Not sure if your brother has a lemon or not, but I would have to disagree with you totally on them being $hit. I would definately not purchase a SONY since the picture usually sucks and Sonys are very high priced and never rate worth a crap on CNET. Samsungs are great, best bang for the buck IMHO. I have a 73 inch Mitsu in my theater room and it blows the sony picture out of the water. I used to be a sony fanboy also, until over the last couple years their picture is terrible compared to their price. Panasonic makes the BEST plasma for the money, unless of course you want to find a Pioneer Elite Kuro floating around used.
I wasnt going to comment in this thread, but couldnt resist with the comment you made.