I guess that's what has been holding me back. Except for people who show me the HD channels, the picture on the LCDs always look bad to me, even in the darkened show rooms in stores. Blacks are dark grays, and on several sets I've seen using Dish Network in people's homes, the expanded image shows even more of the highly compressed "digital artifacts" (blocks of color, ghosting, etc.) We watch a fair amount of TV, but we often watch non-HD channels. My 36" Toshiba tube TV has a much better picture on non-HD broadcasts. I hate the expanded, deformed image when they are 'stretched' on the new TVs, yet when you turn that feature off, it seems like the image is smaller on a 42" than it is on my 36" TV. So I'm thinking I would have to go to a 50" or larger to get the same picture size. I think my 36" TV has a 4:3 aspect ratio, and the newer ones have a 16:7 like a movie screen.
We looked at TVs in Sam's Club or Costco, where they had them stacked with the manufacturer's LCD TV in front and the matching Plasma behind and above it, and it was obvious the Plasma had a better picture, in every case. The store probably had a HD feed, but even in HD, the blacks on the Plasma were truly black, and the blacks on the LCDs were dark grays. Other colors were just as different, with reds and blues much better looking on the Plasmas. But the screen on the Plasmas has more "reflections" on it because it is a high gloss like our picture tube TV.
If Verizon ever gets their FiOS installation on our side of town, we'll probably switch to them over Dish Network, and consolidate our phone, TV and Internet, and then spring for a new TV. Until I'm able to get HD content reliably, I don't think I would be happy with a LCD or Plasma TV.