• $2,399
• 56" single-chip DLP
• 1280x720
• Key Connections: Dual HDMI and component inputs, USB input

• $3,499
• 58" single-chip DLP (wobulator)
• 1920x1080
• Key Connections: Dual HDMI and component inputs, VGA computer input

My late father-in-law fought in the Pacific theater during World War II, and afterwards refused to buy Japanese-made products. That's why he owned an American made Curtis Matthes console television, he proudly told me. I didn't have the heart to tell him the guts were sourced from NEC—something I discovered when I removed the back cover to perform a decidedly non-ISF fix on the all-green, out of focus, un-centered picture he'd been happily watching for years.

How things have changed. Just a couple of years ago, bringing a 57-inch TV into my studio meant wrestling with a 300-pound gorilla of metal, glass, plastic, and particle board. I'm still trying to figure out how to get my 51-inch Hitachi CRT out of its room so new flooring can be installed. But when Mitsubishi delivered their new WD-57731 for review, I could almost have moved its 88 lbs. by myself had it been in a more compact package. As it was, two delivery persons hauled it into my house without breaking a sweat.

Welcome to our third biannual RPTV Face Off. For those of you just joining us, we've brought together today six 1080p RPTVs at the roughly $4,000 price point. The excitement is palpable, the TVs warmed up, and the judges ready to stare.

We're living through interesting yet complicated times in the video display business. The much-revered CRT is an endangered species, being replaced by a supermarket of different new technologies.

Though the first Sony product imported to America was either a transistor radio or a reel-to-reel tape recorder, and the cassette-based Walkman was probably the company's best seller, it was the 1968 introduction of the Trinitron television that drove the Sony brand name into America's collective consciousness.