WEP is just as useless as MAC address filtering. Chances are, that if a person knows to change their MAC address to match yours, that they also know how to get your WEP key (in about 20 min, maybe more, depending on the amount of traffic). WPA2 or the less resource intensive WPA is a good wireless security solution.

As for the question about a hardwired connection into the router; Usually the MAC address filtering is just for the wireless connections. So, anything that you hardwire to the router is given full access.

BTW all this being said I just use MAC filtering because so far it keeps the neighbours out. You can usually check your router's DHCP list to see if it has leased out any IP addresses to any other computers.

The only way that you can really compare contrast ratios is by looking at different screens from the same manufacturer. If you see that a manufacturer has 2 different models, a 30,000:1 model and a 40,000:1 model; then the 30,000:1 model is clearly the lower end model. But, if a manufacturer has 10,000:1 and 20,000:1 model, then clearly the 20,000:1 is the high end model. But you still don't know if the 20,000:1 model is better or worse then the 30,000:1 model, since they're from different manufacturers. So, as the above poster said it pretty hard to compare between different manufacturers. I'd just look at other options, like number of inputs, screen size, border size, but most of all screen resolution and the included tuners.

I noticed that the Samsung doesn't have Coaxial Cable Inputs, so you won't be able to plug in a cable line directly (which means that you'll miss out on the free unscrambled digital channels and the "On Demand" channels that you neighbours are watching).