Since you're in San Pedro you can check out Pacific Sales in Torrance. They're owned by Best Buy and can get anything Best Buy has but at a lower price.
With a lot of ambient light I'd make sure the screen you do get has a matte finish to cut down on reflections.
We have two Sony's, 46" and 52". My wife bought the Geek Squad tune-up/tweak when she and my daughter bought the 52" for me for Xmas a couple years ago.
I highly recommend you get it or at least get a tune-up disc. The difference in picture, out of the box vs tweaked is really amazing.

I'm a computer-A/V tech, I do my own tweaking... oh wait.... no, NO THAT IS NOT WHAT I MEANT! :p

Just bought 51" Samsung plasma at Costco $599. It fit our recess in bedroom with 1" to spare. Can't beat it for the price.

Vizio makes a good TV for the money, but after 5 years, ours took a dump. Costco gave us a full refund after trying to get Vizio to replace it.

Costco has since revised their policy on returns but I will still purchase there.
Have a Best Buy just down the street but will never buy anything there.

Vince

I have a 42" Samsung plasma that was the best I could buy 10 years ago. It's still working great and has a geat picture. I want to replace/upgrade, but I can't justify it. If I do replace, it'll be with another Samsung.

when our 50" Toshiba projection TV died, my wife and I debated long and hard plasma vs LCD. Going to the store, I really wanted an LCD but when I started looking at them we decided the extremely bright screen of an LCD did not offset the great blacks of the Plasma.

In the end, we went with a 60" Smart 3D Panasonic Plasma. I am very happy with the results.