I just went to Best Buy and spent a good while comparing many televisions. Upon talking to the sales guy, I'm now wondering if my best bet might be to go with a plasma....considering I don't game and usually just watch sports, tv shows, and movies.
That said, I liked this one:
http://www.amazon.com/Panasonic-VIERA-TC-P50G10-50-Inch-Plasma/dp/B001UAEWUS
Do you have any druthers...................plasma vs. lcd?
The plasma refresh rate is 600hz and this particular model is 1080p.
I bought a plasma. If I had to buy a TV today, it'd be LED or Plasma. The LED is really expensive, but they'll come down in price. In fact, I own a 58" Viera. I love the picture. The black frame kind of disappears in a dark room, which adds to the experience. The built in speakers suck, but I don't care since I use a sound system.
Check out the reviews on cnet. They have a "best picture" set of rankings and you can go from best to less best and find one in your price range.
I figure you are going to spend $1K+ and not going to want to throw the TV away in a couple of years to get something new. If the picture is great for 5-10 years, you can always upgrade the sound system, get DirecTV or whatever, to improve your experience.
http://reviews.cnet.com/flat-panel-tvs/panasonic-tc-p50g10/4505-6482_7-33497901.html?tag=mncol;lst
Panasonic TC-P50G10
The good:
Superb black-level performance with excellent shadow detail; highly-accurate primary colors and grayscale in THX mode; great color saturation; uses less power than previous 1080p plasmas; VieraCast provides access to select Internet services.
The bad:
Expensive; less-accurate green color decoding and secondary colors of magenta and cyan; limited light output in THX mode; skimpy picture controls; still less efficient than comparable LCDs.
The bottom line:
With excellent picture quality marred by only a couple of flaws, the Panasonic TC-PG10 series sits near the head of the class of 2009.
Specifications:
Product type: Plasma TV ; Diagonal size: 49.9 in ; Dynamic Contrast Ratio: 2000000:1 ;
See full specs
Rated 4/5 by cnet, 4/5 by 37 reviewers. Rated "Excellent"
3 HDMI inputs could be limiting if you have a satellite dish, and 3 game machines.