds, it's the 40" 4x3 CRT model from Sony that weighs 304 pounds. There is a lot of glass in a 40" tube.

I don't know of a single professional in the video production business that thinks plasma or LCD displays look better than a good, well-adjusted CRT.

But you can't get a 50" CRT... ;-) As far as BIG screens, I've only seen CRT based rear screens and Plasmas (and CRT, of course).

Yes, but viewing a 34" 16x9 at around 8 feet away is about the same image size as a 60" rear projector when viewed from 12 feet away. When watching HD on my XBR910, I sit about 4-5 feet in front of it. The detail is astounding.

John

John,
Didn't your mom ever yell at you for sitting that close? ;-)

The thing is, I'm no purist when watching at leisure (and my wife is even less so) and my watching habits are pretty specific. DVD movies, on the couch, shared with the wife. 9 ft. viewing distance, which won't change. And a cost limit of "around $3k". I suspect the limiting factor is DVD resolution anyway, and how big the screen can get before 720x480 pixels become visible at that distance. Then, it's whatever can best deliver "the movie experience" within those parameters.

If, in 5-10 years, HD DVD is a big thing and/or we get HD cable, we may buy again, but I'm not worried about that now.

There actually are "recommendations" of proper distance for viewing television provided by several groups that have conducted tests based on some formula. Can't recall who the groups were, but I do remember the recommendations. There were 2-3 recommendations and each fell between 3 and 3.3 feet away from the screen for every foot of TV screen measured on the diagonal.So roughly, if you have a 30 inch TV you should be about 9 to 10 feet away for optimal viewing. For creature comfort and best viewing ambient lights should neither be too dark or light.

BillyBoy,

Those recommendations were for "standard" definition NTSC television and don't apply to HD.

John

Right John. Of course most of us don't have HD yet. Too expensive. ;-)

When I watch TV which really isn't much any more I just follow my dog's lead. He usually flops down about ten feet in front of th TV.

Great info y'all! I have been saving up for a new years day sale plasma, but I am now conviced I will get the sony crt. I checked it out at a mall hi fi store this weekend. Maybe they will drop below $2K?

Oddly, there seems to be some pressure for RAISING the prices of CRT type large screen TVs rather than lowering them. Sony was just mentioned in a major article as closing two major CRT TV plants to open LCD production in the same places. LCD, and for a while, at least, Plasma, is what is selliing. Some big deal with Samsung to share patents and manufacturing technologies in that LCD vein. With less and less demand for CRT TVs, the price may actually go up.

Projectors are something you might consider. I'm looking into that myself and found a sony with 1366 x 768 resolution for around $2500. That would be much more portable than anything else.
For me it might make sense as I'd use the projector to get the best idea of what my movies will look like when they get projected at a festival. But I really can't speak for crt v lcd v dlp for projectors.

I wouldn't recommend a CRT video projector as a portable device.

DLP seems the way to go, too many reliability issues with LCD although some people don't like the 'look' of DLP.