My 20-year old Sony bit the dust, so after looking at LCD and plasma TVs, we bought a Phillips HDTV with an old-fashioned CRT tube. It definitely has the better picture quality. That's why the sales people won't let you see them side by side. The new TV is a 32-inch wide screen (16:9 aspect ratio), which is really great when watching programing that is in that aspect ratio, but drives you nuts when it isn't, which is most of the time. Phillips has six different modes (4:3, 14:9, Zoom 16:9, Subtitle Zoom, Superwide, and Wide Screen) that must be manually selected and it's trial and error. I have no idea what the differences are between the six formats or when I should use which and neither the manual nor tech support can answer my questions. For some reason that Phillips tech support cannot explain, the TV does not allow you change the aspect ratio when using the so-called CVI inputs, which provide the best picture quality, so you are relegated to using RCA jack inputs for the DVD and satellite box. (We are in a rural area and have to use satellite TV. Don't get me started on how bad that is!) In this day and age of computers, you would think that Phillips could design TVs to recognize the incoming signal and adjust the TV accordingly!