sorry to hijack but i just cannot find a place to discuss tv

i am no gamer but need to buy a tv for normal viewing

my plan is to get plasma/lcd in couple of years so whatever i am buying is for about 2-3 years

I limited myself to 2 choice

a 34 inch Panasonic- at about RM2600- no HD ready, 100 h progressive scan
or
a 29 inch Sony, the one mentioned here- KV DA 29M61- which i believe have better specs, slightly cheaper at 2500...

Is the 5 inch worth sacrificing? Is the Sony picture really more superior?
My normal usage- football, cartoon, HBOs, DVDs...

sorry guys for hijacking the topic!

The New Aspect Ratio
Current televisions are based upon the aspect ratio of 4:3. This means a TV with an aspect ratio of 4:3 will be 3 feet high and 4 feet wide. With HDTV the aspect ratio is 16:9, making the image much wider than a normal TV. The new screen size is 33% wider to be exact.

Comparison of the aspect ratio of a High Definition TV compared to a NTSC TV of the same height...

The increased width is a huge improvement because it allows you to view TV and movies as if you were watching them in a theater. When watching TV on a 16:9 screen you use your peripheral vision, which truly makes you feel like you are a part of the program.

Norm Samat, the directory of ABC's Monday Night Football HDTV feed put it perfectly:
You almost get into a trance looking at HDTV pictures because you really see more. The wider 16:9 aspect ratio makes a big difference in covering football. With the old 4:3 aspect ratio screens it was often tricky to cover the defense. In HDTV they are already in your picture, so you can see more of the play develop.

Resolution
The usual resolution a normal NTSC TV can display is 525 scan lines with 480 actually being visible. The usual TV can display a resolution of about 210,000 pixels per image. High Definition TV's can go all the way up to 1920 (horizontal) x 1080 (vertical) pixels, with a total of 2,073,600 pixels per image. That is ten times the resolution and picture quality. Ten times!

Number of pixels on a HDTV monitor at 1920 x 1080 versus NTSC at 720 x 486...

In fact, when you squeeze all these pixels down to the same sized TV you get impeccable quality. Instead of stretching these pixels out, they are crammed together so tight that resolutions get as high and as sharp as they do.

Different Views of SDTV and HDTV-Resolution

Digital TV - SDTV:

    * 480i - 704x480 interlaced
    * 480p - 704x480 progressive
     

Digital-HDTV:

    * 720p - 1280x720  progressive
    * 1080i - 1920x1080 interlaced
    * 1080p - 1920x1080 progressive

More Accurate - Listing the resolution and frame rate:

    * 480i - The picture is 704x480 - (60/2 interlaced frames per second)
      = 30 complete frames per second.
     
    * 480p - The picture is 704x480 - 60 complete frames per second.
     
    * 720p - The picture is 1280x720 - 60 complete frames per second.
     
    * 1080i - The picture is 1920x1080 - (60/2 interlaced frames per second)
      = 30 complete frames per second.
     
    * 1080p - The picture is 1920x1080 - 60 complete frames per second.

Comparison of Digital TV and HDTV

Note: Although "non-CRT" television sets use different technologies in creating the screen images, and there are other factors involved with how they display the picture, in the end, HDTV-Resolutions are still (720p) and (1080i) - or higher.

On the matter of component input, I have a TV with one component input
but multiple devices capable of component output - DVD, XBOX and PS2.

Is there a switcher/selector of some kind that I can get?
Will the passive A/V selector work at all?
I kind of doubt it myself.

What is the difference between the component cable vs RCA audio/video
cable? The plugs look the same. I can only think that the cable quality is different.

so...
1.a lcd 15" monitor is good for my ps2??
2.a projection tv 100hz 42'' good for ps2??

i saw many widescreen hd-ready tv in senq today...is that the hd ready widescreen tv is hd tv??
wat wat is lcd tv with hd ready??

oh..thx for answering me,,,

Just got back from Guanzhou, china and bought myself a true HDTV.  Its a 32" 16:9 CRT HDTV thats supports 1080P, 1080i, 720P. 

I bought it for RM2250 and cost about RM350 to ship it back to malaysia.

wow!!!
it's 16:9? not widescreen? like that the screen is super long!
even support 1080p?   quite cheap for such big tv, but what brand is it?