Plasma or LCD?

[Grant Lamontagne]

Plus I figure with the smaller overall footprint than my current CRT has then I can better place my cable box, DVD player, VCR and other stuff so they aren't piled on top of eachother....

Def

[DaveK]

That's one of the real advantages of a flat TV, you actually get quite a bit of your room back.

[Grant Lamontagne]

I initially went from a 17" CRT to a 19" LCD and was completely blown away by the increase in screen size (3" of viewable area since CRT's lose an inch or so around the frame) and the major increase in real estate on my desktop.  It truly is amazing, and the prices of LCD monitors has dropped so drastically that I ended up bumping my pretty new 19" LCD down to my backup computer and bought a 22" widescreen for my main machine.

Def

[DaveK]

Yup, I went pretty well the same route you did.

The problem is that these things all follow the laws of available space, which specify "the volume of crap on your desk is proportional to the space available".

[Grant Lamontagne]

Yeah, I have that problem on my computer desks, but not so much in my living room.  Worst it'll get is maybe a cordless phone and a few DVD's.

Def

[Whoey]

I went from 19inch CRT to 22inch widescreen lcd... this is a before and after pics... I gained about 3/4 of my deskspace back... I love my 22... I have a wall bracket for it now, I just need to get around to actually mounting it...

[Grant Lamontagne]

You mean you need a nice new multitool to use to mount it! 

Def

[Whoey]

actually I know how messy it will be to drill into the wall, and I know it's going to require me to move the desk out, which means I have to deal with the 100000 cables behind it... and that's putting me off...

[DoughDTD]

I didn't get a chance to read every post in this thread, but I'd like to throw my 2 cents in.  I did quite a bit of research in the market about 6 months ago and eventually purchased a 42" Sharp Aquos 1080p LCD TV ( I got a free blu-ray player with it too!!).  Each of the technologies has its advantages, but I ended up preferring the LCD technology.  The biggest advantage to plasma is that the darks are MUCH darker, and anything over 42" plasma is much more affordable than comparable LCD televisions.  The newer technology of the plasmas really turns the "burn-in" problem to a nil issue; they quickly realized how bad of a problem it was and made it so its no longer a problem!  So my advice is to find your price range, look online for the best ones in that price range, then head over to a best buy (prefferably a better quality store...the tv's arent always set up right on display and awesome tv's might look worse than smurfty tvs) and just take a look at some first hand.  I would also advise to DEFINATELY not skip on the 1080p right now, even though it might seem as if its a luxury, your TV will be an investment and pretty soon 1080p is going to be essentially standard, so shell out a couple hundred more for that extra definition (anything under 40" u wont be able to tell 1080p from 720p, but your going big!).  Another note...there is a critical quality that not many tv's "boast" about in advertisments and that is the refresh rate or response time.  Typical samsung LCD's and plasmas are 8ms, my aquos is 4ms, and you really can tell the difference when things move fast on the screen (no edge blurring).  Head over to cnet.com, they have some typical qualities of these tv's and real world explanainations as to what they will mean to YOU.  Then you decide whats important, and pick out a TV that fits your criteria.  And shoot me a PM if you want some personalized shopping advice, I'm pretty good at this stuff!

Good luck man!

-Dough