"Is it true they are still only good for about 2 years"
where did you come up with this? Try adding a 0 to that, 20 years is more like it. An LCD TV with average to heavy use could easily last 20 years. After that all you need to do is change out the backlight and it should be good for another 20 years. The only problem being it will be very outdated in 20 years, and the backlight would cost as much as a new highly advanced super HDTV then. LCD is amoung the most reliable TV technolgy's on the market today. It will not give as good of a picture as CRT, or use up a large amount of power and heat your entire house like plasma-but its a great technology and one that is proven to work. read the
www.avsforum.com to find out everything you need to know about each type of TV, become a member and start asking quetsions. You need to really know what you getting into before you purchase a TV these days, you could easily make a $5000 or $10,000 mistake. In the end make sure you feed your HDTV and HD signal, because anything less is not HD!