I'm looking at 50" Panasonic Viera too - which model did you buy?
We've got a 50" plasma Viera, and a 42" Viera I bought for M&D. They've had to have theirs repaired twice, at considerable expense, whilst ours is mainly used for Wii. We have a 50" Sony plasma as a regular set: it's the second Sony after the original blew up a power unit! It's OK but not brilliant
Best set we have is an LCD Loewe, only 32" but a brilliant picture and does all that we want, including inbuilt HD for recording (HD, of course!). We also have a couple of LG LCD's, which are better than we expected, with the general running down of LG that occurs in Australia. Early days, though, as they aren't used that much so far.
Best by far: Loewe LCD
But just a tad more expensive in Australia, unfortunately 