Well, few months back I got confused when I saw so many LCDs of Sony, Hitachi, Philips, Samsung Sansui. I visited many showrooms and what I discovere that in one showroom I found Samsung as the best and in other Sony was the best, if you get confused obviously most people would end up with Sony. But then I realised dealers promote one or the other brand and they keep that unit in best settings.
So, I jumped into a shop and got the remotes of all LCDs and when I set all of them on same brightness, sharpness level, it was a minute job for me to go for hitachi. Shopkeepers will tell you about so many factors, but only two are important Contrast ratio and response time, the time taken between the result on screen and when the button is pressed. This is how I decided and its been six months no problems.
Till then there are new models but you can use the same approach to decide about a LCD.