"This Christmas my father in law gave us money to buy a new television, so we ended up getting a 42" Vizio Gallevia. So far so good - it has an excellent picture and all the bells and whistles that you could possibly want (especially for that price point - we ended up paying about $1000 for the set because my wife works at a retailer and we used her employee discount, but I've heard that they can sometimes be had new for as little as $899 if you time the sales and promotions just right)."

I'd say you've got a pretty nice father-in-law!

I was stuck between a rock and a hard place when my conventional CRT TV died about five years ago.  Digital TV was already on it's way, so I went with the 37" Sharp Aquos, which was the largest one available at the time.  Being an early adopter, I paid dearly for it -- five grand, and another couple hundred for a HDTV tuner.  The newer ones all come with built-in HDTV tuners.  I'd do it again, though.  Everyone who comes here and watches a sporting event or movie in HDTV wants one by the time they leave.

Some friends of mine recently got a 42" Olevia at Sears for $900.  An even better TV for a whole lot cheaper price.

The hardest decision is which type to get.  I did a fair amount of research before settling on the LCD.  CRTs were out for me.  Big, heavy, consume a lot of electricity, no thanks.  Plasma screens I had experience with at work, and they were also heavy, had noisy cooling fans, a fairly short life-span (~25K hours), and susceptible to "burn-in".  Even those little "bugs" that networks place in the corner of the screen will eventually become permanent.  DLPs will, over time, have some of those million little mirrors fail and leave blank pixels on the screen.

That left LCD, and I still think it's the best choice currently available.  Light weight, ~75K hour lifespan, and coming down in price.

Organic light-emitting diodes (or OLEDs) might be the next big thing, but at $2.5K for an 11" screen, I'm going to pass for now.

there's only one way to find out...

Due to a variety of warranty issues (and Costco's liberal return policy now defunct I'm told )and then a move to the UK, I haven't actually 'owned' a TV in 5 years. I have however in that time gone through at least 6 televisions migrating from a 32" CRT to a 42" DLP to a 42" Plasma to 37" Plasma to a 37" LCD.

I -really- liked that LCD; it was the Phillips with the "AmbiLight" technology that cast a backlight in the color of whatever picture was on the screen. Unfortunately I had to give it up when I moved to the UK -- now that I'm here, the landlord provides a 37" wall-mounted LCD.

Having tried a wide variety of these devices, my general short takes are as follows:
DLP's have a great picture + low cost - however they are relatively bulky and the bulbs tend to fail.
Plasmas (rather the ones I've used) tend to suffer from screen burn in which means that Plasma + Tivo equals ghosting.
LCD's are great but suffer just a tad if you are watching sports game -- they don't refresh fast enough.

As to the standards: the difference between 720p and 1080p are nigh undetectable for anything under 42". It just doesn't matter if you can't see the difference. Unless you have the room for it, getting a large tv tends to DOMINATE a small apartment. Wall Mounts are strongly recommended, and even so I think apartment dwellers should limit themselves to 37" at the maximum.

OT but related points: Buy your TV with a credit card that offers to double your warranty coverage. Costco is a great place to get a television, however their return policy is not as liberal as it used to be.

Memory is a strange bell, jubilee and knell.

I gave up my tv nearly 10 years ago and it was one of the best things I've done.  It's amazing how quickly your thought patterns improve after you stop watching commercials and sitcoms.  I do use my computer to watch the occasional movie.  So I guess I am ready for HDTV...

Hey everyone who has invested in a high end TV with $50+/month cable or satellite package:
If you were to view your TV purely as a source of information (temporarily disregarding entertainment value),  do you think you're getting your money's worth?

Signed

Trying to rationalize my expensive craving

Am I a great person? Hell no - by most metrics I'm pretty much an asshole. -TSlothrop

In my experience there's no reason to fret about reception with digital television.  I recently purchased a Pioneer TV that can receive HDTV over-the-air and it pulls in many more stations that I could watch with my old analog TV, even using the same stupid $5 Radio Shack indoor rabit ears.  I was quite surprised to find that I could get Fox, ABC, NBC, CBS, PBS (six different channels thereof), and a number of local stations with crystal clear reception.  I don't even need to move the antenna any longer.  I just leave it in the same place all the time and it looks fine.

With regular analog TV I could get only a single channel with acceptable quality, and then only after considerable fiddling with the antenna.

The big problem I had when I was looking for my perfect HDTV was that a 32" screen was just past the high range of good sizes for my apartment.  These things are being sold with the assumption that everyone who buys one is going to be devoting their entire room to the set.  I just want to sit on the couch and watch old Simpsons episodes, I don't want to blast out my eyes or turn a wall into a TV!  That brings me to the other peeve I have with flatscreens, there's too much push to have these things wall-mountable.  Trust me on this, anything I put on a wall is going to fall off, I'm not about to start with $1k worth of glass and solder.  So instead the thing sits on its flimsy little stand on my entertainment center and creeps me out any time I have to push or pull a connector from the back.  The one I ended up going with is some 29" 720p Philips LCD model that's probably obsolete by now, but it's still pretty.  It also needs some help catching the ATSC signals that I know are floating around San Diego, as it only really gets a couple spanish-langauge stations and fuzzy CBS.

(is 3fingerspointback)

This Christmas my father in law gave us money to buy a new television, so we ended up getting a 42" Vizio Gallevia. So far so good - it has an excellent picture and all the bells and whistles that you could possibly want (especially for that price point - we ended up paying about $1000 for the set because my wife works at a retailer and we used her employee discount, but I've heard that they can sometimes be had new for as little as $899 if you time the sales and promotions just right). The biggest thing I think consumers need to look at if they're buying a TV right now, is that if you're getting something bigger than 32" (or maybe even bigger than 20", depending on how picky you are) you should definitely invest in a "Full HD" set capable of 1080p resolution. This makes you more or less "future proof", as right now there simply is no standard better than 1080p (most TV broadcasts are in 1080i or 720p). Movies you buy on Blu-ray and HD DVD discs should mostly be in 1080p, as are some Playstation 3 and Xbox 360 games. If you get a good 1080p capable TV now, you probably won't have any strong reason to update it for at least a decade.

On the other hand, 1080p capable sets are much more expensive than sets that only do 720p (and 720p sets can generally accept a downscaled 1080p or 1080i input, so compatibility isn't necessarily an issue). Whether the added quality is worth the extra cost to you is pretty much a personal decision. Ditto for the LCD vs. plasma vs. rear projection (DLP) debate - I got an LCD set, and for my personal tastes it's more than good enough, especially since a 1080p plasma or DLP set would have been at least $500 more, and probably would have had fewer features. Unless you're a real videoophile, you probably won't see a whole lot of difference between the three formats. Again, though, YMMV, so before you buy go to the store and see the set "in action" first. Keep in mind, though, that a lot of times the stores haven't tuned and tweaked the sets to look as good as possible, and sometimes if you're willing to calibrate the colors on your own you can make a cheaper set look just as good as one of the more expensive brands.

Another thing to keep in mind is how you're going to get the signal. If you're lucky enough to get channels over the airwaves, they'll look just as good as if you pay for HDTV on cable or satellite. HDTV broadcasts look much, much better than SDTV, if you have an HD capable television, and even the SDTV broadcasts over the HD signal look better (in my opinion, anyway). Still, if you live in a hilly area or are far from your closest metro broadcasters, you might have to rely on cable or satellite. I personally love my satellite package - right now I'm with Dish Network, and using their DishDVR (which is spectacular - better than TiVO, in some ways). The package I get (which is comparable to Comcast's basic digital package with a DVR HD channels added) is about $75 a month (although right now I'm getting the HD channels "free" for a three month promotional, so it's only $55 a month until March). With Comcast the same package would be around $90 or more. Before we bought our house, when we lived in an apartment complex, we were able to get Verizon's FiosTV, which is a great service that is even cheaper than satellite - with DVR and HD, it was only about $55 a month (and their internet service is even better), but the DVR included in the Fios package was very mediocre compared to Dish Network DVR. We had no service interruptions at all with Fios, however. We do on rare occasions lose the satellite signal (mainly when there's a bad electrical storm - normal rain doesn't seem to affect it, unless it's a torrential downpour - snow doesn't affect it at all, as long as you keep snow from building up on the surface of the dish itself), but we had even more problems with losing our Comcast signal at random times for no apparent reason. No matter which way you go (cable, fiber optic, or satellite), keep in mind that not all channels are available in HD, and even those that are available in HD don't necessarily broadcast all their programming in HD. A&E, for example, broadcasts some shows in HD and some just in regular standard definition.