I went through the same decision making process last month and opted for a 55" Panasonic ST55 Plasma. Of course, the sale price at the time helped but it's a really nice upgrade from my LCD Visio. Blu-ray movies are amazing, OTA viewing is so much better than cable, and video games are fantastic but I haven't tried out the 3D yet. I used the settings listed on CNET to setup the picture quality and it's pretty darn good - way better than the default settings which weren't all that great, actually they sucked, to be honest. Also, the newer plasma's don't heat up like the older one's and have improved with respect to energy consumption - not on par with an LED but still an improvement.