I would avoid buying an HDTV with a tuner built in if you want to save money right now. It will only become dated as future generation ATSC chips come out. You will be able to get a much better quality HDTV-ready set that way. Look at the Sharp Aquos line in particular for LCD.

Samsung makes some excellent OTA tuners on the old SIR-TS151 and SIR-TS160 boxes (160 has a DirecTV tuner in it also which a moot point in Van.). Newer OTA model is the SIR-TS161.

To start off, you could always get an ATI HDTV Wonder card for about US$140 if you have a PC within cable stringing distance of the TV.

You can hook up via component, HDMI or DVI depending on all the TV supports. All HDTV/HDTV-ready sets currently support component, along with one/both of the other two inputs and the picture difference is entirely negligible between the 3.