I haven't seen tons of flat-panel televisions but from what I have seen of the current stuff it looks like you can't really go wrong with an inexpensive set. A friend has a Vizio and the image quality looks just fine; I think most LCDs are very similar now days and they're all pretty much 'good' at this point regardless of price. You also just need to know how to setup the color and other stupid features and it'll look fine. I've got a $700 JVC that initially looked kinda ugly until I figured out to completely turn down the backlight setting to keep the picture from looking washed out and bright with no depth.

I'm glad we're done with tube televisions; those damn things vary so much that you could easily pick up an ugly screen but with today's LCDs they're very similar so you can't really go wrong unless maybe you're buying some crazy off brand in a shithole place for $200.