I'm looking to buy a new TV set. I went to BestBuy the other night and the sales person recommended a DLP one because of picture quality and price. He said LCDs are just too expensive and plasmas have limited life and their screens will start burning as soon as they come out of boxes. Is it really worth it to spend $2K to buy a DLP? Will there be a major price drop? My original intention was to buy a plain old Sony trinitron but everyone says it's too outdated.
I certainly recommend staying away from plasma, unless you have a specific application that plasma is suited for (my brother chose plasma because he did not have room in his urban Chicago condo for rear projection, and didn't want to deal with the light control necessary for front projection). DLP and LCD each have their advantages. I believe the current consensus amongst enthusiasts is that DLP has the technological edge. I recently saw a LCD rear projection screen from Sony that looked pretty sweet to me, FWIW.
If I were to choose projection, I'd go for a front projector with a screen versus a rear projector set. Oh, and never trust anything that comes out of the mouths of the sales guys at Best Buy. Or Circuit City, Sears, CompUSA, etc etc.
Regular flat panel LCDs are still prohibitively expensive, but the LCD rear projection and the DLP rear projection both seem about the same to my eyes. DLP supposedly does a better job with movies, but I don't know. I don't think you can go wrong with either one. There are fewer limitations with DLP and LCD rear projection than there are with the older school rear projection sets (which I hated). They're not nearly as bulky or heavy, and don't have the brightness issues. No, it's not an LCD flat panel, or front projection (which can get really expensive, and really good), but it's a good value. I'm still a fan of CRT sets, like the widescreen Sony Wegas. They still do the best job in terms of keeping up with motion (sports!), but they still big, bulky and heavy as hell. And you can't really go bigger than 34" or 36" with them. Up-and-coming TV technologies will be out next year, and it will be even tougher to keep up with them - like LCoS (Liquid Crystal on Silicon) and the one I'm most looking forward to - SED (surface-conduction electron-emitter display), which has the brightness and contrast of a CRT but uses 1/3 the power of a Plasma! Must win lotto....must win lotto....
I have a DLP and am really pleased with it. I have it in a very bright room in my house, so I sometimes have to up the brightness, which of course causes the black level to suffer. But blacklevels during daytime aren't a big deal to me. This is a problem for all non Plasmas and CRT's though. DLPs have had major price drops already. So don't count on that. DLPs get you great size and tech for the $. My dad, though, just got a 36" LCD (not projection) and he really likes it. But size per dollar in that is way too rich for me. The other thing is DLPs rock for HDTV and Xbox.
I think most of the manufacturers are moving into DLP as a compromise between plasma and CRT. Except for Sony, whose well-liked Grand Wega series are LCD rear projection. Its tough to tell the difference between the two types, even with deep blacks. The key point of confusion though is often that rear-projection LCD is not the same as flat-panel LCD. The former competes with DLP, and its larger than a flat-panel TV but not nearly as expensive. Flat-panel LCD competes with plasma.