Samsung LN40A550 
$1,499 
A fab 40 that offers 95 percent of the Sony's performance (minus 120 Hz) in a smaller package for less dough.
Philips 42PFL5603D $1,399 
Dated industrial design and frustrating full-screen menus overshadow this 42-incher's touted 30-percent energy savings.
Sharp Aquos LC-46D64U $2,000 
A stately case cannot hide 46 inches of noisy picture and ugly menus.
Sony's LCD 46er aced our processing-evaluation gauntlet, cleanly displaying all SD and HD video we fed it — even film-style 24-frame-per-second sources. It adds interim frames to make up the difference between 24- and 60-fps sources and its native 120-frame refresh rate — without the visual artifacts we saw in other 120-Hz sets. Toss in stunning, accurate color and this LCD rendered our test Blu-ray — Spider-Man 3 — so beautifully we could almost ignore the flick's miserable plot. Almost.