"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." -Manuel II Paleologus
The best plasmas (think latest generation Panasonic and Pioneer HD units) are pretty nice. Better than the best LCDs I've seen, I would venture to say, although the latest, greatest LCDs from Sony that I've seen (full 1920x1080 HD XBR2 models) are also very nice, and higher resolution. Haven't seen the LCD in a controlled environment, though.
When I went looking last year I didn't really need anything as big as even 42" (the smallest common plasma size, although Panasonic makes a 1024x720 HD 37" unit, too). I tried a 37" Sony Plasma, one of the 1024x1024 interlaced units, and while its picture was fantastic on well-lit subjects (wathing the Tonight show you sometimes felt like Jay and the guests were in the room with you), its performance at the dark end of the scale was abysmal. And at CDN$2,799 it was one of the cheapest ones. Of course, now I see 42" LG HD plamas are going for CDN$1,999.
Anyway, I finally settled on a 34" HD CRT, in this case a Panasonic. It's comparable to the non-XBR 34" Sony Trinitron CRT, both in price and performance. I would have like the higher-spec Sony 34" CRT model, but it was almost twice as expensive, and weighs in at 230 lbs (!) compared to the relatively svelte 160 lbs for the one I did get. Being a CRT, it's not perfect - it has some minor ghosting issues and is not perfectly focussed in the corners - but its black level and colour reproduction is fantastic, particularly with HD programming. My XBbox360 looks great on it.