_o/ Pioneer 43" 435HDE here, its been great for xbox component and hdtv shows for the past year and I'm really looking forward to X360 on it. I'm looking into buying a 32" LCD into the bedroom where I can hide the original xbox for casual entertainment and gaming use.
And 500$? Try 6000$ for the pioneer 12 months ago and about 1900$ for the 32" LCD (looking at Samsung, Sony or Philips).
I can understand people wanting to hold back on HDTV as the LCDs or plasmas are still for the large part not 1080p native and hugely expensive if you're after quality, but if your good old CRT was a 300$ one back when you bought it, good luck in the HDTV era. No amount of waiting will get you what you want in the next 5 years (the lifespan of the next gen).
Furthermore I'd like to stress my disappointment at the launch lineups SD resolution looks (not having seen them in person though). Judging by some of the framebuffer grabs at 640x480 they are not supersampled nor do they use proper amounts of AF to sharpen textures and hide the mipmap stages. Poor use of the hardware for low resolutions to get that realistic look the x360 is capable of.
Remember, until you see a console or game that looks like real life at SD, there is still room for improvement no matter what they try to sell for the reason of "looks good only in HD".
