Loewe or Toshiba HDTV ready?

Robk- Loewe is a very big company in Europe, supported and distributed here in the US by Sensory Science who also owns California Audio Labs. The product is very source dependent; looks absolutely awesome with a good DVD source and has a very good built in doubler (at least my Planus, 30" 16:9, 420p, not 1080i does) so you can get a really good picture from a non-progressive DVD. Have not compared it to the Toshiba. I have not been as pleased with the picture from some conventional cable signals; garbage in maybe? I would be careful regarding service; there appears to be only one service shop in the entire Central CT area where I live. However, if you slip a good anamorphic DVD in and watch, you probably will be seduced like I was.

AV- too bad you dumped your Tera; I have a 23" in my bedroom, and actually prefer it to the Loewe for cable, its less source dependent.

RobK- you might want to check out the Proton sets if they are available in your area, they seem to provide a good compromise if you are going to watch much NTSC (conventional) TV.

I'm not sure, but the Calida may not display a true HDTV signal (1080i). I think it has the same chassis as my Planus which shows 420p (or is it 480p?) Anyhow, I'm told that in smaller sets (under about 32"), there is little if any visual difference due to resolution limits of your eyes. I would also point out that the panaroma mode on the Planus (which allows viewing of a 4:3 format signal at almost full screen width with loss of about 1" top and bottom) works fine in terms of no significant distortion, but since it enlarges the picture, it also magnifies any problems that may be inherent in the source.

Patrick- can you provide more info on "invar mask". I haven't had any significant problem with skin tones, but I definately am fighting a battle between running contrast and brightness "too hot" and it being a bit (my wife says more than a bit) to dark. Any suggestions on how to deal with this issue.

Dovetail- any thoughts on who makes a quality splitter? Also I am somewhat concerned because I have cable modem and cable digital phone thru same provider. No one can tell me if this affects the signal, other than the fact that it must be split a second time (once to split out the TV from the phone/modem, and then a second time to the various TVs. There is some kind of a filter at the output of the first splitter (where the TV signal is split from the modem. Anyone know if I can just use a bigger splitter, rather than passing thru two is series? Anyone know I where could get a 5 way splitter (1 in, 5 out) rather than the 2 way, 4 way that currently is present?