Help me find a new TV

You will be best served by going to local box stores and letting your own eyes be the judge then come home do some online research on this site, amazon, cnet and such. then get the best deal you can. Keep up with prices for whatever the price guarantee time of said retailer is. Then never look at prices for that model ever agian. or you will be pissed. Post on this forum once to tell how you like it and leave forever to enjoy your tv. Or come here every day as many of us do only to question your tv and your eyes everyday for the rest of your life.. JK
Good Luck

If you have room to go 46/47" you can most likely find a display with better black levels...most 42" displays tend to be entry/mid level and although you can probably find something you like in a 42" your choices are much more limited.

Size matters and matters far more than you may realize/understand as it is what provides the WoW Factor via viewing distance immersion.

If your source content is HD then go minimally to a 46" as a 40-42" is not going to deliver IMMERSION and that is what makes you go WoW!

I view a 60" Samsung D8000 from 9' and it's too small and will replace with a 70" plus in the near future and some folks have an 80" at 9-10'.

Seriously, 46" minimal - I also have a high end 55" upstairs and a 40" Sony in the Master Bdrm that looks great but can NEVER match the WoW factor of my larger panels as it simply cannot deliver on immersion factor. At one time I went from a 47" Sharp 6 yrs ago to a massive 57" Sharp and the difference was dramatic with those 12 inches and it had WoW factor that never went away whereas tyhe smaller 23" Kitchen, 32" and 47" now in my basement could not come close to the WoW factor of the larger 57"-60" panel. The 40" will give you a great PQ but rarely give you that HT WoW that is addictive to many! Enjoy!

Simply audition what works for you and your budget though it's likely going to cap out at a 46" - the good news is they are BIG and really cheap today - my original 23" Sony LCD in my kitchen 8 yrs ago was $1700 on sale - my 47" was $3800 and 57" was $6500 on sale 6 yrs ago and today you can easily buy a 60" for less than the 23" that still serves me well but early adopters can get ill looking back at TV pricing and if only our Autos would drop in price like our TV's.

Samsung 46EH6000.

Enough said.

Number 5 on your list is a lcd killer. If you are picky about black levels and light bleed, you need a plasma. Go with Samsung. Since you are playing xbox, Samsung has a more durable panel as far as IR goes.
http://www.samsung.com/us/video/tvs/PN43E450A1FXZA

I owned plasma for years. I just bought a new edge lit led but my price range was $1500-$2500. Your requirements limited to your price range will ultimately disappoint you. If you want larger, Sams Club has a nice Sammy in 51" for around $500.

An LED is a LCD. At the moment the only two flat panel technologies produced are plasma and LCD. OLED soon to follow.

Some people prefer the look of lcd (either fluorescent or led) to plasmas. LCD's generally have more pop, while plasmas generally have the better black levels and off angle viewing.

I took a look at http://reviews.cnet.com/best-33-42-inch-hdtvs/

and see they rated the Panasonic plasma TC-P42UT50 first and the Samsung LED UN40EH6000 (recommended by a poster above) third. They are about the same price, around $800. To get deep blacks on this particular panny you'll have to turn the lights down, as it doesn't have features of the higher end pannies which allow it to retain blacks better in a lighter environment. It's rare to find a plasma this small.
The Samsung EH series is very good on many fronts but I've heard it's blacks are somewhat lacking and, if you're not sitting directly in front of it the picture suffers.

Note the EH series is not exclusive to Canada, eh

I think that all LED back lit LCD's in your size range will be "edge lit". Which means no local dimming which means OK black levels at best. If I were looking for a 42-47 inch LCD I would not care how it was back lit but only critique screen uniformity, black levels, and off angle picture degradation. For the plasma to compare it would need to be bright enough for your environment and present no bad screen reflections. Pick the best LCD and plasma and make your choice.

I would also recommend the Panasonic TC-P42UT50 if you are looking for a plasma, and the Samsung UN40EH6000 for an LED...it depends on the brightness of the room and which set you can find a better deal for.

As I've heard, all the Samsung EH series are backlit, not edge lit. So they will have good uniformity and will be thicker from front to back. They don't have local dimming, which is very costly anyways.

Incidentally someone just posted in the EH6000 thread that they returned an eh6000 because it had a bad case of motion blur and poor blacks. He got an eh6700 instead (which has 3D and is bundled with a bluray player), and no motion blur or poor blacks. Is the 6700 better than the 6000, or was that particular 6000 just defective? Unknown. Cnet seemed to be less than impressed with the 6000 they reviewed, so perhaps they too got a bad one as well.

the EH series is like full array but with fewer LEDs... as such, it can still suffer from uniformity issues (but not as bad as the edge-lit ES series)

discontinued... 42" 1080p plasmas just don't sell that well, it's a shame

from CNET's review (http://reviews.cnet.com/flat-panel-tvs/panasonic-tc-p42ut50/4505-6482_7-35153391.html):

Series information: I performed a hands-on evaluation of the 50-inch TC-P50UT50, but this review also applies to the other screen sizes in the series. All sizes have identical specs and according to the manufacturer should provide very similar picture quality. Update 8/21/2012: The 42-inch size of this series is no longer available for sale.

if they have no dark screen filter, then yes the blacks washout in a well-lit room (UT50 falls in this category)

if they have a dark screen filter, then they perform like any glossy LED/LCD (ST50 and higher falls in this category)

Panasonic calls this feature "Infinite Black Pro" on the ST50 and GT50 and "Infinite Black Ultra" on the VT50 (the latter is even better).

I'm looking for something too. would prefer something in the 40-42" size, and would prefer LED to plasma (this will be my first LED, had plasma now for nearly 10 years) for energy efficiency and space savings. This is going to be a bedroom tv.

While having a nice set of apps, like netflix, amazon, vudu, etc. bundled, it isn't paramount. My main interest is IMAGE QUALITY in a room. We'll be about 6-7 feet away from the TV and I am super sensitive to image quality.

I've looked at the samsung ES6500 line, seems like a nice TV bout 850$ local or amazon (comes now with wireless keyboard and 2 sets of 3D glasses) but, from review it doesn't have the BEST image quality. Some even go back to 2011 models to get better quality in the D7000 or D8000 series.

Any thoughts about other systems in this size range. I'd prefer to keep the price below 1K$

I really like the JVC Black Crystal 32" set and I think the 42" would fit your criteria pretty well. I have heard that JVC is getting out of the TV business though, if that matters to you.