To answer your question about change a bit, there are many females that are aware of audio/video quality, but to a great extent they have been marginalized.
For things to change, the first step is (and many people ignore this), is to include your SO or wife in your purchasing research. Everyone responds differently to stimuli and what may look or sound good to you (the "general" you) may not be the best choice for "her". She may notice something you don't, like DLP rainbows, aliasing, motion lag, motion judder as these may appear more in the "foreground" now depending on display type or size. She may see dithering, flickering, strobing or something else that may make it an uncomfortable viewing experience. If your SO if not getting the same thing you are from it, I would ask "why?". It *really* just may not be an interest, or it may be something else.
Slightly OT but on the audio side, the same applies for audio gear. I've found what may sound "crisp" and "detailed" to some men may in turn sound "bright" or "harsh" to females. And the reverse. Many women I know do not care for DVD DTS soundtracks and get fatigued from them, including myself. On the surface it sounds better at first, then becomes uncomfortable after a while. Now I've been told I'm flat out wrong on that, that it is the same as PCM, but it is not. Either something is boosted in the mix or there is a coloration from the codec(s) (the theatrical release and home video are different) but whichever it can end up with the same result, fatigue. The same with some upmix/derived 5.1 DD soundtracks.
Many years ago there was a problem with a local channel. There was a very high pitched artifact present in the audio signal. It took months to fix even though myself and many others complained. The engineers could not hear it- but virtually *all* of my female co-workers did. It was eventually tracked down to a faulty switch causing the audio artifact (at least that was what I was told). In the meantime I did my best to filter it out by EQ-ing down the upper frequencies (which helped some).
I'm actually not really dismissive on analog video. A pristine analog signal into the home (which is extremely rare) can be a thing of beauty.
But back to the topic at hand, I have an older 42" Panasonic ED PDP. Some will just dismiss any observations of PQ out of hand because in *theory* I should not be able to tell differences within (1080i x) * and/or bitrate reduction on that display but I have noticed differences. So has my husband. Everything does downscale to native, but the better the incoming source is, the better it looks coming back out. I could tell the difference immediately between Comcast HD and Voom HD (the service proper, not the E* package) and mentioned it (and got some sh*t back for it sometimes). But Voom could look *really, really* good (especially with the old Moto encoders) and as a service was more reliable than Comcast, the pricing was right, and I liked a lot of the programming so I stayed with it.
That having been said- I am not happy with what I have been seeing on E*, especially on the VOOM channels. We have called about it (and other issues with the service) and am looking into other options, including going back to OTA only for HD.
