I want to know - does anyone plug FOXTEL pay TV cable to plasma
display?
The problem is that FOXTEL TV is still analogue and is going to stay
this way for at least another 12 months. As the matter of fact, no pay
tv is available in Australia in digital format. So, this is my
question: How bad(good) the picture quality? Please note that I do not
want compare with the digital input
(which definetely would be much better), but at least with the
standard old fashion TV

I have the pleasure of watching a Phillips widescreen 110cm plasma
screen at home. It's not mine, unfortunately. However we do have
foxtel attached to it. The attachment is made through the set-top-box
which you need to buy with any plasma TV. They;re another $700 or so
on top of the TV. Why they're not integrated I have no idea!

In terms of quality, it's not really very good. Well, it's not as good
as you would expect with a tv the size of a small swimming pool. It's
also not in the correct format for watching in widescreen mode. So,
you either end up watching everyone being "fat" or you end up changing
the ratio back to standard TV size. If anything having a plasma screen
and knowing what is possible makes you realise that what you're
getting on foxtel is really grainy. It's kind of like paying for
business class set and getting shifted back to economy. Given that I
dont have the guilt attached to paying the same amount for a TV as for
a cheap car, I can say that it's probably not worth it for pay TV.

DVDs are a different story though. I think if you were going to get it
you would do it for that reason. The quality, as you would expect, is
excellent.

I dont think they expect digital foxtel till 2007 or something
ridiculous like that. as for digital tv it's a bit of a non event.
It's okay but takes some getting used to as for every terrestrial
channel there's five digital channels (ie channel 2 has 5, channel 7
has 5, channel 9 has 5 etc...) so you need to scroll through five
times to make it to the next (effective) channel.

Even when foxtel goes digital digital cable has slightly better
resolution than analogue television, but it still looks terrible.
Plasma is simply way out of the league of even digital cable. The best
quality that you can view television programs on is a standard 32" JVC
picture tube TV. These are designed to display television signals,
whereas plasma is specifically engineered just for high end DVD
players and S-VhS machines.