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When you study a planet, and I mean study, not just a quick glimpse but really sitting down and watching it for 5 or 10 minutes, like Dave, Geoff and myself were doing at Snake Valley, you DO see more detail and there's something more exhilirating about the photons hitting the back of your eyes realtime, not looking at the processed image afterwards.
Planetary observing is a skill, and it takes time to perfect it. When I first started observing, I could only just make out 2 brown belts of Jupiter. Now, I can make out many more, as well as the GRS, blue barges and even smaller white storms. It takes time, patience and practise to be able to "see" these things. You need to train your eyes.
The same goes for Mars.. when you get better at it, you'll see more than a red/orange disk.. you'll see the polar caps, and many albedo features that you see in teh images.
And a good quality eyepiece helps, because otherwise when the planet drifts near the edges of the FOV, it'll go mushy/blurry so you won't see the detail.
You'll be absolutely amazed and stunned at the detail you can see when you really study a planet IN GOOD SEEING. The detail just jumps out at you, it's just great.
But there's no reason you can't get a good quality eyepiece that serves a dual purpose, for high power DSO viewing (core of a galaxy, planetary nebula) as well as planetary viewing. Something around the 7mm range will serve this purpose. Combine that with a 13/14mm for medium power DSO viewing, you can then use a 2.5x powermate to get the equivalent of a 4/5mm eyepiece for those nights of REALLY good seeing.
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