David Katzmaier

Photos by Tony Cordoza To break an awkward silence at a business dinner a while back, somebody went around the table with the question, "What's the one thing you'd want if you were stranded on a desert island?" When my turn came, I replied, "A plasma TV." Everybody was incredulous, but I had my reasons.

With the proliferation of flat-panel LCD and plasma televisions, plus all the rear-projection models using LCD, DLP, and even LCoS technologies, it's easy to overlook the good ol' cathode ray tube, or CRT.

A plasma TV has become one of the most desirable items on the planet, and owning one confers a certain amount of social status. Case in point: a friend of mine recently visited the palatial Long Island house of a certain hip-hop star, who had hung more than twenty of the things on his (presumably gold-plated) walls.

The hottest-selling HDTVs right now are big-screen rear-projection sets, a category that's still dominated by the relatively cheap, time-tested cathode-ray tube (CRT). But the new "microdisplay" TVs are gaining fast.