Adrienne Maxwell

Given the explosion of LCD sales, one might expect LCD manufacturers to simply ease up on technology development. The average consumer seems quite pleased with LCD's image quality, so why change anything? It is to the manufacturers' credit that they continue to strive for improvement, to create a picture that both everyday users and videophiles can appreciate. Thus far, they've focused their efforts on two performance areas: motion and black level.

Remember the days when interlaced was a term used primarily by basket-weavers, and scaling was something the dentist did to your teeth when you didn't floss? Ah, those were good times. . . simpler times, when you didn't need a degree in electrical engineering to pick out a new television set. As we enter the era of large-screen 1080p displays, video processing—or the ability to convert all signal types, from 480i SDTV and DVD to 720p/1080i HDTV to 1080p high-def DVD, to a TV's native resolution—plays a more important role than ever before in overall performance. Even an average TV can make high-quality HD sources look good; the real test is how good a lesser-quality 480i signal looks when blown up on that big 1080p screen.

<I>Driven by his passion for movies, this homeowner truly went the distance to create his ideal home theater.</I>

Do you need 1080p in a 42-inch flat panel? This is an important question, especially for plasma manufacturers that fear losing customers to the LCD camp at this highly coveted screen size. Up until now, plasma technology's cell structure has made it difficult to fit 1,920 by 1,080 pixels into a 42-inch screen size, which seems to have put them at a competitive disadvantage. As I write this, the first true 1080p 42-inch plasma (a Panasonic) is about to hit the shelves at a price of $2,500, but the market is already littered with 42-inch 1080p LCDs priced under $2,000. If consumers believe that they must have 1080p right now, it's fairly obvious which route they'll go.