And yet, for all of its flaws, you can see how this is a compelling product. You can download content over their wireless network anywhere you can get a signal, which likely means at the beach, in the airport, at the doctor’s office, almost anywhere. The catalog is surprisingly deep. The screen resolution is more than adequate, and the e-ink screen is surprisingly readable — a much nicer experience than reading a backlit screen. If I traveled a lot for business, I’d definitely buy one for myself. You can load your own content onto it as well, so anything you can get from gutenberg.org is usable.

Reading on an iPhone seems possible, but only for light reading. I have my scriptures loaded on my Sansa e200 mp3 player, thanks to Rockbox. It’s great for reading a few minutes at a time, but the Kindle is a different experience entirely.

Mike, regarding Dish, the non-Zoom networks (i.e. DiscoveryHD and others) definitely aren’t as good as the big four (NBC, ABC, CBS, Fox) However I don’t see any difference between my local CBS via the satellite and via over the air. There seems to be no additional compression that I can see.

My big complaint is that I watch Discovery Channels a lot and they are compressed to hell. It’s very jarring.

My second complaint is that the local ABC affiliate doesn’t broadcast in HD and Dish won’t let me receive ABC from some other state. It’s pretty annoying everytime Lost comes on and I’m seeing a 4:3 SD picture.

Mike, most 1080i sets can also do 720p. Although there aren’t really a whole lot of 1080i sets out there. With 1080i you will see a lot of flickering artifacts which is annoying. Most 1080p sets will convert fairly well 1080i to 1080p. (i.e. de-interlace) The only place I see interlacing artifacts is with DVDs. (Especially animated Disney films)

as for 1080p vs 720p, i think you won’t notice the difference on anything smaller than 42″. but if you’re going for a bigger tv then why not? prices are dropping so fast. right now you can actually buy a 47″ 1080p toshiba from costco.com for $1299. but it’s definitely not a big enough deal to throw out your 2 year old 720p.

and i don’t think there’s actually such a thing as a 720p/1080i tv. if your native resolution for horizontal lines is 720 or 768 the 1080i signal would be downgraded to 720p.

I have no opinion about that. Most 720P seem to actually be 1024×768 (which, as I understand it, means fewer vertical lines, but more horizontal lines, right?). Seems to be an accepted practice, though I’m ready to be persuaded if there is some sort of controversy about this.

(In the interest of full disclosure, I did recently buy a 42″ Panasonic 720p/1080i TV with the understanding that 1080p wouldn’t really make a difference.)

And what are we to feel about TV makers that have been selling panels at 720p that are in fact 1024×768 rather than 1280×720?