The first thing I will say before anything is, please go compare the TVs for yourself. What I like may be something that you absolutely hate. When I was buying this TV my wife and I set a budget. This was for our master bedroom and I was not going for the cream of the crop of TVs. I already have had the Sony 60" LCD for almost a year so I know what to expect when looking at HDTV and wasn't going to be WOWED by the beautiful picture since they all do look pretty darn good in HD. Another thing I would like to say is that the difference between this TV and the Panasonic is the difference is just users choice. I really couldn't see the difference between the two. Ok was the Panny's blacks a little blacker, sure, but not by some large difference.
I paid a little over $2500 at Circuit City for the TV which to me was great considering it was HDTV and not EDTV which was huge for me. Personally I have had very good success with Philips in the past which was a good thing to me. I was comparing it mostly to my Sony LCD and really like the deeper flesh tones it provided and the viewing angle was just great from everywhere you looked at it (to me one of the best features of Plasma). It had all the features I was looking for like HDMI, cablecard, etc. And the picture did look really good in the store and that was even compared to the $6000+ Pioneers.
Store appeareance only means so much to me, because it always looks different once you get it in your house under real lighting conditions and room size.
So for me, for the price, i feel I got a great TV and don't lose sleeping wondering if the Panny or any other one was really the better choice. So far there isn't anything that I feel is missing and I love the picture I get from it. I am sure I would be saying the same thing if i bought one of the other tvs as well.
Is there something special in a TV that you are looking for that your afraid that you might make the wrong decision?
In responsed to daniels1994 question. The black levels are much better than the Sony LCD that i have which i feel gives the place much more true to life color tones. Once again, for the price I paid, I think I got a good quality TV that may not be the best one out there, but can compete with alot of them