My dad has been a TV tech for 30+ years. He's one of the most well-known big-screeen techs in the area (not a big circle I imagine, but still...) and is one of the only factory certified techs for warranty work on several brands in the Seattle area. He gets called to go sit on movie sets that have big-screen TVs in shoots just to make sure nothing goes wrong with the TV while they're shooting. He knows his stuff.
He's given away a few LCDs and plasmas that didn't get authorized for warranty repair so he fixed them himself and gave them to me and other friends.
He only owns DLPs.
If I was spending my own money to buy one right now, that's where it would go. But he told me not to buy anything for now, and wait for the new organic panel displays that are being developed. I haven't seen one, but he said they're amazing and should be long-term reliable.
Grain of salt: Obviously repair issues aren't a big concern for me or him, so that may play a small part in the preference for DLP. The cost of repair and the relative chance of needing repair/fine-tuning on a DLP system is probably the biggest drawback that I can see for anyone not in my unique situation.
The biggest gripe he has about about LCD and Plasma is that there are very few serviceable parts if something goes wrong. Except for Wii controllers smashing displays, the biggest failure of LCDs is the ballast for the display light burning up. It's a fairly routine job, but the parts can be expensive if you're just an average joe. Anything other than that means it's time for a new one because parts + labor is more expensive than buying new.
