DLP vs Plasma/LCD

Talking about the life of the bulb, my old model Panasonic plasma has a half life of 30,000 hours. It means that the luminence (contrast ratio) will be reduced to approximately half after that number of hours. Assuming I watch 8 hours of TV per day and 365 days per year, it would take 10 years to get to half life. Of couse, there will be some weekends that I'll stay home and not stay home. I think that I'be ready for a new TV set after 10 years. Lets assume that the actual half life is only half of the claim, that will 5 years for me. I think that I would love to get a new one by then. The old one can be moved into the bedroom for another good few years.

Usually, I find that owners buy new TVs to replace the old ones even when the current units work fine. It just that they do not have the latest bells and whistles. Upgrading is a scary disease that many of us A'gon members have.

The current model of Panasonic plasma and the upcoming 7 series or the Onyx to be released in Oct claim to have 60,000 hours of half life. If I were to have that and watch about 8 hours of TV per day for 365 consecutive days in a year, it would take ~ 20 years. If the claim is only 50% effective, the new number would be ~ 10 years. By then, you most of could move the old units into the bedrooms to get few more good years of use.

When people talk about half life, they do often not do the math, and many prefer to wait for better models to come out. Now that I have presented the math, we all can go buy plasma or DLP now. ;>)

Jer,
I took the 8,000 hours from my memory of researching/discussing the HLN437W last summer. That's no longer a current model so I can't find a link that shows that now. Take it FWIW I guess.

Samsung's current DLP product brochure states, "The bulb will deliver more than 5,000 hours of operation."

http://www.samsungusa.com/pdf/DLP_Brochure.pdf

Samsungparts.com sells the replacement bulb unit for my set for $199.

Saw the JVC DILA picture yesterday . It seems to be the best currently available vs. DLP and LCD.

you can pick up a 5o inch Pioneer plasma for much less than 5 g's. check the specials over at avsforum.com. I have the 43 inch high def. model and the picture is great. I have compared RPTV, DLP, LCD, CRT and the plasma was overall the best....my point is that MSRP for my model was 8990 which I picked up for about 1/3rd of that.....look around if you like the picture. I did not like the artifacts with the DLP including the HD 2+ chip. I haven't seen the DILA's rear projection yet though.....I did have a DILA front projector and prefer plasma if it is big enough for you....43 inch works well from 10 feet or less....

I recently got a chance to compare various displays that use LCD, DLP, and D-ILA. All three technologies deliver a great picture, but of the three technologies I saw I prefered DLP. But not all DLP sets are created equal. Of the various sets that I compared, the best image I saw came from a Samsung DLP using an HD 2+ chip. The images were jaw dropping. And like Darrylhifi mentioned, Samsung is coming out with a 1080p set really soon (the first 1080p set that I'm aware of). It looks like Samsung is really onto something here, they seem to be genuinely concerned about great picture quality. And for me that's the most imortant thing.