I believe (taken from Fujitsu press releases) the 65" is not a 65" but a 60". Or am I wrong?

Thanks Richard, good post! I fully agree with you. This article is at least half a year old, though. There were already 10-20 threads about the article on avsforum at that time.

I exchanged some emails with the author of the article some months ago. His real intention was to raise awareness that all the brand new 1080p rear projection flooding the store floors at that time were not the real deal and that people often were better off buying a 720p rear projection TV instead at that time. His article sounds like he would think 1080p was a total waste and that it would never be more than that. But I think that was not really what he meant to say. He should have worded his article better. By just stating that he was talking only about "now" and not about the future, he could have gone a long way to avoid these unnecessary long forum threads which were spreading after the article was released.

@SJ, SD content doesn't necessarily have to look bad on a 720p display. It very much depends on the quality of the video processing. Actually with a very good deinterlacer and scaler SD content can look on par or even slightly better on a 720p display compared to a SD display. Unfortunately almost all built in video processing electronics in current displays is grotty. If you want optimal image quality, you should look into external video processors. Not cheap, though.

Brad is right. Discs are being encoded in 1080p24 for both BluRay and HD-DVD. It's just that some players support 1080p output and others don't. There are also some BluRay players which do NOT support 1080p output, e.g. the Samsung, I believe.

Argh, you guys crack me up. Doing everything for a catchy headline, don't you!? You should really know better than to fuel the old myth of ultra high plasma power consumption.

Let's get some facts straight:

- In average in these test plasmas only consumed 10% more power than LCDs.

- The LCD with the highest power rating consumed more power per inch than the plasma with the highest power rating.

- The difference between a good and bad LCD was more than 100%.

What does that all mean?

When you care about power consumption, it's less important to look for "plasma" or "LCD". If you do that, you will gain only 10% in average. It's much more important to check what model consumes how much. This can gain you more than 100%. Buying a good plasma can save you lots of power consumption compared to buying a power hungry LCD model.

And for your interest, Pioneer plasmas weren't tested and they reportedly consume even less power than Panasonic plasmas.

"The fact that the 60-inch bad boy displays at 1080p but can't accept a 1080p signal is a minor annoyance at best." Sorry, but actually that's a MAJOR annoyance for several people. Why? Because that means you can't really use an external video processor to its fullest potential. Also you can't connect your HTPC optimally. Home cinema forums all over the world are full of complaints about 1080p sets which don't accept 1080p inputs. Some don't care, but some do. Saying it's only a minor annoyance is short sighted, because video processing improves very fast these days. In 2-3 years we will most likely have external video processors which do motion compensated deinterlacing. That's a major step up in image quality. Do you really want to buy a display which can not be updated to the latest video processing algorithms (by adding a good external video processor)? A 1080p display without 1080p input is simply not future proof, it's video processing will be outdated soon.

It will show a blank screen, if being fed a 1080p signal. Unfortunately most of today's displays don't accept 1080p sources yet. This is expected to change in 2006, though. That's why I'm still waiting. What I'm wondering is why Thom found plasma displays so expensive! I mean one of the best Plasmas available (Panasonic 50") is available for MSRP 3999 USD (online prices even lower).