Bought a new TV

[TransformX]

Got a Panasonic THL42E30
The good: it's full HD, got lots of inputs, some outputs, yada yada yada.
The bad: I can't stand watching most TV stations now, deeply disappointed with most of my DivX collection, DVDs went from 'COOL!' to 'nice' and if up till now I could download a considerably high quality movie in about an hour or less (for ~1GB), now I find myself ignoring all R5, DVDrip etc, in favor of 720p or more (7GB+ downloads).

TrueHD Full HD stuff looks absolutely awesome, everything else is..crap.
Bottom line, I love the new TV, I love watching movies and documentaries in 1080p, but I've lost the little fun I had watching most everything else.

[Jammrock]

SD content rarely looks good in HD. I'm still pissed that DirecTV doesn't have BBC America in HD yet. I've been known to download 720p versions of Doctor Who and stream it to my TV to bypass the SD content conundrum.

[Evildead666]

TrueHD is a trademark for Dolby's high definition audio codec, akin to DTS-HD.

We have a 720p Sony flatscreen, with no image enhancing hardware inside.
I deliberately chose one without the hardware, because the DVD player and TV box both do upscaling to 720p, and I didn't want the picture to be 'enhanced' once by the box, and then 'again' by the TV.

Any upscaling standard def to 1080p by either of the box's is awful, hence why I stuck with 720p.
Its only 32 in in diameter but everything looks very sharp, be it DVD's or whatever.
576p to 720p is only a small upscale, but take that from 576p to 1080p and thats a lot of info 'created' on the fly.

Maybe its just your standard def stuff being badly upscaled to 1080p, or even being upscaled/enhanced more than once.

[TransformX]

Standard stuff looks barely OK. I have satellite TV box supposedly without any image processing.

Problem is that many channels are broadcast in sub-par quality. While CRT smooths down many artefacts and imperfections, my new TV is truly a crap in - enhanced crap out box.
The TV has a very sharp image (which can be toned down a notch, but still), so while in HD you get incredible details, broadcasts that look like they've been recorded on a crappy VCR in the 80's look simply horrid.

My old set was a 32" 16:9 Samsung 100hz. So this one has an impressively larger screen (added ten diagonal inches) and about 5 times (?) the resolution.

[Fat Tone]

Since upscaling has already been covered, try and sit 5 feet further away.

[TransformX]

Since upscaling has already been covered, try and sit 5 feet further away.

That'll be 3 feet outside the house, 10 feet above ground

[Fat Tone]

Hehehe, i am watching the Family Guy episode with Rhonda Latimer...everyone lusts until they see the HD reality

[RedRed]

I feel yer pain. We have virgin cable here, and its generally crap byond belief since we upgraded the tv to a 42'...

The huge video files seem to be a future part of life....
Either that, or get glasses with a prescription 1 size out...