Undecided HDTV Shopper need good advice to choose TV.

You can get a 54" panasonic g10 for under $2k. Plasma is best for movies and sports... LCD's have motion blur, so that is bad when watching sports; poor blacks unless you go for LED LCD and that is out of your budget, even then plasmas still has better blacks.
Plasmas have the best PQ. Cheaper per inch then LCD's. Plasmas have near 180? viewing angle with no PQ image drop, LCD's PQ drops off as you move more and more of angle.

For future tv's... Everything is out, you just many see larger version of the current models... Like panasonic is releasing there 58" & 65" tv in a few weeks but the smaller version of the same model are out now. Sony releases there 'top of the line' large model sets around this time of year.

Given what you say you watch the most of I suspect you will be most happy with a Plasma, better picture for movies and sports. I know how you feel, I took almost a year to make the decision, I was not really in a hurry as I had a great tube TV, so I took my time and gathered a lot of opinions, read reviews and watched both LCD and Plasma sets at friends.

In the end the plasma won hands down, the one downside was not an issue for me, and that is they tend to have more glare with bright light, but by the time I went to get one most had anti-reflective screens, still not as good as LCD but well in to the range that normal room daylight conditions were not an issue any more, and low light conditions are stunning.

The g10 meets your budget you might want to check them out, I have the prior year model so I can't speak directly to the G10 except all I have heard is they are even better than prior year.

I have also been very happy with Panasonic, especially after reading this forum and the experiences of people with at least 2 of the other leading brands, you can't miss them if you flip through the messages on here, just look for the set you see the least issues reported on and those you see the most.

Pioneer is another good one but I think the Panasonic might fit your budget a little better and I don't know about the new Pio's but the model year I looked at did not have as good blacks and clean whites.

Good Luck! I have been very happy with the Panasonic and if I was getting a new set that is what I would buy again for what it is worth.