Bright room, good integrated speakers...best choice

There really are no good sets with good speakers. This is why the majority are going with soundbars or avrs to feed the sound.

We still use our old 2-channel stereo for times that we want to listen to stuff that sounds lousy on the downfire speakers on our Panny Plasma.

To add, friends of ours ended up getting their living room windows tinted to cut down on the glare, due to they have a 65" DLP. Works like a charm and set looks good all the time. Even better at night, due to no drapes on that window.

unfortunately you can't get the brightest screen without sacrificing viewing angles. An LED lit lcd will be the brightest, with some sacrifice in off/angle viewing, while a plasma will have absolutely no off/angle problems with some sacrifice in maximum brightness.

I'd take a trip to a brightly lit tv showroom and take a look--you'll notice that the plasmas are a little dimmer, but ask yourself if they are in fact too dim in and of themselves and not just in comparison to the leds. You can also get an idea of which of the uber-bright leds have the best off-angle performance.

As for good speakers, no flat panel on the market is going to have what I'd consider good sound so just budget for a sound bar or other audio solution.

Good luck!

Steve, reason that the plasmas appear dim, is due to everyone dicking with the settings, or the store setting them for what they think is the best option. I have ours set to the best quality, and whether watching sports, movies on the Blu-ray, or tv on our U-Verse, the picture is better than it was out of the box, set at the default for the manufacturer.

When I worked for Sears about 10 years ago, we had no problems letting customers play with the settings on the tv. After they were done, we would set them back to a calibrated level for that set.

People are doing the same now, as they have been doing for years, when tube sets were all the rage. They are going for what fits their pocketbook, rarely will they purchase a higher end set, unless they have either schooled themselves, or have a person doing the selling that steers them to the best set for what they are looking for.

I work in an over-bright tv showroom now. All the sets are in torch mode because the vast majority of buyers equate pq solely with maximum brightness. The remotes are available near the sets so customers can adjust the sets but again most customers are totallly unaware that adjustments even exist. I had a lady yesterday ask if the color intensity on a Sharp led could be reduced!

It is also your job to educate them and show them that there is something that will fit their budget. We did it at Sears, but never set for "Torch" mode. Another guy & I would take the time first time in the morning to readjust the flatscreens, so that we could actually show people what they are getting for their money, vs. just emptying their pocketbooks, and having them come back with a return.

I think that in the whole time I sold sets, we had only one return on flatscreens, and that was due to it was defective out of the box when it got set up at the customer's house.

Believe me, I do make a sincere effort to educate my customers. Many compliment me, saying they learned more from talking to me for 20 minutes than from anywhere else. I showed the lady that thought the Sharp's colors were too intense how to turn the color control down to her taste, she bought the set. I'm always showing people how to adjust sets to get rid of the graininess induced by too high a sharpness setting, how turning up the brightness doesn't make the set brighter but just washes out blacks, etc.

My comment when confronted with the "but this one is brighter" line is to say yes, it is, but do you really need the set to be that bright in your home, which is probably not lit up like Death Valley at high noon?

My job is to sell tvs. If a customer expresses an unshakable desire for the most retina-burning oversharpenned Soap Opera-like picture possible I point them in the right direction (usually a Samsung LED). If they are open to a little (or a lot of) education on how to get the most accurate reproduction of source material then they get it.