The two best brands for HDTVs are Samsung and Sony. They win, hands down, for quality, reliability, workmanship and service. The only category that they don't win on is price; for price, Vizio is the current leader, but of course, you sacrific on the other aspects, especially reliability and workmanship.
LCD vs. plasma is a religious issue, these days, and we cannot talk about religious issues here.
Seriously, there are enough pro's and con's of each that you'll never get a clear delineation for the two, except in a couple of aspects:
Plasma has a much higher peak energy consumption than LCD; essentially it is a power-hog. So much so that most plasmas on the market today will not qualify under California's proposed ban on energy-hogging HDTVs:
http://www.dtvusaforum.com/home-theater-news-articles/2341-california-ban-hdtvs-2011-a.html
A lot of people feel that plasmas tend to have better video qualities, better contrast, more consistent color reproduction, etc. However, some people disagree, and many people feel that the difference is too slight to really worry much about.
An HDTV with a contrast ratio of 4000:1 isn't a great television, especially not for LCD or plasma. Many projectors (which have a much harder time achieving great contrast ratios) are providing 5000:1, and you'll regularly see LCDs and plasmas providing 10000:1. However, don't get caught up in the numbers. It is an engineering metric, with so many contravening factors that one HDTV with 5000:1 could be better than another with 10000:1. You just cannot what the contrast will actually look like with that number alone. (But you can tell a "cheap" television by the fact that the manufacturer didn't even invest the little bit necessary to get their device up to an impressive contrast ratio.)
Don't buy something with something else built-in. There is no guarantee that the two devices will age, both from a component perspective and from a technology perspective, at the same rate. It also makes dealing with a problem much more difficult.
