[Jeffhs]

You may not like the looks of flat screen televisions, but that's how they are built nowadays; the old style sets with heavy, real wood cabinets are relics of a bygone day we may never see again.

Have you thought of putting your flat screen in an entertainment center cabinet? Not necessarily one that raises and lowers the set (shades of Zenith's Space Screen 45 projection set of the early 1980s), but a cabinet that can hold the TV as well as your DVD and audio gear; some of these have doors you can close over the equipment when not in use, but they are rather large. A friend of mine has his TV and stereo equipment in a large, floor-to-ceiling cabinet (it fits since his family room has very high ceilings), and I personally have my small video setup (19" flat screen, VCR and Blu-ray player) installed in an old oak-finish woodgrain utility cart. My stereo gear is separate from the TV, with the main unit next to my computer and the speakers at either side of my desk. This is about the closest I'll come to having a large cabinet TV/stereo entertainment unit in my apartment, since the place is very small.

BTW and IMO, if you use your TV only 30 minutes a day, any flat screen you get should last years, despite the estimates that most flat screens last only two years due to the use of cheap parts, mainly power supply capacitors that swell and burst or outright explode. My 19" Insignia flat screen is just out of warranty and still works; I use the set about two hours a day, mostly watching DVDs and retro TV stations (there are three such stations in my area, two of which are subchannels of local network affiliates). Don't have much use for the major networks these days, except for news.