I've been doing a lot of research, but first here's my background.
I live in a Beach City, near Sao Paulo, Brazil. My grandfather has bought me a piano years ago, at an auction for R$ 900 (in today's currency it would be like $300, but since this was years ago, I don't have an actual reference). But by all means, I have to admit it was a real bargain.
Though I'm no professional musician, I absolutely love my piano. I have never done any courses, but I usually spend 1 or 2 hours everyday learning online and practicing on it. Of all my hobbies, it's the one I enjoy most. So while I don't really want to spend a lot of money, I'm all in for investing more than a grand or 2 on a piano.
About the piano, it's a national vertical Piano, Otto Halben, but you see, it's not well preserved. Partially because I was too young to care before, and partially because I can't find a soul here in this city that works with pianos. It's just not a common thing here.
As you can see, it looks quite old from the outside. Also, I believe it's somewhat out of tune: If I play a music simultaneously to a, let's say, youtube video, I can clearly notice that the notes sound slightly different from one another.
About the notes, they are also getting yellow:
Sorry about the bloat of images in this topic, but I'm trying to be as clear as possible. Here are two last images, one of its insides, and other of the pedals:
As you can see one of the pedals (the middle one) is also broken.
Despite all those problems, I quite enjoy the sounds that come from it. It's VERY different from most keyboards I've ever played on. It's not "artificial". It's very sensitive, and if I would compare both, I'd say the piano is a human, the keyboard is a robot.
That being said, I know this isn't a website for opinions, and though I've post a lot of personal photos, I'd like a straight-forward advice about the similarities between a good ole piano and digital one and why should someone get one rather than the other. I've always been told that if you have the money, you should get a full-fledged piano. But in my understand some digital pianos seem almost as good.
Also, I'm thinking a lot about a digital piano because I don't want to bother people with my practice sessions, currently I'm forced to play just a few hours during the day.
The one I'm thinking of, that dances around my financial limit, is the Yamaha Arius YDP 1XX (XX being any version). It has absolutely everything I need. I could get rid of my piano and buy this one, and I could practice at any time of the day by using headphones. And from what I've seen on the web, its sound is VERY good. I've seen this question here, and someone said that:
A good digital piano is better than a bad acoustic piano.
And I'm thinking this is the case.
Either that or I could play a simple keyboard to practice during the night, and try to restore my old piano somehow.
For you guys who had both (an acoustic piano and a digital one), am I being ridiculous on the idea of replacing it for a digital piano?