That's a good point, Mort. I tell people who ask me about buying a flat screen not to worry about if prices will be lower next year. I ask them, do you want to have a TV now, or wait a year?
I would say conversly, why buy something that is not of great use now to you if you can wait? In the computer industry, there is not much point in purchasing more power than you need (ie: future proofing), since prices fall so rapidly and power increases two fold every year. Even in Highly computationaly demanding applications, it is some times less expensive to buy a new workstation every year, to keep up with needs, rather than investing in a server to try to meet needs five years from now. This is enhanced by the fact that deploying a workstation can be a matter of weeks, while a server can take months to be fully usable.
In the case of flat panels, if you don't see the need for a tv right now, why not wait? So what is panel prices go up $100? The electronics, scalers, etc are falling just as rapidly. Also, the panel price increase is only a short term thing. Manufacturing capacity is increasing, the Flat panel volume (worldwide) is not expected to peak until 2011 or later. So even if the US market becomes saturated, Europe, Asia, etc will be rapidly adopting units, keeping costs low. In fact, a few Tier I Japanese manufactures are expected to start assembling units in Mexico, which will significantly reduce logistical and labor costs... which will translate into lower cost units in the stores. In addition, R&D is continuing at a rapid pace, so color quality, brightness, etc will continue to improve.
Nope, the only reason you should by a flat panel, at any time, is if YOU want it. Otherwise, fence sitting just continues to give you better and better options and lower prices.
Which all means, by the way, that I disagree that LCDs have (or ever will have) reached the rock bottom prices.