Okay, I've got to chime in on the 720P vs 1080P issue.
1) Most scripted TV shows (dramas, sitcoms) are shot on film, at 24 FPS progressive, or on a digital camera at 24 FPS to mirror the "film look". The 1080p24 recording is broadcast at 1080i60. No detail is actually "lost" in the translation, but going from 1080i60 to 1080p60 results in visible "judder" in scenes where the camera moves slowly. 1080p24 -capable TVs with good video processors can recover 24 FPS information from the 1080i broadcast. All 1080P TVs do some form of deinterlacing to show a 60 FPS progressive picture.
2) Most 720P HDTVs are not really 720P. They are 1366x768, and have to scale a 720-line picture to 768 lines. Scaling something by 7% is more difficult than scaling something by 50%. Exceptions: Rear projection 720P sets are usually truly 720P, and some 42" plasmas are 1024x768 (non-square pixels) or 1024x1024 (non-square pixels and alternately-lit scanlines, essentially doing "interlaced" on a plasma)
3) All TV video processors suck. The WORST TV video processors don't give you anything better than 540P video from 1080i sources. These worst processors are likely to be in cheaper 720P TVs. Therefore, a cheap 720P TV may be presenting only a 540P-quality deinterlaced picture scaled up to 720P, and then scaled again to 768P. Eww.
4) On the other hand, a 1080P-capable set only has to do one deinterlacing step and no scaling. Less opportunity for things to go wrong.
To sum up - in a perfect world, a good 720P TV will show a good picture. In an imperfect world, however, with a ton of 1080i programming, a average 1080P TV will do a better job with it than an average 720P TV. Even with 720P programming, a 1080P-capable set has to do relatively simple 50% scaling, whereas a 720P-nee-768P set has to fiddle with the pixels to get everything 7% bigger.
Sincerely,
Odeen, sitting 11 feet in front of a 56" 1080P DLP.