I don't have an answer for you, but I went with VE and will be using it for the 1st time when my new TSL3294hf arives in a couple of hrs. If yougo the VE route, I will give you a link to the place it got it from for under $19 shipped.
Avia has generally been regarded as the better of the two. It's the one I own, and a member on this board actually helped create the software (Guy Kuo).
The current VE has a difficult-to-navigate menu system, but it's a disc everybody should have. AVIA is more user-friendly. And everybody should own it as well.
The Sound and Vision disc is pretty good and it's made by the same folks thad did Avia. I think you can get it for around $15 at Amazon. It doesn't have every single feature of the $50 discs but it will allow you to effectively calibrate video and audio.