Just FYI if you have a Costco or sam's club anywhere near you you can find a Brand called Vizio they continually get very high marks from consumer reviews. the 32" 1080i is about $599 so they sre getting very close to the price point you are looking for

SD is fine, ill just change the settings on my tv until it looks clear enough for me.

This is a good comparison of the 2. The only thing is HD only matters for TVs like 40inches and bigger. I personaly have a 70 inch Sony SXRD XRB2. I get a new TV every year, I know not a lot of people can afford that, but thats life. The wierd thing is I always give my old TVs away, to family of someone at work, or a friend, and a lot of times people will not take them. My family and friends never say no, but people at work will turn them down all the time. 2 years ago I had a 42 inch panasonic Plasma that I had to set out in the drive way with a free sign on it. You know why? people at work said it was to bid and they didn't want it. So anyway I guess my point is HD dose not matter to everyone, because not everyone wants a TV that needs HD. Even if all TVs were free people would still get 25s cause they just don't want a bigger tv. Its the dumbest thing i've ever seen but its the truth.

There is an obvious difference as far as i can tell.. however, i must admit that i'm surprised at how small the difference is, thought it'd be a much bigger change

whoa, yeh HD is way clearer, but i really dont see the point in spending all that money to see the pimples more clearly on someones face. i'd still love hd... but maybe when its all a lil cheaper

weak comparo.

 got to see it with your own eyes to truely see the difference.

Because you aren't seeing the comparison photos?

it depends a lot on the size of the screen.  Watching football on a 50 inch screen is way better in HD, but i have to admit the difference is not that great on a 19 inch screen.  Regardless of the difference though i just don't really care that much.  I'll get a HDTV when it is near the price of SD and my current TV goes bad. 

I should point out that HD is NOT the reason those pics look better. It's the fact that HD-DVD uses MPEG-4 HD and VC-1; either codec show pictures at a much higher quality than MPEG-2.

 EDIT: Also, the fact that the pics are shows at the same resolution, does make it less clear how those codecs improve the picture.

KBG29 : mmmh, you won't be able to get much better quality than your Sony. For that, you will have to buy the best Pioneer plasma which is 3 times the price of the Sony. But I assumed you were talking about the rear projection Sony TV (SXRD XBR2) ? That's the best quality TV for HD and SD once set correctly, after the best Pioneer plasma (but plasmas have the burn-in problem, among others, not good for games). That's what I plan to buy actually (but the 55" one, not 70"), or the new one that take 1080p@24 that are due this summer.

This TV is actually the best in Europe too, as it gets the TNT tuners and every features people need, and it upscales everything to 1080p.

XBR2 is the best SD upscaling/deinterlacing chip in TV nowadays.

BTW, the difference I see is ridiculously small here. This is to be expected, on a 22" monitor, I just won't be able to see any significant difference. To do this correctly, he should have taken 1/4th the image each time, and then, we could see the difference.

But if we talk a TV set, depending on the set and how it's set up, the difference won't be the same.