[darkpuppet]

my 2 cents (plus or minus a $130 consulting fee)....

The aquos is nice... but I wouldn't buy it.. it's big and expensive, and it's not particularily the best technology out there. It's old school LCD... which means, not the greatest response time (not that it matters for TV really), it's traditionally backlit if I recall correctly which means it's going to look best the 1st day you buy it and slowly work down to the brightness specified by the half life of the flourescent tubes backlighting the thing.

So you don't start off with the best contrast ratios, you'll lose color gamut, and it's not the brightest TV either...meh...

if you want LCD tv's I'd wait for LED backlit ones to come down in price (30" is like 40k).

Staying away from plasma is a good choice. They're a transitional TV that consumes a lot of power, suffers from burn in... bleh

I would recommend either the 6th generation DLPs that samsung has, or the Sony SXRD. SXRD/LCoS TVs are the next generation of pimp.... and the prices have finally come down to where one could actually afford one.... but you can get a 1080p 6th generation DLP for nearly half the price... and with the faster color wheels, it's unlikely you'll notice any rainbow effect, and the response times and (already stellar) black levels have improved even further.

one word on projectors
to get the equivalent picture quality out of a projector, you'd have to invest in an expensive LCos orDLP projector, and then a proper silver screen to display it... and that means you save no money over getting a self-contained rear projector.

So there you have it. I get the feeling your house isn't short on space, I'd recommend looking at the 70" DLP or SXRD.