I also took a plunge and bought a 50" Samsung Plasma full HD. Got it for a steal at R10 000.
I did a very quick tour of shops and stats.
(Because I bought a media player and it came pre-loaded with lots of HD stuff, and suddenly I didn't want to watch them on 74cm roundscreen).
In my very brief investigation I found:
1) The current LCD's don't seem to have a fast motion blur effect any more.
2) The plasmas are slightly cheaper, but you only get full HD from 50" (42 for some models).
3) Sony don't even make plasmas anymore.
4) Although Plasmas have existed for longer, they're not falling behind and have also evolved & improved.
5) r.e. the reflection - Plasmas have a real glass front panel, whereas LCD have matt plastic like your PC - you can poke it and disturb the picture. Because of the real glass, the potential for reflection of light is more. But in reality, because it's flat, the source areas of potential light disturbances are small. As one sales person pointed out - we had reflection problems in SA since 1974! And they were fish bowls which would reflect light from almost anywhere in the room. I don't have glare problems.
6) The standard "sales person thinking" is still the Plasma is for sports & movies. LCD is for PC & games. I think both techs have come some way and not sure that's still a valid argument, although it did influence my decision. (e.g. how are games different from sports when it comes to the traditional strong & weak points of plasma vs LCD?)
7) Plasma uses more power and creates more heat, although apparently also better than previous generations.
Unless you get the shop to put 2 panels next to each other, and show the same source on both, you can forget about trying to spot a difference between screens, or types of screens.
I didn't look at LEDs just because they're too new and still pricey, in effect they're still LCD but with better back light technology.
I'm very happy with my purchase!
Regards
Leon
