Am I crazy for using HDCRT still?

[captainsolo]

There's a pioneer 5080 locally and a couple of Panasonics but I'm not sure if any affordable ones will approach the top level ones that go for nutty price on AVS and the like. If I could find a Kuro, Panasonic or any plasma that would match or better the 960 for around $200 I'd bite immediately.

What JVC projector do you mean zoidberg? I had planned on getting an Epson 3LCD refurbed at some point.

I'm tempted by that local xs955 that seems to be fully functional. Of course I don't know how I can get it here and what I'd do with my others. Currently I have my 960, an xs955 which only does analog next to it unused and an older 4:3 32" SD trinitron that I had before that I was going to keep for old games.
I have too many CRTs. Moving the 960 was incredibly hard but the xs955 is impossible and I hope to never do that again. And even if I get the 955 apparently the HD board going out is a very common occurrence on that particular model.

From my experience with 4K sets so far, it seems anything below 4K can be iffy depending on if the set was built to handle lower res at all. So I'd really like to get the best 1080p screen possible for the time being plus my budget is shot to heck.

[zoidberg]

I was referring to the JVC D-ILA home cinema projectors. Starting with the DLA-RS1 JVC managed to start hitting really high on/off contrast ratios natively without the need for dynamic irises. Older models can be picked up for reasonable prices if you keep an eye out, but certain models have problems with the optical block degrading over time.
Epson make good projectors, LCDs in general have come a long way from the early days. Now they use inorganic panels they don't degrade like the older organic panels.