Lets make a few things nice and simple - and nice and clear.

Unless you get a GOOD lcd tv, then anything that isn't "HD" won't look great, specially if you are used to the good old CRT (tubescreen) TV's...

That means that normal TV/Freeview/Cable/Sky, isn't gonna look as good on your flashy LCD as it would on your CRT, unless of course it is a HD transmission (like BBC HD or similar)

Why? It's all to do with resolutions. I'll try to explain it in a simple way.

With standard PAL (the UK/europe standard) transmission/DVD's etc the picture has 576 (horizontal) lines of pixels. 576 from top to bottom. These are INTERLACED lines. That means that line 1,3,5,7,9,etc show at the same time and 2,4,6,8,etc show a split second later - constantly alternating. (For reference, PROGRESSIVE SCAN means it scrolls all the lines in one go, usally giving a faster and more natural looking picture)

So. All LCD's and 99% of plasmas (except the early plasmas which are EDTV's, but not worth talking about here) are HD ready. This means that they support a minimum of what is called 720p. 720p means that the TV resolution is 720 horizontal lines, and the P means it can show these 720 lines in progressive mode - great for DVD's using a good quality DVD player that has component output (three RCA's : red, blue and green, or the HDMI output on newer players)

But, what about the fact that standard def DVD;s and TV progs only have 576lines?

The TV is fitted with an upscaler. Without this, the picture would be a box inside the screen with black all around it. Showing 576lines inside a matrix that shows 720lines - 576 lines of picture, 72 lines of "nothing" top and bottom (144 lines total). What the upscaler does is "blow up" the image to fit the native resolution of the screen - 720 lines.

Now on standard def transmissons, this isn't the best thing. The "bit rate" (the speed at which data is transmitted - the higher the better quality it is) of digital TV (Freeview) isn't fantastic. It's better than analogue mind. Sky isn't all that great either.

With a HD source (either BluRay, HD DVD or a HD transmitted TV programme, the source is the same resolution of the screen - much in the same way as standard TV transmissions are the same resolution as a standard CRT TV is! So more detail and no replicated or "added" lines

Something to think about there. A good LCD tho, can look great mind. But don't expect it to look as good as the HD demo's you see in the shops, like the SkyHD national geographic demo's or HD sports demo's etc....