The best way to decide what's right for you is to know the strengths and weaknesses of each technology, so let's start with the plasma displays. These are the best-looking HDTV displays that you can buy. While they currently run at a lower resolution than most LCDs, their picture quality is subjectively better. Plasmas have richer colors than LCD displays and are just as thin, but they tend to cost anywhere from two to three times as much as a similarly sized LCD display.
The LCD displays are a good middle ground between the high-end plasmas and the bulky CRT displays. While they technically don't have the same color fidelity as a plasma display, they do run at higher resolutions, which tends to make up for that gap. Since LCD technology has pretty much taken over the PC market, the displays are also much cheaper than plasmas. You can find a 30" LCD today for around $1,000-$1,500, which is a steal compared to prices just a few months ago.
While they are a dying breed, CRT HDTV displays are currently the cheapest way to get the high-definition revolution. These look the same as traditional big-boxed televisions but sport flat screens instead of the old-school fishbowl. These displays technically offer better visual quality than LCD displays and are usually cheaper. Their biggest flaw is their monstrous size. A 30" CRT display could weigh upwards of 130 pounds, compared to a plasma or LCD weighing around 40 pounds. For people who don't plan to move their television once they bring it home, this isn't a huge issue, especially considering the price of a CRT. You can get a 30" CRT HDTV today for $700-$1,000, and there are often deals online that bring them down to around $400. For the cost-conscious consumer, CRTs are the obvious choice. However, as LCDs become available under $1,000 in the near future, I think the appeal of the CRT will weaken gravely. This basic technology has served us well since the invention of the television, but it will soon be time to move on to a thinner, flatter world.
Before LCDs and plasmas came around, projection televisions were the only way to have a big-screen TV. These monolithic displays still exist today, complete with support for HDTV. For screens 50" and above, they are also fairly inexpensive when compared to the flat-screened competition. There are many projection technologies, the most impressive of which are the Digital Light Processing (DLP) TVs. DLP was originally created by Texas Instruments to replace the standard film projectors in movie theaters. Every theater in the U.S. that projects digital films uses a DLP projector, so it's basically the same technology in your living room; however, projection sets don't do well in brightly lit rooms-a flaw shared with any projector technology today.
Similar to projection televisions, but not nearly as clunky, are stand-alone HDTV projectors. After factoring in the added cost of finding a worthy screen, the headache of setting it up properly, and the weaknesses of projectors in brightly lit rooms, stand-alone projectors end up costing about the same as an LCD flat-screen television. Their main draw is that they are capable of projecting an image equivalent to a 90" screen. If you're looking for the most theatrical experience, this is definitely the way to go.
But for next week, I'd like to change things up a bit and talk about this new Podcasting phenomenon. It's now looking as if Internet killed the radio star ... .