If only the answer was as simple as your question makes it sound. It's a very personal thing I guess but for me a CRT TV will beat any plasma for day-to-day TV viewing of Sky or Freeview. For DVD playback then a good plasma will beat CRT. It's all down to the quality of the source. Have a look at the many threads allready about on this very subject but at the end of the day it's your money so make sure you view before you buy and do not base your purchase on how the screen looks with DVDs. Cheers, Lee
Agreed. All technologies have their shortcomings, including CRTs. It's just that they differ from techology to technology. For example, whilst it could be argued that the contrast range (for example) is likely to be better on a CRT, you have to be prepared to find convergence, stability, geometry errors and perhaps uneven brightness or, worse, colour staining on a CRT - none of which are present on Plasmas. It is a matter of understanding what the inherent shortcomings are and deciding which you can live with, and which you can't. And peoples' opinions on this will differ. And there are enough other threads here debating the pro's and cons.
Again, it is a matter of differing shortcomings. CRT projectors (whether RPTVs or front projectors) use three small monochrome CRTs to generate the image. Because the tubes are smaller than direct view CRTs they tend to suffer less from geometry and stability issues. Because there are three separate tubes for the three colours, they won't suffer from staining or uneven brightness as colour CRTs do. BUT: Because there are three separate tubes, to get an accurate colour image on screen, the three tubes have to project onto exactly the same place on the screen. Any inaccuracy here results in bad convergence - coloured fringing around the edges of objects. And CRTs (even small ones) are somewhat prone to drifting of their adjustment, so to keep them 'right' need re-adjusting from time to time. You have to offset this against (comparing other projector technologies) rainbows for DLP and greyish blacks for LCD. Neither DLP nor LCD will suffer from convergence drifing. These are example issues only; there are others, in every case.
One of the things I love about my plasma is that it has given me so much space back in my lounge, as it hangs on the wall. I really appreciate not having a giant box in the corner.