BTW: Beside the line doubling making even VHS tapes look decent on a 53" screen, the real benefit for ME is being able to go into 16:9 mode for anaphoric DVD's. (You will need component outputs on your DVD player, but that is a pretty standard feature now.) The image is just amazing! No information is wasted making "black bars", instead, that part of the TV just isn't used. I can't stress this enough. Tony brought it up and I just want to re-iterate it. You will LOVE watching DVD's at home. It will be nice too when friends bring by their HDTV capable X-Box's!

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I can't get a projection TV mostly because I don't have room for one.

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Are you sure? Rear-projection TV's have a smaller foot print and can be placed closer to walls than tube sets...

FWIW: DirecTV does do a painful amount of compression now in order to provide local stations, yet their compression has gotten better in the last year or so. However, I do watch DirecTV through my HDTV-ready set and am very happy with it. I think Sony does a great job with their scanning. The do conventional "line-doubling" AND horizontal pixel doubling. It may not be accurate, pixel for pixel, but the image isn't too soft and there are NO scan lines even from 2' away. I did spend a good month with Video Essentials tweaking it. (Make sure your "Sharpness" is set to 0 on any set you use please!) I have found that cable, even Digital cable (at least in the Detroit area) looks worse. That depends on your provider.

Mitsubishi is my other favorite brand and Toshiba would probably fall in 3rd.