While LCD is often considered a good choice for brightly-lit rooms, what’s probably going to make the choice for you here is cost — larger LCD screens still tend to be much more expensive than plasma screens when you get over 40 inches, so a 50-inch LCD screen may simply be unfeasible for your budget when you compare it to the cost of a plasma screen of the same size. Plasma also tends to have much more vibrant colour, and its faster response time makes it much more attractive for those watching sports programming. The downside: it’ll use a lot more electricity than LCD.

As for the HD-DVD or Blu-ray battle, it’s really still too early to tell. Momentum keeps see-sawing between the two technologies, and there’s very little practical difference between the playback capabilities (both are now capable of 1080p playback). So you may want to simply buy a good upscaling DVD player for the time being, and wait for a proper Blu-ray/HD-DVD player later in the year or early next year. If you absolutely feel like you need one of the new players now, your best bet may be to head down to the place you buy your DVDs and see which titles are available in which format…you may find yourself drawn more to one than the other. And if you’re really stuck, you can always buy one of each…prices have fallen to the point where you can get both for under $1000. Tip: the most cost-effective Blu-ray player at the moment is the Playstation 3.