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We have a 46" Sony BR2...absolutely love it, although my husband complains that he can't configure it properly because the cable channels I watch are too dark, so if he sets it up 'properly' for DVDs, HD stuff, etc, I can't see what's going on on my shows. It has a few issues with patchiness, and is more expensive than some of the other 46" LCDs out there, but it works for us. Personally we'd never get a plasma because of the risk of screen burn (my husband spends a lot of time gaming and we tend to watch the same channels all the time). Rear-projections are out because I have a pathological hatred of them.

This is actually the...god, I lost count...3rd? 46" TV in 6 weeks. We started out with the Sharp Aquos, but found they had HORRIBLE banding issues (on both the 46 and 42"). We tried 3 different sets, two never even made it out of the store because we spotted the problems, the 3rd made it into the house, onto the cabinet, then 10 minutes later was being boxed up again. This is kind of the norm with us though, we went through a ton of 42" CRTs a few years ago as well. My husband has a knack for spotting 'common faults that affect certain sets' which seem to affect all of ours.

We got ours from 2001 AV in Mississauga, but got them to beat a price the Sony Store were offering, so got about $350 off the lowest price they offered originally.

We have a 42" plasma and a 50" plasma and love them. There isn't a problem with screen burn as long as you don't leave it sitting on a still screen for any length on time. We don't play video games on them, the kids have thier own tv for that. We like the fact that you can view the plasma within about a 180 deg angle. Love the fact that they take up very little space, we have 1 over the fireplace and the other on the wall in the basement.
Best deals are Boxing day if you can wait. We got ours at Future Shop.

From my research, the general conclusion is that a good LCD is better then a good Plasma, but there are of course lemon's and gems in both categories.

LCD is more expensive, especially in the larger sizes (if the sizes are even available at all.)

I personally would favour the Sharp Aquos line, but try and get last years on sale, the one that supports 720p, not 1080. While the latter is superior, at this time there just isn't enough 1080 p content to warrant it, and if you buy at 720 prices now, and buy again in a couple years at 1080, you'll probably save money, or at worst break even.

check out dltv.com they do a fair number of tech reviews, and do the occasional HDTV round up, last one was just before Christmas I seem to remember, and they cover both a selection of models, and a bit of education to teach you how to be an informed tv consumer.

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Toshiba REGZA series LCD's are great
http://www.toshiba.ca/web/products.grp? ... Television

Yeah I totally disagree, not that 1080P isn't superior, but its like buying a porche to sit in gridlock with, it will look pretty on the driveway, but you will only rarely get to see it in its full form. The Blu-Ray/HD war is only just beginning, and the upgrade in quality from up converted dvd isn't great enough to be compelling. By the time one format wins, and the price of players comes down from the stratosphere, the amount you saved player, and by buying a 720P screen, you will be able to buy another.

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One thing to consider about that was that Sony was really selling re-branded Hitachi sets, and Hitachi couldn't keep up with the demand.... That was a major reason that Sony dropped their Plasma sets....

Plasma is excellent for reproducing dark colours, fast moving action and available in larger sizes. Disadvantages are they tend to run rather warm and use more electricity compared to the same sized LCD.

LCD works the same as your laptop or computer display. It is made up of a bunch of individual pixels that are lit from behind with a fluourecent light. The pixels act like little windows that can be opened/closed in rapid fashion to let the light through. Because of the light behind potentially bleeding around the edges, it is very difficult for an LCD display to show dark blacks.

LCDs also have difficulty showing fast moving action without breaking up. Next time you are at the big box store picking out your display, make sure you are watching a hockey game or an action movie, you will see some distortion around the edges of the action in the picture.

LCDs do however work much better in bright rooms compared to plasma. They also tend to use less energy and provide a higher screen resolution. (not that you will have content to take advantage of it)

Plasmas can suffer from something called burn-in. Burn-in happens when the same picture is left on a display for a long period of time. It tends to stick. You may remember a simular thing happen with older CRT TVs. Burn-in is not much of a problem anymore with the current lines of plasma displays, unless of course you plan on leaving the same picture on your display, 24 hours a day for a week.

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I'm not touching the LCD/Plasma debate as I've only experienced plasma on a big screen (40" and 50") for any length of time, but I'm planning to buy LCD when the time comes to replace our old CRT (which isn't going to be until it dies if more HD content doesn't come out, I'm not upgrading for like 12 channels of HD).

However, a couple side points... one thing that was mentioned was upconverting DVD players. It is absolutely AMAZING what they can do. My grandmother's new TV (Samsung 50" Plasma, 1080i) was bought with a samsung up-converting DVD player due to a sale at Future Shop. We watched some of the old James Bond movies (early 80's ones) and while they had been remastered, we would have sworn we were watching a Hi-Def video signal.

Also, in regards to buying 1080p or 1080i now, I think that advice changes over time. A year or two ago, I'd have agreed 100% with gcpear above and said get 720, but now it has been so long that the 1080i's have been out that most 720's are just end of stock and even 1080i seems to be getting phased out. 40" 1080p's are down to $1500 for no-names and the latest/greatest 1080p's (which seem to be 42 and 46" instead of 40") are $2300... I'm guessing that in 6 months there won't be any manufacturers making less than 1080p and then we'll see prices come down a lot more. If I had to buy today, I'd probably get a cheaper 1080i, because the upconverting DVD's do make regular dvd's look much better on a 1080i than a 720p.

With anything though, it's all about how things are when you decide to buy... like computers, they'll just keep getting better and better for the same money, so when do you decide it's a good enough value to jump in?

I just want to add that we have a plasma in our family room which is full of bright natural light during the day. We don't have any problems with viewing. Also we have an upconverting DVD player as well, pretty cool.

The upconverting players are good, but they don't touch a blu-ray or HD-DVD on a 1080p set... I made the mistake of watching a few movies at my fathers place on his new Sony 70" 1080p set on Blu-Ray.... Now how do I convince Michelle that we should throw out all our furniture and convert the family room into a shrine for a 70" set of our own?

Marc

I think what would help is having a movie night at your father's house and inviting all of us to see the difference ourselves. We'll all tell your wife that we're going to get one and that will at least give her the "keep up with the Jones's" bug

Actually, considering how good it is, it might require a movie night and at least one hockey game and one football game... just so we can provide adequate support, of course!

Sounds reasonable to me... but my step mother might take some convincing....