littleb, you are actually on the mark. Tubes have been known for offering the best blacks, greatest contrast, and best color. Limitations have been tube size for large images, which drove people to plasmas (cool 4" thick design, but many drawbacks of the plasma technology). Like good Bose marketing, many people fell victim to the "cool" factor of plasma. Now, for some people, the plasma was the only option to get the picture size or for TV placement, so I am not slamming anyone that has one, I am just pointing out that there are those uneducated people out there that don't do their homework first and trust the sales guy at Best Buy with their life. These are different than those people (like the ones here) that did the homework and found that the plasma WAS the best for their needs)....
Anyway, rear projection is still pretty nice. The price is good, and the footprint isn't as big as it used to be, but you are still hitting limits of the whole projection system. Even DLP (with its claims for deep blacks) still isn't as "black" as a tube.
The trick is finding a tube that does HD, is the size screen you want, and doesn't weigh a ton.
Pluses and minuses to them all. Oh, and don't trust side by side comparisons at Best Buy or your favorite electronics store. Those sets are many times just dropped on the display shelf and turned on with not tweaking, or with too much tweaking by workers and customers. One picture may look too light with low contrast compared to the unit next to it, but maybe someone turned up the brightness and dropped the contrast settings on that unit. You never know. You could start by having them reset the units to factory defaults and go from there. Good luck!
