I had no idea what I was missing

I've had a 61" rear-projection CRT Sony for the last 5 years, and I love it. It's huge, but the picture quality is fantastic and it's been 100% trouble-free. It's the workhorse; 90% of the TV-watching done in our house is done on it, and it's also the monitor for our home theater.

But recently I remodeled the kitchen and have made the first floor of the house more entertainment-friendly. Seemed like a good idea to have a TV upstairs as well. I considered putting a 60"+ DLP or Plasma in the rec room and pulling the Sony upstairs, but it eats up too much space. Plasma was the obvious choice.

For starters, there are a ton of myths about plasma TVs. I strongly suggest looking here http://www.dynamicdigital.ca/documents/Plasma%20Facts%20and%20Myths.pdf to dispel them.

So once you've decided to jump in to the plasma pool, the next step is picking a TV. My only criteria was a good picture and at least 50". There are a ton of TVs that fit the bill, and the prices vary. Hands-down, the most important thing is how does it look to you? Some people will never notice that the 50" plasma you can buy at Costco for $1,200 only has a 650:1 contrast ratio.

Anyway, I did a ton of research on the 'net, and everywhere I looked, the TH-50PX60U received rave reviews. Armed with this, I went shopping. Sears, Circuit City, and Best Buy all carry this TV, so it was easy to compare it to numerous other units. In every store, in different lighting, and with different source material, this sucker blew away everything except the Mitsu 1080p DLP TVs. My mind made up, I worked the three stores and ended up with the TV, a nice tilting wall-mount, and tax coming to $3,020 at Sears. Currently Panasonic is offering a $100 rebate on the set if you have Comcast hi-def cable, so that's a bonus too.

The set uncrated well, and it was a relatively simple job to hang it on the wall. I foolishly forgot to hook the cables up prior to hanging, but it's not to bad as long as your mount tilts. I opted to go with component video cables from the cable box, so my signal comes in through one of the video modes (which the TV allows you to label). So we're all mounted and hooked up.....

Wow.

Simply, wow.

If you've only seen hi-def at the store or in a bar, you have no idea what you're missing. Max res on this thing is 1080i with a 10,000:1 contrast ratio. When I say crisp, I mean it is crisp. We watched some World Cup football, a baseball game, and the film [i]Valiant[/i] in HD off the cable, and it was just breathtaking. Even watching non-HD channels looked good, certainly better than the trusty Sony downstairs. Per the website I mentioned above, I made all the necessary adjustments for break-in, and the picture got that much better. I had the manual open, but the menus are so intuitive, the manual really isn't mandatory.

The only real let-down is the remote. On the plus side, it will control the cable box, but it seems really rudimentary compared to the TV. I'd like it better if it was backlit, but hey, it's just the remote.

The TV's got some nice features. It'll accept SD cards, so you can view photos from a camera that uses that medium. The speakers are surprisingly good. Sure, they don't replace a decent surround system, but for normal viewing they're just fine. There are two HDMI inputs, which means you can have a hi-def connection to the set with a single cable. And let's face it, it just looks cool having a 50" plasma hanging on the wall in your living room.

This is one purchase that there's definitely no buyer's remorse about.