Pros: Low cost, none of the drawbacks that projection TVs are expected to have.
Cons: I’m sure there are some cons but realistically I cannot think of any.
The bottom line: Wait for it to go on sale or find a decent coupon and buy this one today, only if you're sure you don't want to hang it on a wall.
I've had my TV for almost a week now and am thoroughly impressed. The most important feature to me about the television is the picture quality, which I had trouble discerning. At the store, some of the televisions have great pictures and are connected to a 1080p feed while others are connected to one receiver that is split to 4 different TVs (thus eroding the picture quality significantly) and they may not even be on the correct settings (thus further eroding the picture quality). This makes it near impossible to properly discern between the various levels of picture quality on the televisions when you can't make an 'apples-to-apples' comparison.

I was fortunate to look at the TVs in Sears and they had this 50 inch Sony setup to a 1080p source. I will tell you, as someone with 20/20 vision and standing 3 feet from the screen, the picture was AWESOME! That sold me on this television right then and there. The colors, brightness, and above all, the clarity was superb. The only question was where to get the best deal. I checked a lot of areas and even considered one of the 'on-line' stores because of their low, low prices but decided this was too large of an investment to leave it to chance so I went with a brick and mortar store. Best Buy, at the time, had the TV on sale for $1,899. I had a 12% off coupon for any TV purchase that a co-worker found online for me. After taxes, the cost was just under $1,800.

I have a PS3 and had been dying to connect it to a 1080p television, a vast improvement over my 480i standard TV that I had at the time. I was not aware that Blu-Ray discs were not readily available at the local movie rental stores. So my game, Resistance: Fall of Man, was all I had to look at on the new TV. It is shown in 720p and looked rather incredible. I was impressed. I've watched a few standard DVD movies on it and they also looked quite good. Last night I bought an HD antenna (Terk model HDTVA) and for the first time got to see 1080i rendered in all its glory. It was awesome. I sat there and watched some weird dance show just because it was so incredible to look at. You could see the faint scuff marks on the floor from the dancers and the grain in the hardwoods. It was fantastic.

Some of the issues that I had to consider before getting this TV were:
(i) do I want a flat panel or will a rear project suffice? Even if I had a flat panel, I was going to sit it on my TV stand regardless because the TV stand is what houses my satellite and stereo receiver as well as my PS3. Why pay the money for the flat panel if when you can get the same picture quality from a rear-projection for so much less money.
(ii) Do I want LCD, Plasma, DLP. After looking at the different formats and knowing this was going to be a TV that I would be using for my video games, the LCD seemed like the clear winner. Did not want to deal with the potential burn-in issues of a Plasma and didn't want any color halo effects like I've heard about the DLP (thought I've not personally seen).
(iii) I don't care about PIP (Picture in Picture) because I am not a sports fan. This TV does not have that and I would never use it if it did.
(iv) It has two HDMI ports, allowing for one input from your Blu-Ray Player (Or PS3) and one input for your satellite. My brother's TV only has one HDMI and it is a pain for him to switch the cables around whenever he wants to watch a disc.
(v) Thought the bulb will burn-out in 8000 hours, averaging the usage I expect from the TV, this should last me for the next decade or so. It is approximately $250 for a new bulb.
(vi) Fairly light weight, approximately 70 pounds, which allowed me to pick it up and place it on the TV stand by myself. I also don't have to worry about my toddler pulling the thing onto herself (it is strapped down regardless) and possibly killing her.
(vii) Apparently some rear-projection TVs have a delay for gamers between the input on the controller and the reaction on the screen. This is non-existent for this TV. I've read reviews stating such (the TV has a 2.5 millisecond reaction time) but I can now personally vouch for that.
(viii) This is the full 1080p. Our viewing distance was going to be quite close, approximately 6-9 feet, so I wanted the resolution to be the "best".
(ix) Lastly, the viewing angle seems fine, though for our room it would be hard to be at a poor angle. You can tell that the screen seems to dim as you look down or up at the screen, but left and right of the screen seems to have minimal changes in viewing the screen.

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UPDATE!! (3/12/07)
Now that I've had more time with the Sony, I wanted to post one item that should be noted. If you're lying on the floor looking up at the television, the screen will look 'darker' than when viewing it while sitting on the couch. I'm using 'darker' as a relative term...the TV still displays an incredible picture, but the brightness is slightly reduced. As I mentioned before, the viewing angle from the sides is quite good with little to no change in brightness, however you can see a brightness difference when viewing the TV on the couch and then you stand-up and the picture appears to slightly dim. Just this small difference in elevation of approximately 2-3 feet (up or down) makes a difference in the brightness level...something I doubt a standard flat panel TV would have issue with. That being said, I only notice the difference when moving around, otherwise my eyes quickly adjust to the picture difference and I don't notice it anymore.

I had the chance to watch my first Blu-Ray (1080p) movie this weekend, "Open Season". It was incredible. My wife thought it looked like a 3-D movie because the 'picture is so clear I could reach out and grab the movie characters with my hand!". I'm supposed to get X-Men: The Last Stand today on Blu-Ray so I'm greatly looking forward to watching that!!
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Overall, I'm very happy and excited about this television. The colors and clarity are like watching TV for the first time. They say the Samsung is the other good rear-projection TV that is even comparable to the Sony, but it has some drawbacks whereas the Sony seems to have virtually none.