If you're looking at RPTV's I'd suggest to look at Toshiba's, Mitsubishi's, Panasonic's, & Pioneer's. Those 4 manufacturers make goor RPTV's that aren't terribly overpriced. I saw a rather nice 64" Pioneer at Costco a couple days ago for $2,599 I believe.
Projectors will probably be the way to go in a couple of years. DLP technology is like Plasma, they're getting better as we speak & the price is dropping everyday as well. But an HD capable DLP is going to be much more than $2,500 right now.
If you decide to go with a 16:9 CRT tube set I'd look at either Sony's 34" or the Loewe 30" Aconda. The 30" Loewe is the best looking CRT set I've ever seen. But you're going to have to get a deal on one to pick it up for $2,500.
16:9 HD sets will have line doublers built-in. If possible you should try watching a few things on different sets to seee how you like the doubler in them. You might also want to see if you can turn it off. If the doubler is having a hard time figuring out if the source material is video (30fps) or film (24fps) it'll flip back & forth between film/video modes when it's running the inverse telecine in the line doubling process. The result of that is an occasional jerking of the picture when it's picked the wrong source material type. The cause of a doubler doing such a thing is some DVD's are improperly flagged (or not flagged at all) as to what type the source material is. So if the processor in the doubler doesn't do a good job of identifiying improper source material it'll be switching back & forth. And in those cases you want to just turn it off.
Just re-read your post & noticed you wanted to know by a price/performance stand. You'd do best by looking at the Toshiba & Panasonic sets then.
Another thing to look at is quantity & type of HD inputs. But then you'll have to know what HD sources you'll use in the first place. You'll want to probably look at DVI inputs, as well as HD component inputs. VGA & RGBHV inputs most likely won't be as usefull as the other two.
