So Nick, I take it you feel I'd be better off with a plasma that has an anti-reflective screen verses one of the LED/LCD's? Any brand / model's I should look at?
Come to think about it, I do tend to be drawn to the plasmas over the LCD's whenever I happen to be walking by the TV's in the different stores.
The anti-glare coating is good enough on my Pioneer Kuro that I can casually watch a football game or sit-com on it in the middle of the day with one window behind me (that has an overhang) not having the shades drawn. I wouldn't want to watch anything else on it because their is too much glare to tell what is going on. And Pioneer is supposed to have the best anti-glare coating that you can get on plasmas.
You are making it difficult for any TV with all of those windows, if you plan to watch the TV in the middle of the day. It's almost like asking what the best speaker setup would be to get so that you can listen to them in the middle of a busy shopping mall. Would Axiom speakers sound better than some that are sold out of the back of a van in that situation? It's hard to say. Sure if you cranked them up loud enough to overcome the background noise then the Axiom's could sound good, but that isn't a fair comparison. To deal with all those windows shining light into your room in the middle of the day you will have to crank up they brightness, possibly to the extremes of the torch mode on TV's. This kills the contrast ratio. Just about any competently made TV these days can look good if you ignore the contrast ratio. The biggest difference that you are paying for going from one manufacturer to another (ignoring the thinness fad) is getting better blacks and shadow detail. As you mentioned, this is why plasma sets usually look better, because they are better at doing this than most LCD's. So you can see why contrast ratio is probably the most important aspect of a good picture.
I'd suggest that, if you don't plan to do any critical viewing on the TV then you should just get a cheap LCD. Vizio is a good budget brand that has a pretty good picture for the money. Just make sure that it has a good anti-glare screen on it, because as I mentioned not all of them do. LCD's are nice because you can get more brightness out of them and some of them have very good anti-reflective screens, even better than the best offered on a plasma TV. Just don't expect to have a great picture at that point. If you plan to do some critical viewing in that room then you will need to control the light. There probably isn't much point in spending the extra money on a nice plasma (such as a Panasonic or a Pioneer Kuro, if you can still find one) if you can't even really see the good contrast ratio that you are paying for.
