I have to agree. Every LCD TV I have ever seen had absolutely horrible picture quality. I could not believe that people were fooled into believing LCD is better than CRT.
LCDs often look bad in stores because they aren't properly set up and are displaying poor quality video. Stores generally show standard def programming stretched to fit the 16:9 display and turn the brightness up full. You end up watching short, fat, grainy video with oversaturated color.
The only real way to choose an HDTV is to see a properly adjusted set running real HD content. LCDs are the only (non projection) way to get true HD resolution in a reasonable price. Plasmas under 50" only display 1024 X 768 (with rectangular pixels) and most CRTs downsample the display to half 1080i resolution.
Shadow detail is the only area where LCDs really fall down. On the other hand, if you are watching in a bright room, LCDs can compete with strong window light and won't wash out in conditions that ruin CRT and plasma pictures.
I have 2 plasma TV's. A 52 inch HD Plasma in the family room and a 32 inch in the bedroom. The biggest gripe I have is that they look funny when in traditional aspect mode, so I put them in widescreen mode (just about every plasma is a widescreen), but then you get little eddies of gook where the tv is trying to interpolate how to convert the regular aspect signal to a widescreen signal. However, programs that are broadcast in HD, or DVD's, look better on those TV's than any other TV's I have ever owned. Oh, and I got the big TV (Vizio) from Costco for under 2K, and the small TV is some brand I dont remember that starts with an A ... and I paid about a $1000. The no-name brands give you just as good of quality, and maybe even better reliability than the big names. Same time I got my 32, my parents got a similar size & feature Panasonic, and it died 3 months later.