bobrocks95 wrote:
If you're fine with the small size a PC CRT and a component to VGA adapter would look really nice. If you're leaning towards the EDTV route, I haven't ever seen any ED CRTs in America, so I'm not sure we even got them. NEC and Panasonic made EDTV plasmas, but unless you're near a big city they'll probably take you a while to find. There's also video processors you can look into that are well-suited for 480p, and lots of people think 480p looks fine on an HD set too, but I don't know about 4K.
Josh touts that Samsung plasma an awful lot, too much I might say, but there's a thread around here for it somewhere with lots of pictures in it so you can decide for yourself how you think it looks, which is really all that matters. I'd guess a lot better than your 4K set and probably comparable to your 480i Sony for still images, but that's just a guess.
I have seen some EDTV plasmas in person years ago (very early 2000's) at a Circuit City store here in the US, so I can confirm they were sold here and may be available if you search enough, but they may not be in the best shape having ceased production so long ago.
I know I sound like a gushing schoolgirl about the Samsung, but I can still say without blinking an eye that my two 51" 4500s are hands down the best bang for the money Ive ever spent on A/V gear. The colors/contrast/uniformity/motion and size are dazzling for any set IMO, much less a $400 one. Being as realistic and honest as I can be about it, the only knock about it that I can say is that it only has 2 HDMI ports. The ~37ms of input lag is not really noticeable for me as I dont use external processors that add lag. I will concede though that if you do use them it will throw the lag into unacceptable range, so take that as the other knock against it if you wish.
Ive played DC on it and compared to my Viewsonic 17" CRT, and I feel the plasma looks more impressive by a good margin. The VGA CRT was indeed sharper, but almost to a fault in my opinion. The 4500 was sharp yet not as harsh and had better color/contrast and its size just makes it all the more impressive to me. I also feel that its 480p looks better than 480i on my 27" FD Trinitron Wega, though the Wega does have comparable contrast. Again, just my now infamous opinion...
The kicker about the 36" Hitachi Ultravision CRT is that it also accepts VGA natively, a nice plus for DC. Also, it is not a flat tube, so it has better uniformity than a lot of the flat-tube HD CRTs well.
Ive never seen the NEC XM29 in person, but have read about it and the consensus is that its one of if not the top 480p CRTs ever produced. I personally feel the Hitachi Ultravision CRT should be included in that conversation as well, but its a fairly rare beast and there are very few reviews of it on the net. I was a sad camper when the flyback transformer went out on mine in 2011.
