My old 27" Sony Trinitron from 1990 was starting to show it's age as of late. Most notably by displaying a series of horizontal bars across the screen that were driving me crazy. Although they were only visible, mostly, in dark scenes and in areas that had about 20% brightness. I thought it might be some kind of interference or a ground loop, but after much experimenting with different video sources through different inputs and different power outlets, I was unable to make the problem disappear. Oh well, 16 years of service for one TV ain't bad.

So I did some research on TVs and while I would have liked to get the 40" XBR2 LCD model, I ultimately decided to go with the 50" SXRD rear-projection model. It was cheaper, had a bigger screen and had a native display of 1080p. I went to Future Shop and got their 12 months interest free [somewhat] payment plan. They actually charge a $60 financing charge, so it's not totally interest free. The price I got it for was $2535, a bit less than the $2999 MSRP. [I printed out this forum thread and when I showed it to them, they agreed to sell it to me for that price] I managed to get it to fit in my Vibe and drive it home, although I had to lay it flat because it was a few inches too tall.

I tried scanning for HD channels using the TV's built in tuner, but all I got was one, Discovery HD. It looked great, but obviously I would like more than one HD channel. So I went to Shaw yesterday and picked up their HD cable box/PVR. Now I get about 10 HD channels. Not bad, but I hope they get more soon. Standard definition channels vary greatly in picture quality, some are fine and some are completely unwatchable. Anologue or digital [480i] doesn't seem to matter much, I guess it all depends on the source. DVDs look great, not as good as the HD channels, but much better than any 480i TV channels. Although you can notice differences from disc to disc. Spiderman2 looks sharp and crisp, but Apocalypse Now looks kinda soft. DIVX stuff through my RJ-Tech unit looks pretty good, much better than on my old TV, although it varies from source to source. The last episode of Heroes looked fantastic.

I've heard of the green blob defect with these TVs, but so far I haven't had any problems of that nature. I also did the LPF fix, although I can't say it made any visible difference.

I also had to spend a small fortune on cables. Two component cables for my DVD players. Then another component cable for my PS2, although I'm not sure that was worth it cause PS2 games look rather shitty on this set. My cable box came with a set of component cables, but by that time all my component inputs were spoken for! So I had to purchase an HDMI cable to get it connected. The guy at Future Shop was trying sell me an uber-expensive Monster Cable HDMI cable, but when I decide on a cheaper one because cabling shouldn't make that big a difference with digital signals over a short run, he threw a fit, literally. Totally spazzed out. Anyway, I went with the cheaper cable and it works fine, although it's too short and I have to keep the damn box right by my TV now.