Buy LED, LCD or Plasma

My sincere thanks for all the well thought responses. My five year old Sony Grand Wega has a failing optical block, lots of blue showing at right and bottom with all content. Sony is no help even though countless forums are filled with customer complaints on this issue.

Repair could easily run $1100.00, so that's not going to happen and right now I can't reward Sony with another TV purchase. The Grand Wega has always been rolled up against the left wall for music and pulled between the speakers for movies.

Mounting above the fireplace could be a reasonable resolution to all problems and may even help sound since the TV wont be next to my left speaker.

Several of you made points I had concerns for and some I had not even considered. The viewing distance close and far is 12' and 17'. I've looked at several brands at stores, fortunately most were using DTV or Blue Ray so I had good HD quality signal.

So far I'm impressed with Panasonic V10 Plasma 58" and the Samsung LCD Un55B8500 55". Both are excellent but very different as many here have posted.

SAMSUNG LED

Have you considered a front projector?

Unsound,

Front projector would be great except I read they are not good to run continually and this is the main TV.

With few exceptions, front projector screens don't do well with light on them and the center of my living room has a skylight that's about 8 X 17 feet.

At night you don't know it's there but probably a problem for front projector in daylight and if my wife is home a TV will be on.

PJ isn't for you then. There are some ingenious movable mounts that might deal with the height/placement issue. Here's a good guide for choosing appropriate size for distance: http://myhometheater.homestead.com/viewingdistancecalculator.html
Please note the guide is based on 1080i, with 1080p you can actually go a bit bigger.
As a value driven consumer, if I were buying a set other than a PJ today, this is what I would get: http://reviews.cnet.com/flat-panel-tvs/panasonic-tc-p65s1/4014-6482_7-33490537.html?tag=contentMain;compare

There are better sets, but I don't think there are much better values for a close to appropriate sized set. The current BB price is a good as I've seen yet.

Good luck!