I’ve been HDTV shopping for several months now. Originally, I was debating between a 42″ or 50″ screen size, but after several excursions to the local Best Buy, I quickly concluded that 50″ was the way to go. Even for our relatively tiny living room, 42″ just seemed too small.

After looking at various TVs, I quickly eliminated rear-projection TVs from the running as I was unimpressed with their picture quality and turned off by their bulky size and issues with bulb life. The decision came down to a 50″ plasma or a comparably sized LCD. Plasmas generally offer better picture quality (deeper blacks and no motion blur) and for screen sizes 50″ and larger, they are more economical than LCDs. The disadvantages of plasma are slightly higher power consumption and the minor possibility of image burn-in, but the pros of plasma outweighed the cons for me.

Among the myriad brands to choose from, I gravitated towards Panasonic which consistently gets good reviews and high praise. In fact, Consumer Reports recently rated the picture quality of the Panasonic 50″ 1080p plasma the best they’ve ever seen. The fact that I have been very satisfied with my current Panasonic CRT only helped reaffirmed my brand decision. I nearly pulled the trigger a couple months back when Costco had the model I wanted on sale for $2,199. I reacted too slowly and by the time I decided to buy it, the sale had ended.

That turned out to be a good thing, however, as a month or so later, Fry’s had a sale on it for an incredible $1,699! It quickly sold out online, but they still had stock at the local store. As is typical, I went through some indecision in making the final decision. It wasn’t whether or not the price was right (it was undoubtedly a great deal), but whether or not we’d be better off getting a 58″ size instead. After staring at a 50″ and 58″ side by side, taking measurements of our living room, staring a bit more, and finally dragging Judy into the store to stare with me, we decided that 50″ was the way to go.

The day after buying the TV, we went looking for a suitable TV stand. As luck would have it, Best Buy had a sale for a really nice stand that we both liked. Judy, for those who don’t know, is freakishly strong for her petite size, and between the two of us, we were able to unload and set up the TV and stand (which I think weighed more than the TV!) with no problems. So far, we’re quite pleased with the picture quality (Lost is awesome in HD as are sports). We just lament that there isn’t more HD programming, particularly movies, currently available. And as for the screen size? 50″ turned out to be perfect.

Posted by Roger at 9:19 PM.