Panasonic plasma. Best picture by far, the most reliable per a friend who does warranty work for many of the big electronic stores here in Indianapolis, they have good connectivity also. Stay away from LCDs, at this point they don’t have the picture quality, black levels or reliability of the big plasmas. At your price point though I don’t know if you can get 1080P on anything larger than a 42 incher.
Plasma City and Plasma Depot are good online suppliers. The following prices were found on Plasma Depot.
TH-42PZ700U $2079
TH-50PZ700U $2979
Finally don’t buy into the old burn in issue with plasmas. That problem, which was never as bad as some would have had you think, has been a non-starter in high end plasmas for at least 4 generations of screens.
Hope this helps.
“Stay away from LCDs, at this point they don’t have the picture quality, black levels or reliability of the big plasmas. At your price point though I don’t know if you can get 1080P on anything larger than a 42 incher.”
From what I’ve seen, the latest, high quality LCDs have excellent picture quality and black levels. The Sony XBR2 LCDs, for example, look excellent to my eyes. Also some Phillips (!) LCDs I looked at a couple of weeks ago were looking pretty good. All 1080p.
I still like plasmas, but you have to go to at least 50” to get 1080p in a plasma screen, and those are still a little pricey. The Panasonic 42” HD Plasma is very nice, however the resolution, IIRC, is only 1280x720 - which still looks great on a screen that size from a reasonable viewing distance of say, 6 feet or more.