Tell the truth, two years ago I was happy with my CRT TV and DVD player. We had two TVs, one 4:3 CRT that's 20+ years old now and still going strong, and a 16:9 widescreen CRT that is 15 years old and still going strong. The DVD has always been hooked up to that.
The plan was to keep going with those until one died, and then replace it with a flat panel set. Then someone in the house, who shall remain nameless, put their foot down and demanded a satellite dish instead of Freeview. I did my research and found that most SD satellite boxes were crap. Found a TV with built in Freesat instead, which happened to be a 1080p LCD panel. Since I was halfway there, I got a Blu-ray player as well. All of a sudden I'm in the HD age, and I've never looked back.
I still use the CRT TV to watch DVDs on, especially anime DVDs which I've found upscale badly in comparison to live action discs, especially for the majority of my collection, which is from that pre-2010 period where everything was NTSC-PAL converted.
But anime Blu-rays look gorgeous. I can't get past 1080p 24fps playback, even for SD upscaled material.
The fact of the matter is that I wasn't planning on upgrading. It's just that I had no choice in the end. I think a lot of people are in that position. It's made worse in that broadcast television is still mostly SD. Few people get to see the benefits of HD first hand. Even now, when I channel hop, I click through 1,2,3,4, and 5, not 101, 102, 103, 104 and 5. I still tend to forget that the main four terrestrial channels are in HD, unless there's something I plan ahead to watch, like Doctor Who or a movie.
It needs to be a two pronged change. One will happen naturally as more and more CRT TVs die and are upgraded, but the other needs to be broadcaster led, with more free to air channels in HD, at the moment it's just the main four, plus NHK World and RT on satellite, and they need to be top loading the EPG with them, so people click on them first, not as an afterthought.