[Robert Grant]

My nephews recently gave their mother a 55" flattie for Christmas. I asked her if she wanted me to move her old set to another room (She's a 5'0" widow and the set weighs 99 pounds). She then said my nephews had already pitched the set to the curb, I asked her if there were anything wrong with it, and she said it was fine. She did not even ask anyone if they wanted a perfectly functioning digital-ready color TV.

Fortunately, it was not raining that evening. I'm now the happy owner of a Sony KD27FS170! Fortunately, it was not raining that night. It survived both the cold (right around freezing) and my clumsy handling. The picture really is as good as new, as is the cabinet. Definitely an upgrade over the 1994 19" Daewoo I had been using in the bedroom (PM me if you want it).

I found I still had to use a converter box with it, since like most sets of its era (November, 2006), it has less tolerance for multipath than the CECBs, and the set is hooked up to an attic antenna, with the closest stations off the side of the antenna.

As for people who don't want CRT sets in their homes - I find in my acquaintances that it is those with the lowest incomes that really want to replace their CRT sets with flat screens. They don't want other people to think that they're poor, and feel that a CRT set in the home implies poverty.

One may have noticed that I discussed the digital tuner in this set. Yes, contrary to a previous post in this thread, there are sets that have a both a digital tuner and a CRT, a fact that a lot of people seem to be unaware of (I have seen cases where a thrift store has two otherwise identical sets, only one with the SDTV mark, and the other without, set at the same price).