Home audio & video forum: Looking for good HDTV without extra features

pretty much all the decent quality brands are going to have extras you may or may not need. Unlike with audio, where there is a niche audiophile market of stripped down, less-is-more components consumer televisions all strive to have as many bells and whistles as possible. But that doesn't mean the picture quality suffers as a result.

In my opinion, as long as you can control the light in your room, nothing beats a plasma picture (especially for the price). Panasonic makes the best now that Pioneer has pulled out of the market. TRegardless of whether you go plasma or LCD though, the best thing is to do is read the review sites (CNET is a good start of course) of models in your price range and go look at the runners up in person.

By the way, I think you might be disappointed by VHS tapes on a 46" HDTV. The extra resolution really shows off the limitations of the source. If you don't already have an upscaling DVD player and have lots of DVD's thats a good investment. Blu-ray players upscale DVD's as well so that might be a way to kill two birds with one stone.

I too copied many old VHS tapes to DVD. Glad I did for the most part, but what a pain. Luckily most of what I copied ended up available on DVD. Keep in mind that just because you have a DVD in-hand, the quality is no better than VHS and it will look pretty bad on a larger TV. Also 99.999% of VHS were done in 4:3 aspect ratio, so your copies will maintain that format.