My coworker (who I finally got to be a pair of M2s), has an older Panasonic Viera. I was over at his house setting up his new receiver and looked at the TV. It had been a while since I saw it, before I even had my plasma, and with casual viewing it looks every bit as good as the Pioneer.
Mitsubishi probably makes the best DLP, rear-projection sets out there. But the best rear-projection still isn't as good as an average plasma when it comes to viewing angle. That's one of the other things I don't like about LCD, is you lose contrast as you move out of the sweet spot. The new sets aren't as bad as they used to be, but it still happens with as little as 15°. The rear-projection DLPs are the same way. Also I believe that there is no true dot-by-dot mode on the rear-projection sets that have small depth, that's because the picture has to be processed before sending it to the chip to correct for keystoning and other distortions.
I'll always vote for the direct view, self emitting (no back light) display panel.
