Help Haku Find His Dream TV!

Well, since I'll be moving back in with my dad for a while, and I currently have no furniture to speak of, my dad is spending some money to have the media room redone into another bedroom. Anyway, one of the things he wants to do is get me a new TV, while passing my 19" Westinghouse to my younger brothers. I'm really excited about getting a bigger and better TV, but I'm pretty clueless as where to start. Things have changed since 2005, and I haven't been keeping up with the improvements and what's good in regard to today's standards. Anyway, I might as well tell everyone what I'm generally looking for:

I want a fairly decent sized TV, since the room is fairly large, and I'd like to not have to sit six inches from the screen. I'd be happy with anything larger than 32", but I'm probably aiming for something larger than 37", but smaller than 50". 1080p with two or more HDMI hookup's is mandatory for me, since I'll be gaming on it a lot, and will probably be trading his 360 in for one with a HDMI port. Not to mention VGA and DVI hookups for my laptop and PC. As of right now, I probably won't be able to pick up external speakers for the TV, so decent built-in speakers would be nice. Now, here's the killer. I would not like to spend a tremendous amount of money on the TV, but I'm not for sure about the price range yet. I know for a fact that my dad's going to choke if I show him a $1000 TV, so something that's not going to cause my dad to keel over with a stroke.

Anyway, if any of you could recommend brands, what to look for, and other things of that nature, that would make researching this a lot easier.

$500-$749.99

$750-$999.99

Those are the only price ranges below $1000 that will have 1080p. Enjoy your search =D.

TVs tend to come out in generations, often without too much in the way of improvement, more or less as a way of keeping up with aesthetic trends and making sure costs stay up. If you go for something a generation or two old, it'll probably be about as feature-rich as anything else and will work fine for you, but for less money.

One of my friends just bought a TV that supposedly has the fastest refresh rate on the market currently. I'll ask him what brand it was.