Panasonic. In my personal opinion Samsung produces terrible quaility TVs.

I would stay from Panasonic. I had a 42" 1080p from them and it got burn in from less than 20 minutes of Super Mario Galaxy.

Panasonic makes best plasma tv's and they have longest lifespan.

LCD would be deferent story.

Get a sound system.  Speakers on flat panel televisions sucks anyway.

EDIT: Nevermind.  I was a dumb ass.

55" Sony A3000 SXRD here.

I have a samsung 32 inch, and panasonic 50 inch, and sony 40 inch tv in my house. I have had the panasonic plasma for about 3 years now and it still looks great. SO I would say go for panasonic ( my panasoinc cost me about $2500).

I just bought a Panasonic vt20 a few months ago from best buy and love it. I got it for $1800 with 3 pairs of 3d glasses, 2 3d blu-rays and a 3d blu-ray player (sold it, have a PS3). Recently I sent in a form and got a free 3d Avatar blu-ray from panasonic. I was worried about the burn in thing, this is my first plasma, so I treated it right the first couple of weeks. I never see any burn in and I use it a lot for gaming using my PS3. From reading the reviews my set has the best 2d and 3d picture, and it doesn't suffer from loss of resolution when there's movement on screen like with a LCd , it has 600hz refresh.

Electronic magazines constantly put Panasonic and Pioneer well above Samsung (and a lot else) at anything from the mid-price to the higher price range where TVs are concerned.

You should check out a website like Which for some pretty plain and honest reviews and customer feedback.

While I still choose LCD over plasma, when I was considering a plasma tv it was Panasonic based on all my research into that tech.

Why a Plasma set and not LCD/LED?

Anwyays; I'd go with Panasonic, they are the new Pioneer when it comes to Plasma TV's, Samsung have made all their bets on the LCD market the last few years.