Front projection or not?

You would be suprised at what you can get for $3000.00
Check out Videogon. You can get a great front projector for less than $3000.00

I will never buy a Typical television. RPTV or anything that is self contained. I will always stick with a projector. First off, it uses no real estate in your room. Nothing worse than walking into someones house and having this huge box taking up all of this floor space.
I personaly won't even have a TV in my living room. I don't think that it is the place for a TV. That is why I built a dedicated Theater room. I can control the lighting at any time of the day.
For $3000.00 you could buy one hell of a used front projector and a screen ( minimum of 96" ). Even have enough left over for a dish.
Most people just don't get it though. They don't understand how easy this is to put it all together and make it work.
They end up going to Best Buy or something like that and usually don't get what they paid for. And to make matters wors. Most people don't even know what a good picture really looks like. I can't tell you how many homes I have walked into, and the first thing I want to do is grab the remote and start calibrating their TV for them. And then they try to show off the free DVD player they got when the bought this piece of junk.
I would go for a minimum of a 96" screen. You don't have to use the whole screen if it is too much for you. As your eyes adjust to this new size, you could gradually increase you picture size.
Just some thoughts.

Well Doc, you are right. That is what I did. I built a dedicated room with my old trusty Sony 46" built into the front wall. Then I pull down the screen for DVD's

My old and trusty Sanyo LCD projector finaly died. I went over to VideoGon and picked up a Vidikron Crystal 1 LCD for $499.
It has Component , S-video and Composit.
This thing has a great picture for $499
I use it for normal TV viewing so I don't have to fire up the Theater system just to watch TV.
When I started doing this a couple of years ago, I knocked about $150 a month off of my electric bill.
I use 3 seperate stereo amps for my HT. You start adding everything up and between the electric bill and heating the basement. It seemd a little much.