It does not matter if the TV is plasma or LCD if the signal coming to it from the cable company is analog or has not been upconverted. The TV's screen will look its sharpest if the signal is brought to it via HDMI, so hopefully your cable box has a HDMI port. The next best signal is via component, so a set of component is needed. S-Video follows. Finally, the yellow-white-red RCA jacks in the back of the VCR or DVD player do not work with digital signals. Keep in mind that those folks who don't have cable, but have HD TV's with built-in tuners, can still watch any HD and analog free over-the-air TV signals. The tuner will take care of that. However, they must use a VHF/UHF antenna. The HD signals will look nice and sharp on the screen, but not the analog signals. However, soon all the free over-the-air TV signals will be digital. A final point: folks like me, who don't have cable but watch movies at home, can use one of several DVD players that don't cost very much, but still provide an incredibly nice digital signal. The key is to buy a DVD player that has both signal upconverting via HDMI, and progressive scan. These units are fairly cheap (around $99.00), and are one step below Blue Ray and HD DVD. What you do is to connect the DVD player to the TV with a HDMI cable, and then change the DVD player's settings to match the TV's capabilities (the instructions are found in the DVD player's manual). Once you have changed those settings and play a DVD movie, you will be amazed! Component cables allow you to upconvert the signal out of the DVD player, but the signal is not as sharp as HDMI. HDMI is capable of the best signal posible for now, which is 1880i (p). Keep in mind that not all the DVD movies are created equal. Some are incredibly sharp, while others are just sharp. Some allow you to choose the Surround sound out the DVD player, but not all. For example, you can change the player's sound to English Surround 5:1, 7:1, or other. All depends on how the DVD was burned by the producer.

Well, actually it is not terrible advice just as I wouldn't take a confrontational stance to judge your opinion as terrible advice. The OP is obviously not technically inclined and is looking for a solution to simply set their tv down, connect some type of simple means to get what they had when using the analog tv, plug in the tv and turn it on and watch some tv. According to the OP, there are a ton of signals in the area. I'm not particularly hooked on any specific manufacturer or model of product. I merely recommended the Wingard 2000 is good for up to 40 miles so if there are as many receivable signals in the area as the OP implies, placing an antenna in an attic will block at least 50% of the signal depending on what the roof is made of, minimizing overload and I don't think micro mapping will be a significant problem. Attic installations where possible are quite common because the antenna are not aesthetically intrusive, easily maintained and the homeowner doesn't need to get on the roof and can install them themselves. Omni directional antenna don't require being aimed in a particular direction making it more of a plug and play situation for someone not particularly knowledgeable of what stations are where. If mounted on the roof outside the structure, using the pre-amp wouldn't overload the face of the signal. The preamp energizes proprietary circuits which modulate and amplify the weaker signals just as the large outdoor antenna with the varying lengths of arial are designed to do. The omni directional design of the antenna would allow them to pick up signals from any direction. A directional antenna would limit the user to what is in the direction the flat panel is tuned to and adjustment is necessary until they get it right. A flat panel is nice if you know where to place it, what stations you can expect to get and have the means and technical knowledge of attaching it. The OP made it quite clear, they don't have the knowledge for that sort of thing. I'm certain from this post and another they posted, the OP is not into all that. They want to watch the news and an occasional sports event. Original Poster, in my honest opinion, if you are correct and there are a ton of signals in the area, a set of rabbit ears will most likely satisfy the viewing preferences you described in the original post. That is where I still say you should start, go into the new digital tv menu options, do an auto scan and see what you get. You should receive the same things as you did before and maybe even more. If there is a particular channel you think you should get, manually tune the set to that channel and adjust the rabbit ears just as you did on your analog tv until you get the signal. Then manually add that channel to the list the tv already found on it's own. To do more, you would then need a different antenna or, a cable or internet hook up or satellite service.

You need to check out the websites offering independent comparative reviews of plasma TVs. When I was shopping for a 50" three years ago, I got some great information from these sites, far better than the anecdotal info you'll likely get from this forum. I recall that there was at least one site that focused soley on plasma. Unfortunately, I deleted all the links from my Favorites but you should be able to Google them up with words like plasma, comparison, features, etc. Recognize that each buyer will have a unique set of needs and some sets are optimal for one and not another. When I was shopping, I found the best deal on-line but I think that may have changed now that plasmas have come into the mainstream. (I paid $8,000 for a Panasonic set that's probably somewhat inferior to one I saw recently at Costco for $2,500.) But be aware that, if you buy it on-line, you'll likely need to have the shipper unpack it completely in your presence to verify that the screen isn't broken. I failed to read a notice to this effect on the box when I took delivery. Fortunately, the set was intact; if if had been broken, I would've been the proud owner of an $8K doorstop! Good luck! Bob

look at where teh cable enters your house. the first splitter should be a 2 port and have 1 side feeding your TVs and one side feeding NOTHING but your cable modem. if it is a multi port splitter, then you should have it changed out to a 2 port setup as i just described. you will need a larger splitter after the first one for the TVs, but you do not want a bunch of loss in front of teh modem so in low signal cases you use 1 2 port splitter only before the modem. you can get bi directional amps, but they are pricey, though certainly WAY less than teh 20k the cable co wants. just to give you a detailed example of a layout, here is how my parent's house is wired: cable in feeds a 2 port splitter. 1 port goes directly to cable modem 1 port feeds a 30DB one way amp that feeds a 12 port splitter. this 12port feeds every room in teh house, and 1 additional amp that inturn feeds a 4 port splitter going to the sunroom and 2 rear bedrooms. yes, that is a lot of ports. the amps are there due to fact that with so many ports the signal goes to crap to teh tvs. figure it this way, a 2 port splitter will give just UNDER 1/2 the incoming signal strength to each port, with a little bit just flat out lost. a 3 port gives under 1/3 signal stregth to each port, and a 4 port gives under 1/4. and so on and so forth.