Digital Trends

It's a somewhat annual ritual at my house: the HDTV Super Bowl party. The first year, 2001, Runco loaned a two-piece 50-inch plasma TV for the event, and it was the first time any of my guests or I had been in a living room with a $25,000 TV. Everyone tiptoed around it to the get to the cooler. As the guinea-pig minority of the TV viewing public, we watched a separate feed altogether from the analog TV audience who enjoyed first-string commentary by Phil Simms, while we digital pioneers had to make due with a backup squad. We endured our share of snafus, but we saw a glimpse of the future of TV sports and it was crisp, rich and wonderful.

A couple of years later, a Pioneer 50-inch Elite plasma model wowed my crowd. We graduated to the same broadcast feed as the analog viewers. My guests overwhelmingly preferred the glitzy look of the pricey flat-panel TV over my far cheaper CRT rear-projection HDTV on the other side of the room. Still out of reach of my beer-budget friends, the cost of a plasma had dropped to $10,000.

This year, Panasonic provided the eye candy for my Super Bowl party. The 42-inch TH-42PX50U plasma crossed a critical threshold: At a street price of $2,399-$2,599 ($2,999 retail), the flat-panel HDTV is no longer a product my guests can only dream about but one they can actually afford. That's only a couple hundred dollars more than I spent for my first analog CRT rear-projection at a highly discounted press price.