if its really that important - and you have money to BLOW, then i'd say go for it, it wouldn't hurt. but as far as the calibration that we normally do, we usually take almost all of the settings down. when you go to bb or cc to buy a tv, they crank off the settings waaay out of proportion.

the japanese did a study that even with the exact same tv, the tv with the brighter picture looks "better" to americans. turn your brightness down to like 30% because it will give you better blacks and extend the life of your tv. it will give you better blacks because tvs can not produce black - it is only the lack of color - so the brighter everything is, the more gray it will be. it will save the life of the tv because all of the little pixels aren't having to work as hard.

also, do not play video games on plasma's. they will burn static images into them (HUD's, Scores, etc.). most of the new plasmas have "addressed" this problem and it takes a little longer to do so, but it does not take long for an image to burn into the screen and ruin your new purchase.

as far as dvd players, i would highly recommend the DENON DVD-1910. We sell it for about $250 bucks but its a great dvd player. It outputs at 1080i, and all the lower quality resolutions. If you have a HD set, you need something with 1080i output. and spend the money on the hdmi cables, they are expensive - but they will give you the best signal.

if you want a little more quality, i would recommend the DENON DVD-2910, it has a little bit better processing and faster internals. It also is able to play SACD's, so if you have any, this one will play them.

im located in jacksonville florida for about another 2 weeks and then i'm moving back up to boston.

this is a little more technical that you care for, but check out the denon site for their exact specs on these 2 dvd players
http://www.usa.denon.com/catalog/pro...l=1&c=4#PID731

also, if you ever have any questions about any high end home products, check out www.ce-pro.com, it is a website/magazine who's purpose is to evaluate high end companies/products/systems and give you their exact technical brake down.

hope this helped.