My parents are getting a fancy retirement condo in Florida. Part of this will include a big flat panel screen and fancy surround sound system. To make things tough, the condo will have lots of big windows with nice ocean views. That's great if you want to see the ocean, but it's a problem if you want to see the TV.

Dad's convinced that he doesn't need to get really big. He figures he'd be quite happy with a 40" screen of some kind, and he'd like a flat panel. Right now, the leading contenders is a 40" LCD panel from Samsung, then maybe a 40"-ish plasma of some sort, or maybe a rear-projection set of some kind.

If we were talking about a pitch-black room, a plasma or DLP rear-projector would almost certainly be the winner. However, it's going to be pretty bright in there. When I was last in a home theater store, the salesman helpfully had a flashlight which I was pointing at the screens while watching them. The LCDs had a nicely diffuse bright spot. The plasmas and rear projectors had bright pointed reflections. You could also clearly see yourself and everything else in front of the screen reflected from it.

Now, I know that LCDs cost more and don't have the same beautiful black levels you get from other technologies. However, I'm not convinced any of the other technologies can perform well in this environment.

- Anyone actually seen a 40" LCD in person? There's one from NEC and one from Samsung. The only big LCDs I've seen personally are a 34" from Sharp (clearly lacking in the black levels) and a 30" from Panasonic (truly beautiful, but too small).

- Anyone seem a plasma or other set that does a good job with reflections off the screen? All the plasmas that I've seen have shiny, reflective glass screens. My own rear-projection CRT set is also horribly reflective.

We have until maybe October of this year before they'll be ready to move in, so we can wait a little while, but not too long. (Any idea if bigger/better LCDs were shown at CES? I've heard there's a 42" Sony LCD coming soon.)