A huge part of the perceived difference in image quality is that the screen is bigger, so the same amount of pixels get stretched over a bigger area. A 50" CRT wouldn't have given you a sharper image.

Going from 32", which is reasonably big for a CRT, to 42" nearly doubles the area of the screen, making each rendered pixel twice as big as before.

People's standards for what is considered a big screen have changed. People's standards for what's considered a sharp image have changed. My PC screen is nearly as big as my parents TV (24" vs 27") when I grew up, and I'm sitting two feet away from it. I used to sit 7-10 feet from the TV when I was a kid, of course the image is gonna seem like it was sharper before even if it wasn't.