Hi Sir Quack,
Stay away from Philips. Generally poor reliability over the years and it's too bad about Toshiba, which used to have excellent reliability in the days of VCRs and CRTs.
The best-looking images are from Sony and Samsung LCDs and Panasonic plasma. LG are really quite good, a hair behind the others. Sharp always looks great in demos at the CES show but terrible in stores, perhaps because their default picture is lousy or they're difficult to set up--I've never figured that one out. Pioneer tends to be wildly overpriced and, for me, underwhelming in demos despite all the critical raves about black levels. There's more to image quality than black levels!
Regards,
Alan
