Help with plasma TV choice

Hi Frogman - if you know anything about it, you could probably do it yourself. I knew absolutely nothing about it. The guy did have a piece of equipment, but I believe all he was doing was confirming what he was doing with the remote. So no, I don't think the test equipment is necessary. You can also, by the way, calibrate it for a few different settings - he did two different TV settings for me, one daytime, and one nighttime, and also did a third setting specifically for my DVD player.

Hi Frogman - sorry if this gets posted twice, something weird happened on my end.

Basically, all of the sets, no matter what brand, are calibrated to look their best in the much darker environment of the stores. When you get them home, they will appear MUCH more bright and sharp in your room, too much so in fact, so be prepared for that (people will look almost etched onto the screen). What you will want to do, no matter which brand you buy, is have it professionally calibrated once it has been in use for 250 hours, I think it is (unless you already know how to do this yourself). I did this, and could not believe the difference it made. I watched the guy carefully and could do it myself in future. So don't worry about your windows, you can calibrate it so it looks ideal in your room.

As far as specific brands, I would choose the Panasonic (which I did). I'm very happy with mine, no issues whatsoever. However, if there are issues, their customer service beats Samsung by a mile. Also, once they are outside the store and in someone's home, I do have a preference for the look of the Panasonics - the Samsungs are a little too sharp in the home environment for me. The Panasonic's colors, again after recalibration, look more real and lifelike. Mine looks fantastic, and I'm sure you would be very happy with one. And FWIW, the sound on them is quite a bit better than the Samsung's, though since you are going to run it through a home theater set up, perhaps that won't matter so much. I don't have a home theater set up and don't run mine through my audio system, I figure I will save the tubes for audio!

I think you would be more comfortable in the long run if you bought shorter stands. Could you maybe trade them somewhere?