There's such a wide choice of LCDs available, we thought you might need some help working out which is best for you. So here's a guide to the features you should look out for.

Screen Size
Resolution
Contrast Ratio
Weight
Inputs
Sound
Price!

 Screen Size

To get the most out of your investment, remember what your mother always said about sitting too close to the TV-that it's no good for you. Well, she might have been thinking about your health, but we're thinking about your viewing pleasure. For the optimal viewing experience, you need to maintain the right distance between your viewing area and your television screen.

Determine the right screen size based on your budget and your floor plan.

The right distance depends on the size of your TV:

• For 20 to 27-inch displays, you should be able to watch comfortably from 2.5 to 5 feet away.
  
• For 32 to 37-inch TVs, you should sit back 6 to 8 feet from the screen itself.
  
• For 42 to 46-inch TVs, you'll need 10 to 14 feet between you and the screen.
  
• 50-inch LCD displays look best when viewed from 12 to 16 feet away.
  

Until now, LCDs have been more common in smaller sizes (27" and less). One reason is that quality-control issues have long limited display size: Increasing the size of an LCD panel means adding pixels and three transistors for each additional pixel. It also makes distributing the light evenly more difficult, which, in turn, interferes with color reproduction. This is why colors may appear slightly off or faded in LCD TVs larger than 37".

New factories are coming online in Japan and Korea that can mass-produce the super sized sheets of glass embedded with transistors that are necessary to achieve large-scale LCDs. All of which means you'll be seeing larger flat-screen LCD displays with increasingly smaller price tags. Samsung and LG recently unveiled 55" prototype LCD TVs at this year's Consumer Electronics Show. The price of these panels has yet to be disclosed, and you probably shouldn't expect to see them for sale (at any price) in the US any time soon. After all, the vast majority of LCD monitors sold in the US are 20" or smaller. So, if you're choosing purely based on flat-panel display size, Plasma is still clearly the better choice.

Note: Some audio-visual critics have observed that fixed-pixel displays tend to show their pixel structures at closer viewing distances, so one might notice a sandy texture to the screen when the set is viewed too close. This underscores the importance of maintaining an appropriate viewing distance between you and your LCD monitor when configuring your viewing area.

 Resolution

If you're one of the millions of households that can now receive HDTV signals, your LCD TV will enable you to take advantage of the slightly better (10-15%) picture you can get from a higher resolution unit displaying HDTV broadcasts.