New TV

almillar

Shuikit made an excellent first post and I agree with him.
Plasmas don't last long is a myth. The backlight, power board or other board is just as likely to go on a LCD.
Whether plasma is better than LCD is a matter of opinion that people will fight over for a long time, so don't expect a definitive answer.
OK, here's one - plasma's better, and I think Panasonic is your best buy. Look for a G10, or if you want FreeVIEW built in AS WELL as FreeSAT, the G20 replaces the G10, but will obviously cost you more, unless you wait until around Christmas...

sillywilly

neilmcl wrote: »

That's a load of rubbish I'm afraid. They do have a finite lifespan of around 60,000 to 100,000 hours to half-life but this is like 20 odd years with average use and is actually a longer lifespan than the old CRT tubes.

It is not a load of rubbish at all if you actually do some research you will find that early plasmas only had an average life span of about 3 years. Something to do with the backlighting that was used.

Another problem with Plasmas were that they were more suceptible to "screen burn".
So if you watched something with a logo in the corner for a long period, or left it paused on a game for a long time, then the image would stay "burned" on the screen permanently.

They have obviously improved TVs since then.

neilmcl

sillywilly wrote: »

It is not a load of rubbish at all if you actually do some research you will find that early plasmas only had an average life span of about 3 years. Something to do with the backlighting that was used.

Even in its infancy the average lifespan of plasma TV's was not much less than 30,000 hours to half-life, that's still 10 years. I don't know where you're getting your 3 years from, maybe you're quoting lifespan of an old plasma based on continuous use of 24/7.

almillar

Sillywilly - you've been talking to LCD salesmen and you're dismissing better information and replacing it with information that you're unsure about and is out of date.
Plasmas don't even have backlighting!
CRT screens suffer from screen burn too (LCDs don't at all)- I've never had it happen to me. Just don't leave static pictures on your screen for a day at a time - why would you do that anyway?!
Bottom line is that plasmas and LCD's have similar lifespans and are as usable as each other.