Hey Inane,
some good advice already from the other forumers. Here's some other things to consider:
-refresh rate: if you plan to do any gaming, want to keep up with sports or make it less stressful on the eyes, find an LCD with at least 120hz refresh rate. Don't be fooled by the motion smoothing technology that most companies use to trick you into believing it's actually a higher refresh rate television. You'll be able to identify this by the name it's given (i.e. Sony calls it Motionflow, Samsung calls it Clear Motion Rate, LG calls it Trumotion). These technologies actually interpolate and add frames to a scene that aren't actually there. It makes what you watch look unreal and soap opera like. It's also very poor for playing video games because it creates a lagging effect due to the additional video processing. The biggest scam used by manufacturers of LCD TV's right now. Bestbuy is a good site to determine the refresh rate, although they are occasionally wrong.
-power consumption: Plasmas use the most, and by a significant margin over LCD and LED TVs. LED TV's although more power efficient than regular LCDs aren't so much more so that it justifies the price premium. However, if being eco-friendly trumps the additional cost go for it. Organic LED's are said to be the best, with better colours and deeper blacks.
Here's a couple of links you may want to review:
http://tv.toptenreviews.com/flat-panel/lcd/http://tv.toptenreviews.com/led-tv/http://tv.toptenreviews.com/flat-panel/plasma/http://www.testfreaks.com/televisions/http://www.consumersearch.com/lcd-tvI think it's a little unrealistic to buy a TV of that size for less than $1500 but you may get lucky!
Hope this helps!
fLuid
