Originally Posted by Heff
My mom and dad have a Pansonic 42" EDTV and it shows SD programming pretty well not too fuzzy very watchable. DVDs and primetime HD prohramming looks great. I actually like it better then my 30" Sony HDTV if only due to the larger picture. For me, plasma has the better picture over LCDs. Oh and the audio is clearly superior over SD.
EDTV is a perfect pixel match for progressive DVD and SD Digital broadcasting. Downscaled HD can look great as well.

Since plasma and LCD are progressive displays, picture quality from interlaced NTSC/PAL or interlaced DVD still requires a good deinterlacer and "cinema" mode inverse telecine. That is what makes one TV look better than the other. Make sure you evaluate interlace sources.

One way to adapt a cheap HD or ED TV is to rely on a "HD" cable or satellite box to preform the deinterlace by choosing 480p output over the analog component connection. In 480i mode, the TV must do the deinterlace.