This is Toshiba's 26" combo HDTV CRT with built in VHS and DVD player.
It is 16:9, has hdmi, component, blah blah, etc...I kinda like the built
in VHS and DVD player since it makes it easy to use them as sources
when running VHS dubs (yes, occassionally still do those).

using a crt as an edit monitor?

Scott, I think you would receive better response if your question were more specific.

What exactly are you looking for?
i.e. what do you want to do, what is your budget, (if relevant) what do you already have

Do you want to preview SD and/or HDV?
What is your price range?
What editing program do you want to use?

Glenn, yes. preview HDV and SD. I am using FCP, and plan on
getting the blackmagic card. I bought the monitor. Size wise, it is
perfect for my office, and the price was right. i plan on calibrating it
with AVIA.

Go for it!

CRTs still have the highest contrast ratio available. You will be able to see more detail on this than an LCD, DLP or Plasma.

About the only problem is going to be power consumption and space consumption.

Avia: Make sure your blackmagic card is set to output with 7.5 IRE setup, otherwise the Avia DVD can be *wrong*.

LCD may have a higher contrast ratios than CRT... see http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1697,1734400,00.asp. It really depends on how you measure.

At the very high end, I don't think CRT gives the highest resolution. On the low end, it really depends on the display in question. A CRT is more flexible between various resolutions (i.e. LCD is at its best only at its native resolution) and it also shows CRT artifacts like flicker, which would be annoying to CRT viewers and wouldn't show up if you monitor on a LCD.

There's nothing wrong with CRTs though, and they have advantages over LCD. The author in the link above even argues that CRT is the best, if size doesn't matter.

2- There is however a difference between consumer CRTs and broadcast monitors. Broadcast equipment doesn't apply various image cheats, like scanning velocity modulation, flesh tone correction, etc. The Avia DVD can't get rid of all of those cheats. A broadcast monitor also allows greater calibration controls and can have standard primary chromaticity co-ordinates (100% red is a consistent color between broadcast monitors with SMPTE C phosphors, while this isn't true for anything else).

Size wise, this is a really compact unit. It weights about 89 lbs. I do not
have the blackmagic card, yet. I went ahead with the TV because I could
finance it till Jan 07 at 0%, and at $600, it isn't too much of a stretch.