i remain curious about the digital NV. i saw even bushnell has a NV camera with little IR LEDs on the front. i think it was like $150 or so. maybe they'll shake the bugs out of that and make affordable NV. heck, i remember when having a 3 megapixel camera was a big deal...
to be honest, a lot of it is expectations. nobody really complained about the quality of the picture on the television or VHS back in the 70s/80s. with each successive generation of DVDs, HD, Blueray, etc, people's expectations go up. get used to watching blueray and go back and watch a VHS movie. you'll notice a lot you didn't before.
same with NV. cheap NV looks really cool til you spend some time with a gen3 tube and then you look through the cheap stuff and realized all you were missing. and you really have to experience it in lots of different light conditions. when it gets REALLY dark is where the good stuff shines. if you're lighting up the whole area with IR so it's not really dark, then it might not matter that much to you