>>Mike, I'm truly glad you've asked these questions up here. I know zero about HD and advanced TVs, and didn't even know which questions to ask. (Guess I've spent too much time studying fireworks). So this has been helpful for me!
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>>Kevin
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>I have found that Sony Grand WEGAs come highly recommended.

I'd stay away from Sony, for several reasons. They seem to be running some funny circles. First there's the rootkit story. Then, back in the nineties we had a carousel CD player (for 3 CDs) which never worked right. Sound was fine, but it just couldn't get the CDs to play right, or to switch position, to the point when it started loving the hardware guy more than us, spending all the quality time with him. Then came my previous DVD burner, which cost $200 and I thought it'd last at least three years, but no, it died after about 25-6 months just like any other junk. Now I bought a $35 no-name burner and it'll be a far better deal if it lasts more than 5 months. And then there was a 20" monitor which can now be used only as a strobo light. And from what I hear about PS3... I wonder why it sells at all.

Come to think of it, the only reliable thing we bought from Sony in the last 15 years were the mp3 CD players. So good we bought another one after a few weeks. Perfect plugphones, batteries last about three times longer than with previous players, and has a true randomizer for playlists, not some 4-bit arithmetic which always gives the same order (as we had a case with another player).

It may be just my luck, who knows.