To add to Alan's comments, myself personally, to this day, still hasn't been sold on LCD displays. Although they are improving, there is still a problem with blacks(contrast during dark scenes). Case in point; a few months ago I was asked by a neighbor to calibrate the two sets he just bought. A 50" Panasonic Viera(Plasma) and a 46" Sharp Aquos(LCD). Both were hooked up to HD cable boxes. Both had similar DVD players hooked up to them so I took over my trusty DVE disc and threw it in the machines hooked up to each monitor. The first thing I noticed immediately was that the Aquos couldn't handle a below black signal and along with that and quite surprisingly, even though it was hooked up to its own cable box(same one as the Viera)having been commented on earlier, it did a considerably "poorer" job of handling standard(non-HD) television signals compared to the Panasonic! The Panasonic handled "below black" signals quite easily and had much more flexibility in set-up so in the end even though the gap closed between the two when comparing HD broadcasts, over all, the Viera was noticeably better. The bottom line is you don't know the difference until you have the opportunity of having the two types of sets close to each other so you can make reasonably accurate assessments of each when you are trying to set them up to get the most accurate picture. Dark scenes on an LCD still have somewhat of a "washed out" look and if you try to set the brightness properly(blacks), the picture is too dark.
Until LCD's can cure the "black" issue. for now , I will stay in the Plasma camp.
