i think its just a crap tv! i went through all the formats and it doesnt look any better. Took the tv to my house and it still looks the same. This sanyo tv does not display the resolution its recieving! even my 8 year old 13" polaroid does! but i checked for sure off of my samsung and i was displaying 1080i then plugged it in to the sanyo and wow what a differnce in picture. I guess with the smaller screens you can get away with low end brands but when you get larger the picture it suffers. Does that sound right? If you sit 10 feet away it looks fine any closer it looks like a poor copy of a dvd. Could the tv just be faulty or is it just crap brand
Your description is exactly correct.
Lower end TV's use lower end processors, your seeing the difference between the Samsung and the Sanyo in front of your eyes.
Now that doesn't mean a higher end Sanyo would be better (although I wouldn't recommend one) Samsung has been very good for a number of years of late, along with Panasonic and a few other higher end TV's.
Fwiw, your smaller TV's Will look much sharper as your not covering the same overall screen size.
Bigger you go, the better the processor needed.