I paid $2000 for mine at Christmas!!

For the 58??

I hate you all. That $1400 is in the US though, but still... So cheap

Yay Panasonic Plasmas! As long as glare isn't a big deal (upstairs living room with big window) they are the way to go.

Most of the new ones have anti-glare anyway. It's not quite as good as LCD, but better than a few years ago.

True enough!

Hi Zeddy,
I'm not sure if you have any Magnolia Best Buys near you, but you may be able to find an open box or display model Pioneer Kuro Elite 101-fd for a little over $2000. It's a 50 inch monitor, but the Elite Kuro's are still the best displays out there. You need to run your sound through A/V receiver, because these displays are only monitors. You have to go in the store and check, because the website can't sell elite products (weird Pioneer rules). There are some decent Samsung plasmas for around a $1000 also. The Samsung PnB650 was one of Cnet's 5 best tvs of 2009. I got one for my parents for a little over a grand. That's a 50 inch plasma. Although Samsungs tend to have a bit more image retention than some other plasmas. I believe LG's have a tad bit of image retention too, but I've never seen one to confirm.

Hi Zeddy,

I'd place Samsung, Panasonic, and Sony in the top tier for image quality, whether plasma or LCD. LG is awfully close but not quite the equal of the top three, and Sharp is a distant third, partly because the loss of color and contrast of Sharp LCDs off-axis is much worse than other brands of LCD above and Sharp reliability is dubious.

Pioneer Kuro is an odd brand for me. Despite praise from some fellow journalists, the Pioneer Kuros at CES shows in Las Vegas always looked disappointing to my eyes, while other brands looked stunning.

Don't overlook Toshiba, whose flat screens are sometimes excellent and priced lower than others.

Also keep in mind that if you and others are going to be viewing the set from angles to the sides, plasma screens suffer no loss in image quality, unlike LCD viewed from an angle (Sharp being the worst). If you view LCD from mainly in front, then it doesn't matter.

Regards,

Alan

What you saw at CES is part of what killed plasma. They simply don't stand up in a brightly lit environment like a showroom floor. LCDs are brighter all around, including their black levels.

In a normally lit living room the Kuro is a superior display.

Albeit obsolete in terms of marketing...

My plasma is in a fairly well lit room I have 4 windows that feed light into it and I have no problems with the screen brightness and luckily only one seating position receives glare from any of these windows