I read an article in either residential systems or ce pro, about a guy buying the cheapest plasmas at best buy or wherever and adding a scaler. What does this do exactly to the picture? They made it sound like it scaled down to HD. Does this sound right? Would this picture look good?

You mean scaled up to HD. A relatively inexpensive scaler (DVDO brand} will improve black levels and eliminate some video artifacts because the cheap plasmas save you money by sacrificing quality. In any case, you're still at 480p, not 1080i or 720p which are the resolutions broadcasters put out because the cheap plasmas are not capable, in most cases, of displaying any resolution above 480p. The cheap plasmas scale down true HD input to 480p. I find you are better off with a higher resolution display because 1) Your HD satellite or HD cable will look better and 2) your DVD player probably will have a decent scaler built in and output 480p or better anyway. For your VCR, which is not that important to most people, you can make do with whatever scaler is in the plasma.

Thanks for explaining