My mind is all spinny with lcds and I'm only wanting a 26 or whatever inch. Prices vary so much, and I know a lot is based on cable-quality tv, which I don't have. And then there is the issue of if I need a proper antenna for over the air...

I love my Vizio 37". It's a fabulous TV, and their customer service is great. It's a lot of bang for the buck, IMO. I wouldn't pay more for another brand. Bonus on the Vizio: 2 HDMI inputs that are easy to get to.

From Vizio's site:

VIZIO products are available at valued partners including WalMart, Costco, Sam’s Club, BJ’s Wholesale, Sears, Circuit City, Dell and Target stores nationwide along with authorized online partners.

You can get a full 1080p 37" for $700 (or less, depending upon the retailer). We bought ours from Costco since they have a 90-day return policy and extend the manufacturer's warranty for an additional year.

sara, if the tv you eventually decide on won't fit in the car, let me know. I'll come up with the beast and schlep it back to your house for you. You're also more than welcome to take advantage of my Costco membership. (This goes for you too, Jess. TV's can be ordered from costco.com.)

Is it worth paying extra for a Samsung or Toshiba even if we have to go down a size?

I looked pretty closely at a lot of TV's as we've purchased both a 46" LCD and a 40" LCD in the past few months. Both of them are 1080p and both of them are Samsung. The image quality was better to my eye and the contrast ratio was much better (Our 46" has LED backlighting so the contrast ration is 500,000:1, almost as good as high end Plasma TVs). The cheaper 40" is also quite good. I picked up the 40" for $799 during the holidays which for a 1080p Samsung was an amazing deal.

I'd say go with a name brand. The different can be felt in the user interface on screen and in the remote as well as in the level of control that you have over the picture.

Contrast ratio is REALLY important for me because my living room has a lot of glare. (I love my big windows, except when I want to watch TV in the afternoon.)

Hrm. I should probably just get my butt down to J&R next weekend and look at the screens in person.

I also have to figure out if it's worth upgrading our current A/V reciever to one w/HDMI, or just use it for audio and patch the HD video sources into the TV directly. (We have a Harmony remote, so having to switch multiple inputs isn't an issue.)

The AV receiver was the thing that gave me the most headaches when I got my HDTV.

I picked the simplest thing I could find. I ended up with something that was both too powerful for my small apartment (the subwoofer is huge, and I keep it turned way down so as not to annoy my neighbors), and it has too few audio inputs than I might need in the future.

My current one does great for my setup now, and the only difficulty in switching to an HDTV that I can see is it only has one optical audio input, so I'd have to choose between the TV and the DVD player. (I'll also need a new DVD player b/c my current one doesn't upscale, but that's an easy switch.)

Ideally, I'll keep the speakers I have now and just patch them into a new receiver if I do decide to go that route. Otherwise rewiring everything will be kind of a nightmare.

This looks pretty perfect, and the price is right.

Does it have a coax digital audio input? Mine has one of each, so the optical audio comes from the DVD player, and the coax audio comes from the DVR.

Yup - 2 digital optical and 1 digital coax.

There are also a few others at that price point with HDMI passthrough, which might be easier to connect. I'll have to think about it.