OT: buying a plasma/flat screen, any ideas on the best one? Options

[meares]

i'm about to buy a plasma...i'm doing some research, but wanted know of any personal exper. in your purchases...which ones to buy/stay away from.....

[Richard Casto]

I have been casually followed flat panel stuff, but am not as up on it as a serious shopper would be. Plasma vs. LCD is an interesting decision right now. It used to be that the price premium for an LCD made it hard to not buy a Plasma. Many people are concerned about the lifespan of the Plasma and potential for image burn in. A previous line of thought was to just buy a nice Plasma now (and save many thousands of dollars that you would have spent on an LCD of the same size). Use the Plasma for as long as it lasts, then when it dies, take whatever you saved from your original purchase and then buy some type of next gen LCD that should be cheap at that point.

But, the prices for LCDs have been dropping pretty quickly and unless you want something larger than about 40 inches, the LCDs are attractive at this point. Especially as they are HD and not ED models.

I am not a fan of rear projection units. I have a CRT rear projection right now and I will never do CRT again and I probably will not ever do any type of projection in general (rear or regular projector). So for me, DLP and LCD projectors are out of the question so I am not as well read on those. Rear projectors ARE cheaper for a given screen size however.

Regarding brands, many people are fans of the Panasonic Plasmas and currently the Sharp LCDs have a large following. There are plenty of others that people are happy with. If you are considering an off brand or specific model (such as found at places like Walmart, Cosco, Sams Club, etc.), I would research it. Many of these use panels that are built by some of the bigger manufactures, but will have skimped somewhere else (type and number of tuners, number and types of video inputs, response time of the panels, speakers, etc.) to achieve the lower price point. You generally get what you pay for, but you sometimes pay for a name and sometimes good deals can be found in the off brands (but not always). I would suggest reading up here…

http://www.avsforum.com/
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/

(second link is directly into the forum area)

They have a flat panel display area that is pretty active. There are lots of “What 32” LCD should I buy” or “I have $2000 t spend, what should I buy” types of threads.

Good luck!