Home audio & video forum: Plasma v. Rear Projection, EDTV v. HDTV

Plasma is your best bet. It is brighter and has the best viewing angle by far. If it is for casual viewing, check out Sams and Costco. They have HD plasmas by Viore, Vizio and Maxent that are in the 1500 to 2000 dollar range. While the ED sets are a big step up from SD, HD looks even better. One of these budget HD plasmas will look sharper than an ED from Panasonic or Samsung and at about the same price.

I am in audio video sales, we have the TH42PD50U and in my opinion the tv is horrible. If you are considering plasma just based off of brightness, i would hope you have consider the glare factor. If your room is very bright because of direct lighting, the matte finish on a dlp or lcd projection would be best. In the long run the plasma should be less maintenance once you've had it calibrated in a year or so, but 250 dollars for a projection bulb every time is goes out will add up. On average a plasma will raise you electric bill by about $20 a month. If you haven't looked at the hitachi 42HDT52 then you haven't seen a good plasma. With the screen wipe feature for burn in that may occur as well as the use of Hitachi's alis technology, you'll never see the screen door.