It's a good price. How much better though? You tell me.
It's an obsession with value for money. It just so happens that that's where plasma is king.
Did you go out and see one yet? OR are the thoughts of more pollution when being disposed preventing you?
In fact I went out and had a look at various TVs in great detail. Unfortunately I did not see the PS51D550, only the 450 and 490. IMO, even the 5 series LED and LCD are miles ahead. LED more so but it comes at a cost, so does the 6 series, but again it comes at a cost. 50Hz on the 5 series was not an issue, only a disadvantage for HD sports.
What I found absolutely offputting was the glare and reflection on the series 4 plasma. 2 HDMI ports suck too, having to switch cables the whole time would drive me nuts after a while. Then, I could clearly see a difference between the 720p series 4 plasma and other full HD TVs, once you switched to a FHD source.
The 51D490/450 is a HUGE display. With 1366*768 pixels that's a pixel density of 30.73 PPI. The 430 (and possibly 450) which have a resolution of 1024*768 have a pixel density of 25.1 PPI, even less! That's not a lot of pixels per inch... Sitting at 2 - 2.5m this really bothered me. For comparism, the 46 FHD LCD or LED has a pixel density of 47.89 PPI.
The colours on the 4 series Plasma where more accurate than the 5 series LCD and LED but I really did not like them. To me they just seemed dull. I tested this with the same source and using different settings. A higher series Plasma was a different story.
Grow up and realise that your opinion is not the only one that counts. Just because you don't care about certain issues does not mean they are not important to others. And it certainly does also not mean that your opinion counts more. Disposal is not important to me personally but it may well be important to others, that's why I pointed it out. On the other hand I do care about energy consumption.