"But in the darkened test room, the black bars on letterboxed discs didn't melt into its black frame as completely�and nearly invisibly�as on the Pioneer." The key is in the cave environment, the pioneer is great, no doubt. But in a real family room environment with (gasp) windows, the pioneer just sucks with mirror reflections to boot. I just cannot even consider plasma in a bright room, your mileage may vary.

You Kuro people are such cave dwellers. Yes, the Kuro looks wonderful in a dark environment. Back in the real world, us plebeians prefer a tv that can be seen in a more human environment with actual windows that unfortunately require a brighter picture that does not act like a mirror. Imagine that! Even the diehard LCD camp is split between glossy and matte screens. If I had a dedicated dark movie theater, I would buy a projector though and OLED's will replace both LCD and Plasma soon enough anyway.