Okay, So Why Do My SDVDs Look Worse?

[hahndo]

This has been semi-discussed in a previous thread, but I'm curious about this specific question: Why do my DVDs look worse on my HDTV than on my (long gone) CRT television?

Now, understand, I'm not comparing the quality of standard DVDs to Blu Ray (obviously), but my DVDs' performance on my HDTV vs a CRT television.

I've heard some explanations to the effect of the HDTV is now showing the flaws in the lower resolution picture, etc. I can buy this... up to a point. What I'm trying to sort out is why the density of the DVD image and the contrast ratio seems to be far less than on a CRT. Simply, some of my DVDs look like bad broadcast television now.

I clearly don't expect my DVDs to look anywhere near Blu Ray quality--that's a given--but I also don't/didn't expect them to look worse than before, particularly in light of all of this upconversion talk (which, to my eyes--and being an ex cinematographer, I'm a bit anal about picture quality--seems to do next to nothing.)

Anyone here have a technical/accurate explanation to what's happening here? Or am I just the one in a million that doesn't see any improvement (via upconversion, etc.) and, in fact, might even see a step down in DVD performance.

(Incidentally, I have a PS3. Although I used to have the Samsung BD-P1200, with it's supposedly amazing upconverting/DVD display abilities. The DVD performance on both has been identically mediocre.)