Buying a set

[pewell]

I am buying a set next week and I am trying to get an education of everything that makes the purchase suit my needs. I am definitely going with a Mitsubishi widescreen, but, I am torn between getting one with a built in tuner or an external tuner box. If I get the External, I also plan on purchasing the hughes HDTV Direct TV reciever. I am under the impression that if I take a regular signal, say VH1 for example and run it through a tv with the built in tuner, that it will look worse than if I run it through the external tuner. Has anyone info on this? If I get the 65" with built in it will cost 200 dollars more than the 65" with the extenal Direct tv HDTV reciever and dish. If I ultimately get the same picture anyway....then at least I get my Direct TV (what little it offers now) in HDTV and don't have to worry about purchasing another item later. Also, the salesman claims the hughs reciever formats a 4:3 picture and displays it in widscreen, so I will never have to worru about the burnout bars. Granted it is a stretched picture, but it doesn't seem bad on a 65" screen.

[zarlor]

If an external tuner if $200 cheaper, I'd go with that (especially since it also adds DirecTV capability). I would actually be surprised, though, if the set itself didn't have the capability to the stretch you were talking about. Many STBs have that, but I haven't seen too many widescreen sets that didn't also have that capability.

I doubt you'll see much difference in the picture quality of either tuner, but it is possible that the built-in tuner on the set is not as good as some other external one you get. I don't know enough about all the different models to provide any nput on which ones are all that much better than any others, though.