black friday and pre-superbowl are usually when the best deals are.
order online. you can get them cheaper than what you would from circuit city/best buy and most places. alot even offer free shipping. crutchfield.com is a good place, good prices, free shipping, good customer service. just stay away from some of the "too good to be true price" places, check them out on resellerratings.com.
if you do buy from a B&M store, try to haggle. alot of places will drop the price some. take ads from other places, or print outs from online places. they may not match them, but they most likely will cut you a deal if it means you buy from them and not someone else.
and use your credit card, most credit cards have a thing where they will double the manufacturer's warranty. call your credit card company to find out more.
as for make, i'd recommend toshiba, it's what i got. and i love it. nice balance of price and features/pic quality. the main reason i went with toshiba though is i visited a few hdtv forums and did searches of the major name brands, sony, samsung, sharp, toshiba, and toshiba had the least amount of topics of people having problems with them.
gl with whatever you choose and have fun with it.