Digital vs analog widescreen tv

I'm not sure if I follow your question, but any new widescreen HDTV capable TV will display all of yesterday's and today's formats Your VHS tapes will look as good as they can be ( except you will have "bars" on the side if you view in 4X3 mode) They will probably improve your VHS picture somewhat, as most come with a line doubler built in.
Check out: http://www.toshiba.com/tacp/
Toshiba makes one of the best HDTV's in 42", 50" 65"sizes, and they are one of the most reasonably priced sets on the market. I'm sure some of the other members will give you some more details. Good luck.

HDTV is a superior fomat (in theory). However, the USA is YEARS behind the forcast deadline for implementing the digital standard. Most consumers are quite reluctant to shell out $4000- to $10,000- AND UP for a TV. There is still infighting about progressive vs. interlace scanning (pros and cons for each meathod of picture transmission). Worse, broadcasters are no fools...they would rather simulcast THREE lower quality digital broadcasts than only ONE HDTV broadcast (three times the advertising revenue!) Don't forget that the HDTV standard is NOT compatible with the current NTSC broadcast standard. Unlike the back compatability with black & white TV's when we changed to all color broadcasting back in 1968...almost ALL current TV's will have to be junked. Personally, I don't see HDTV in it's current form becoming a standard for at least 10-15 years!

When and if the FTC requires full time digital transmition of TV, Digital TV. All currents TV will be able to receive it via an adapter/tuner like a cable TV box, but at the current NTSC resolution of 525 interlaced lines, standard TV.

Most HDTV sets in the market at a reasonable cost less than $3000 are what they call HDTV ready with a standard NTSC tuner, (regular TV) and they can receive HDTV via an outboard tuner. This tuner can be a satelite HDTV capable, Over the air HDTV box etc. Most people with HDTV ready sets watch DVD in a progressive capable DVD player. The satelite HDTV programing is currently weak. Some markets are lucky enough to have over the air transmition of several channels. I am not in one of those.

Like Bmpnyc stated any of the new tv's can show your VHS tapes, and their internal line doublers will make them look "better". Remember the larger the TV screen the more the imperfections will show. Imagine seeing your gilfriends face through a 4X magnifying glass. As such VHS tapes are viewable through large screen TV's, but after watching a progressive scan anamorphically encoded DVD it is hard to go to VHS except for archival purposes. These DVD's give you only double the resolution of standard Tv, but about four times that of VHS. True HDTV is between three and four times as good as standard TV

With respect to internal doublers, just remember that they will "double" all of the noise, garbage, etc. With a good signal they can be very good, but they can also make a marginally acceptable signal look pretty lousy.

I agree with swampwalker. I sell electronics and sometimes there is digitizing of the picture when an analog signal is coming through. Our least expensive 16:9 tv`s are under $2000. They are made by Panasonic and Hitachi-47" and 43" respectively. If you can afford it, I think the way to go is digital. Plus there may not be any analog projection tv`s being manufactured after this year. The prices are starting to reflect that reality right now.