Our primary "TV" are two computer monitors (20" dell and 20" apple) that are in two "dens"/computer rooms on the 2nd and 3rd floors of our house (its a row house, not a crazy mansion
) On the first floor I have a 11 year old 20" panasonic tv that currently is only used as a terminal for the xbox and nintendo 64. The panasonic tv will get an upgrade and I am thinking of forgoing the TV route all together and using a HD (by pixel) capable monitor and a computer.
I am not positive about this but I think the upsampling of computers from SD is better than what receivers /dvd players do (has anyone studied this?).
But the main reasons i'm thinking of getting not replacing our tv w/ another tv is that
(1) 1920x1080 and higher capable computer monitors are cheap compared to tvs (and the HD cards are cheap)
(2) You get an extra computer built into the cost of the TV (and networking capabilities there of)
(3) Computers play any codec ever, so it can be considered a dvd player on steroids and I am guessing the HD/Blue-ray players will be much cheaper
for computers than stand-alone.
(4) No weird HDMI nonsense aka "encrypted" digital video because they dont trust us.
(5) auto networking/PVR capabilites for both audio and video.
The downsides are you can't get super large monitors aka > 34" like you can w/ TVs and there is something to be said about the instant on of TV.
I have a feeling apple is going to sell some sort mythtv/media pc solution really soon (maybe january?) so i'm waiting for to see what that looks like.