You may want to wait:
http://news.com.com/2061-10801_3-6124463.html
They will be under $1000 for a 42" and one guy who saw it in action describes it like this:
"It was fortunate to be at the launch party last night at the Sydney
Hilton. They started by showing some great imagery on a
traditional sony plasma, which was VERY nice.
that is, until they took the cover off the laser TV they had.
Granted, it was not a production unit (still water-cooled, for
example
and much deeper than the real version which will
hit the shelves for Christmas 07 (they used a gutted projection
TV for the housing...whereas the planned version will only be
approx 6" deep).
The laser TV made the plasma look like an old console colour
TV. It was so good,
the only way i could describe it was that it
looked like a wet photo in a developer tray - if you haven't done
photography, that may not mean alot. But the colour depth and
contrast, especially the space shuttle shots where space was
REALLY black, and you could see the gold foil crinkles in the
cargo bay, was amazing."
I was planning on getting either a Hitachi Plasma or a Pioneer plasma, but i think I am gonna hold off....I can wait a year.