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I'll be watching this thread. I have the same questions.

We want to build a media room in the basement.

I've considered big ol' flat screen TV's, and projector TV's.

I have NO idea what to do.

Maybe I should do as Ralph Cramden once did: Wait for 3-D television.

I've noticed that there's one aspect to TV shopping that is often neglected...that is the TV's contrast ratio. This aspect is really critical when it comes to watching DVDs of any movie shot on film. Film has a wide latitude when it comes to showing both shadow details and highlight details. The greater the TV's contrast ratio the better you'll see those rich shadow details without the washed out highlight areas. To my eyes, LCDs fail or perform poorly in this regard. Plasmas are better, but regular picture-tube technology still offers the best on balance: sharpness, contrast ratio, life span, etc.

I just read that Popular Science says picture-tube TVs are still the gold standard...and mentioned that a flat-screen picture-tube TV, called an SED, will be in the market next year. SEDs will have better contrast and better color than either LCDs or plasmas, consume less power, and will cost less then plasmas.

As an aside, I think its self-defeating when people buy a large screen TV and spend a lot of money to get that movie theater feel....and then sit so far back from the screen they've negated that viewing distance to screen size ratio you get in the theater. Sitting closer though magnifies the quality differences between one TV technology and the other.

I am on several HDTV forums, I suggest the following for possible technical information, (you may have to navigate to different areas of these forums), I prefer satelliteguys.us for most information, but they all are good.

http://www.satelliteguys.us/search.php?searchid=964338

http://www.highdefforum.com/forumdisplay.php?f=38

BTW: I bought a Sony 34" XBR (CRT) TV in April (paid $2k then, now they are a few hundred $$ cheaper), great picture and the picture tube is "super fine pitch"!!

If you have any questions, please freepmail me.