I forgot to mention response time. The lower the better, but anything below 8ms are the better choices for maximum value of the product.. That goes for monitors as well.

we got a plasma...love it....bought it at Costco...if you use your American Express card you get another year on top of the manf warranty...for a total of three years...that makes it nice...both are a good choice....c

I forgot to mention Contrast ratio. Be sure to get a LCD TV with the highest contrast ratio for the best black scale.

I hear anything over the 40" range you want to get a LCD. And apparently the best to get is the 1080i. I bought one with all those things, coincidently I might add and I have been stoked. The picture in HD is retarded good. You definitely want to make sure that you have HD programming for sports especially. Otherwise it can get pretty pixelated. Particularly during football games. I would think that one of the most important things to look into is the pixel refresh rate. The faster the better.

JLH - I work in the biz and the one spec that has no meaning at all is contrast ratio. There is no standard for measurement. Don't worry about this one, take a look at the picture and go from there.

I agree that the quality of the picture should be the deciding factor. It has been my experience that the higher the contrast ration the better the picture. That is for LCD that is for the full HD models. The higher contrast ratio TV cost about the same as those with a lower contrast. The main thing is to notice if there is much difference between Black and gray. Some feature black as gray or whites as gray not offering much contrast. I don't work in the business, but one of my best friends is geek and the owner of Progressive Tech here in Seattle, and he helps me with all my tech issues and choices.

Good luck in making a choice. Don't be in a rush to purchase. Have patience and do your home work. Here are a few links to check out.

http://www.hdtvoice.com/voice/forumdisplay.php?f=384

http://www.pcworld.com/article/128570/all_about_hdtv_answers_to_your_questions.html

http://www.consumerreports.org/cro/electronics-computers/tvs-services/tvs/index.htm

http://www.sceptre.com/Products/LCD/definitions/definiton_lcd.htm#QAM

http://www.consumersearch.com/lcd-tv?source=adwords&gclid=COzOoca_rY0CFQ6uYAodGn-3sQ

If your room is dark, consider a projector... We did this in our basement and love it for a bunch of reasons, but the #1 best reason is that the expensive parts are up on the ceiling, and away from the kids... The screen is inexpensive and can take a frisbee hit/etc without us losing our investment.

Their brightness has been improving but still well below a LCD or Plasma, so again it depends on your room.

Saw "OLED" TVs at CES this year, and holy cow are they amazing. Years away at the sizes you want, but trust me, we'll all own one in 10 years.

Ok, I'm a dweeb, what is blueray? My children seem to know, just not the dad.

The latest and greatest in High Def. DVD. The sound is the biggest difference. From my understanding, it captures all the little things that regular DVD and normal radio and things miss.

Sorta true... There's actually a *huge* difference in video bandwidth and quality as well... The short answer is DVD's are standard def, Blu-Ray is HD. There's all sorts of upscaling/bs about what is really true but this is a first approximation.

VIDEO
DVDs run effectively at 480p, Blu-Ray disks support 1080p. That's roughly 4x the pixels, and the data rate is roughly 4x as high. On top of more data, the video compression techniques for DVD are all MPEG2, while Blu-Ray supports improved AVC and VC-1 codecs... This all means terrific video quality, but it requires a High Def television to take seriously.

AUDIO
As Pug said, again lots more data for multi-track audio, very high resolution. If you're playing the sound out of your TV's built in speakers, probably not a big deal. If you are a home theater geek, you'll appreciate it.

Thank you IrishRogue and Pug, I am now enlightened more or less...

I think you mean 1080p

Start with size and how much you are willing to spend. The large Sony or Sharp aquos LCD's, I think still the only two makers of large ones so far, are going to cost you $5K to $6K. So if size is a factor and you don't want to spend that amount then you are looking at Plasma or DLP. For me if I were to buy one in the $2K to $3K range right now I'd probably get the Mitsubishi Diamond series DLP. DLP's are not that bulky. The 65" is 15 inches deep and weighs 75 pounds. But, if you have the room, what I would really do is watch craigs list for an older Mitsubishi rear projection which can be had for a song. Yeah it's 1080I but you WILL NOT be able to tell the difference and you'll see a lot better picture than most of the sets in the store. If you can find one that has the convergence issue you can probably get it for free and it's a very cheap easy fix for a brand new picture.

I'm gonna stick with my 20" RCA that's 25 years old for now.JK.Good luck,
STRIKE ZONE

So it's LCD 1080P is the $hit then?????.

Just curious...I know DVD players won't run Blue Ray discs but will Blue Ray players run DVD's? We are starting to think about spending some money finally on our family room (built house in 2004 and have been saving this project) and have accumulated a DVD collection over the years. Would like to still be able to view those movies but would be nice to start buying Blue Ray as well as set up the room with current equipment. Just not interested in having two players to do this ...Do they make players that will run both types of disc..

Thanks, RJ in Montana

yes blu ray will run regular DVD's and most will up convert them displaying a better pic than your old dvd player would.

Just upgraded my blu ray player to the new Samsung 3600. WIFI connects to my network and plays Netflix's Hi Def watch instantly movies. Netflix has yet to transmit in 5.1 or 7.1 surround sound though.

Also gets Pandora which is free Internet digital radio. Although I haven't used this feature much yet I did try out some blues. Entered Clapton and it created a blues station for me of some really good tunes.

Pandora rocks!! I listen the my favorite Reggae music program to the reggae artist "Sizzla." http://pandora.com/ Just thumbs up or down the choice or selection of songs you want the station to play. It awesome with a 5.1 or 7.1 surround sound. I have it playing whenever I'm on the computer. Plus you can have multiple of stations that are tuned to various artists and genre.