After a lot of (wasted) research I bought a Panasonic 42 plasma a couple of months ago and it' - it was a TX model and I am very pleased with it - cost less than £550. I spent months agonising over LCD v. Plasma, Samsung v. Sony, etc but at the end of the day it came down to which picture looked best my eyes and which sounded best to my ears May be too simple but just try it. BTW I had a LCD Samsung previously and never had any problems with it - picture was great although sound wasn't so hot
LCD Samsungs from August 2006-September 2007 models, have a tendency to blow out one of the 10v 2200uF capacitors. Makes the TV unable to turn on, just a heads up.
You're not supposed to touch it with a stick. You're supposed to watch moving images of a quality vastly superior to LCD on it.