I went through a long, lengthy research process starting in November of 2015 until I bought a TV in July of 2016. Perhaps I can save you some time and give a few pointers:
1) From Black Friday until SuperBowl Sunday is the best time to buy a TV. They're by far the cheapest around this time. New TVs usually are shown at CES (which is starting now) and released in the spring. They stay pretty high in price until Black Friday.
2) rtings.com is the best TV review website. They also have video reviews (YouTube iirc).
3) Some TVs have pretty bad motion (also related: judder). LG/Sony typically have the best motion, Samsung/Visio follow after that. Be aware that things like "Motion Rate 240" or other stuff is basically salesman crap that they made up. It has no real correlation to actuality, and those numbers are typically double the actual refresh rate. Read up because some 60Hz TVs advertise as 'Motion Rate 120' or similar.
4) Decide whether or not you'll be using the TV as a dark-room theater TV, or as a living room-with-lights-on general use TV. How far away will the TV be? Will the TV be at eye-level or raised up? Mounted? These things will impact your choice. Some TVs, while better than computer TN panels, don't have great viewing angles.
5) If you can, go for the 55" LG C7 OLED TV. OLED is in a class of its own. The image quality is virtually perfect. Perfect lighting & perfect blacks because each pixel can adjust its light and turn themselves off. LG also does a really good job with motion on its OLEDs. It's ~$1700 or so for the 55" version. I'd calibrate it, too, for the extra $200 or so. You'll use this TV for a decade.
I ended up buying the 55" X900E Sony TV. It had really good performance reviews, especially with motion. I'd still buy it over other models save for maybe the X930E or any of the OLEDs. My budget was $1400 at the time, which put those TVs out of my price range. Unfortunately, the 65" OLEDs are out of your price range, so consider your options. If you can rock a 55", though, get that C7.
This post was edited by Interesting on Jan 8 2018 02:48pm