Pioneer PDP-4345HD

So like many of you reading this, I did countless hours of research before deciding on making the investment and jump to Hi-Def and flat panel. Before deciding on a plasma or an LCD, I had to get over the biggest misconception about Plasmas, burnout and setlife. After talking to a lot of sales reps and reading even more articles, I found out that burnout is no longer a huge issue with today's plasma sets and that set life is almost comparable to CRT's. Although LCD's are proven to last much longer than plasmas, I figured an additional one to two thousand dollars was not worth getting an LCD, especially when the image quality wouldn't match that of a plasma set. Now that I decided on plasma, I had to choose a brand. Having used to work at the advertising agency for Pioneer, I knew alot about the brand and knew that they were one of only a few companies to manufacture their own glass for their plasma sets. I was also a big fan of Sony's styling, but I knew that their quality in making CRT's wasn't matched in their plasmas. Panasonic, was also an option, but what they had in image quality, they lacked in overall styling. So I chose Pioneer for their combination of both. Another factor in going with a Pioneer is the fact that their sets were HDTV and not HDTV-ready, which meant I wouldn't have to worry about buying an additional HD receiver, eventhough my cable provider (Comcast) offered HD service through an HD cable box set, I just had to plug in my cable to the back of the included media box and BAM!, I had ABC, NBC, CBS, FOX, WB and PBS all in Hi-Def. But the biggest reason I ended up getting this set was that I was buying it from Costco (and at a really good price). Costco eliminates any need for an extended warranty, since you can return the set at any point if anything wrong ever happens to it. That's right, if this TV does burnout in ten years, guess what...I can get my money back. To recap, Pioneer quality + Costco price + Costco service = a pretty easy decision.