My parents in india just bought this couple of weeks ago in dwarka after constant bickering from me to change a little towards "modernization". The tv looks just as stylish as depicted in ads and attracts all the oooh’s and aaaah’s from the people visiting our house. Having said that, the craze towards HD television as purported by media and advertisements is absolutely overblown and over-rated because there is NO CHANNEL in high definition whatsoever offered by any dish/digital companies like Reliance’s bigtv or Tata Sky, let alone your local cable provider. Yes the clarity of picture is superb compared to the outdated tube televisions, but the full potential of these HD ready televisions cannot be harnessed just yet in India.
The new digital dish companies have to offer each channel individually in HD themselves, contrary to the popular belief here that once you have HD television, you are watching HD programs. In US where I live each HD channel is offered seperately as it is broadcasted through entirely different technology and must be bought for a separate price. So it will be a whiiiile before the actual HD programming that these televisions are made for will be enjoyed in india. You can however get a glimpse of the difference between digital satellite television and HD quality if you own a xbox 360 or ps3 or an original HD-DVD (not a VCD or even a regular DVD) as they are HD ready. Only then you’ll realize that even though the overall picture is clearer, the HD picture is just purely bliss, without any fuzz and showing unprecedented clarity like never seen before. Until then you could still buy it as an upgrade over regular televisins which are also clumsy looking and bulky in size.
These televisions have a great slim profile, but I do think once you get these you most definitely need a 2 or 5 speaker audio system to take the full advantage of a home theatre system. So in conclusion, it is great update if you can afford it, I would recommend waiting another year or so as prices are slashing already (we got it for 42k and its 38k now plus a free dvd player) and most likely the satellite companies will be reducing prices and increasing quality as usually happens in a free, competition driven market.