Panasonic Announces an End To Plasma TVs In March 202
An anonymous reader writes "You thought Halloween was for treats. Not this time. Panasonic announced to its investors today that its plasma TV business would be over by the end of March 2014." Blacker blacks and brighter whites aside, there are some good reasons for the shift.
Because of the Limited Lifespan? (Score:2, Insightful)
I mean, OK, we all know that electronic devices have a truncated lifespan... but when you go to buy a plasma TV, they make a point to tell you it will only work for about 50,000 hours, after which you have to go buy a brand new one. Hence the reason all the flat panels I own (which were bought before LED TV prices started to come down) are LCD and not plasma.
Re:Because of the Limited Lifespan? (Score:5, Informative)
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Same is true with LCD backlights, CCFL or LED.
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Plus, the LED backlights are so bright that you'll probably start with the brightness at 25-30% to start with lots of room to increase it as the panel ages -- if that's an issue.
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Maybe you should run some post process effects on your cruddy video files then.
Relying on the panel to blur your video file is stupid, what happens when you WANT a sharp line?
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50,000 hours at 10 hours a day is 13.7 years. I certainly don't watch 10 hours of TV a day. Probably maxes out most days around 4, meaning that the TV would last me about 34 years. Assuming something else didn't break first. 50,000 hours is quite a long time.
But I'm retired and my TV is powered on for about 14 hours a day. That is 10 years.
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Turn it off unless you're watching it. You'll save electricity and your TV will last longer.
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50,000 hours at 10 hours a day is 13.7 years. I certainly don't watch 10 hours of TV a day. Probably maxes out most days around 4, meaning that the TV would last me about 34 years. Assuming something else didn't break first. 50,000 hours is quite a long time.
The usual nuisance is uneven wear. Y'know those solid-colored bullshit-ticker-bars that 'news' stations love or the channel watermark in the upper right on some stations? Well, those subpixels are getting a little extra workout (and, just for extra fun, R, G, and B tend not to wear at exactly the same rate...) and it can take rather less than 50,000 hours for pronounced nonuniformity to show itself if you try to display something like an all-white test screen.
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Make them pay the next electric bill out of pocket.
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lets say it's 1Kw.
24*30 720 Kw.
so about 10 bucks. That's not going to change anyone's habits.
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I didn't say to estimate their fair portion, just the whole bill. Continue to do it until they turn their shit off.
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Then he'd be as unjust as his lazy family members. He'd lose their respect and the result would be multilateral passive aggression from all corners.
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24*30 720 Kw.
so about 10 bucks
Where do you live that 1kw costs less than 2 cents?
In California, 1kw can easily cost 20-30 cents.
Even "cheap" parts of the country run 8-10 cents.
So a more realistic cost is $55 to $215 depending on the local market.
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So they get an LCD. My TV is the plasma. :)
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ok why are all the replys to my post adds for Panasonic?
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I bought a Panasonic 2012 plasma and it came with a 5 year warranty. If you read AV Forums there are lots of people hanging on to the decade old plasmas. I think you may have just been unlucky.
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Have you ever owned a Plasma? They die... all the time. I had 3 plasmas die in as many years. I've had the same LCD for 7 years now. Every time I go over to someones house and their TV has a giant glitchy white or black stripe running down the screen I know they have a plasma. I'm sure there are some success stories but when even the $7k+ luxury models have higher failure rates, that technology needs to die.
That's funny, I just pulled a plasma off of the wall yesterday at one of our remote offices (getting rid of local workstation/security camera display). It was an old ED (480p) display TH-42PHD5UY, model year 2002. This thing still works just fine. Additionally, Panasonic has, in the past, scored pretty well for TV reliability. Yes, the black/white stripe is a (rare) plasma-specific failure. LCDs have their own failures, like bunches of dead pixels in the center of the screen. I'm not sure why you were
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One Hitachi 42" plasma. Going for 6 years. Makes too much heat though.
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Funny you should mention that. I have a Panasonic Viera 50" circa 2006 that is still running fine, except for a faint burn-in from the cable box we used to have. The first 60" 3D Samsung LED I bought downstairs to replace my 70" projection set that died, (Sony said they had discontinued parts for it) came out of the box with a one pixel black line across the screen, and had to be replaced. (So far, the replacement model is working fine)
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I mean, OK, we all know that electronic devices have a truncated lifespan... but when you go to buy a plasma TV, they make a point to tell you it will only work for about 50,000 hours, after which you have to go buy a brand new one. Hence the reason all the flat panels I own (which were bought before LED TV prices started to come down) are LCD and not plasma.
Every TV has a limited life span. The number you quote is only relevant after your flat panel displays last 17 years. (50,000 hours at 8 hours/day.)
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This is almost 6 years of continuous operation. How long do you think your backlight will last?
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I've used my 32" Samsung TV as a monitor since day one back in 2008, clocking 12 or more hours daily. Still pretty good backlighting!
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How expensive do you think replacing a backlight is compared to replacing an entire plasma screen?
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Re:Because of the Limited Lifespan? (Score:5, Insightful)
Meh.
You throw-away folks. Really?
I expect more from Slashdot.
When my 52" Samsung A550 LCD developed power supply issues, I took it apart and, you know, FIXED IT. Cost? Two hours and less than $5, including travel time, parts and mileage at $.52/mile.
New, comparable TV at that time? About $1,400, plus at least a couple of hours to get it set up properly and the complete pain in the ass of actually buying a TV.
Because, I mean: I'm just tripping all over myself to figure out how to burn $1,398 to get something that works just as good as the thing I had yesterday, while either fighting with local sales nazis or scheduling a time for a freight delivery.
But go ahead! Throw it away. After all, one part is broken, therefore the whole thing must be trash.
Just do the world a favor and keep it shielded from rain while you list it for free on Craigslist, instead of just leaving it on the curb or paying someone to smash it and haul it off in a packer truck.
"OMG! The headlight burnt out on my car! I need to buy a new car!"
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You know that 50,000 hours is over 5 years of non-stop use. Even if the set was on for 12 hours a day, that's still over 11 years.
Also, that 50,000 hour count was not the "lifespan", but the half-life of the phosphors. Meaning after 50,000 hours of operation the screen would be half as bright as when new.
Know what else uses phosphors with a half-life? The back-light of the LCD panels you've bought up until the last couple years (LEDs also have a brightness half-life, so it still applies).
Good job being misl
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LEDs have a lifespan of 100k hours, and they claim brightness will still be 70% of the original or there about.
Re:Because of the Limited Lifespan? (Score:5, Insightful)
You know that 50,000 hours is over 5 years of non-stop use.
Yes, I do, but apparently I'm not your typical American consumer, who feels they have to buy something new every couple of years, even when the old one works fine.
My point being, the fact that they point out the lifespan of plasma televisions (while omitting the lifespan of other types of display) works, in a psychological sense, to scare away most consumers, who aren't going to take the time to do back-of-the-napkin calculations while standing in Best Buy; rather, they hear the phrase "limited lifespan" and subconsciously remove that product from their mental list of potential purchases.
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This is actually one of the few electronics products in my house I've been really satisfied with. Customers like me would buy LED now though. If you are BMW, you need to move with the best products in class: aluminium, electronic car, ... . Plasme could never shift to the lower segment as LCD had that well covered
Re:Because of the Limited Lifespan? (Score:5, Informative)
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Interesting. My cable company puts up the same guide-box on the bottom of the screen every time I change channels, with the same, static header bar. I've had a Panasonic TH-42PX80U Plasma for 4 years (almost 5), with no burn-in issues. I play video games on it too.
I have the pixel-orbiter on, and I do use the screen wiper once a year or so, so that may be some help. Regardless, I find it strange that the box is up long enough to result in image retention. AFAIK, displaying the black box in the same spot f
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your tv is 4 years old.
GP's tv is 8 years old.
that's the difference right there. modern plasmas have pushed the threshold for permanent burn-in times to something like 18-20 continuous hours.
image retention of video game static images happens after just a few minutes on my 3 year old plasma, but the screen wiper (or just watching regular tv) cleans that off in a minute or two... but I've got an LCD monitor that does the same thing. image retention isn't burn-in.
hell you can burn-in a CRT if you try. nobody
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We didn't have many other options back then... so yes, we complained about it (and it was a big problem back in the 80s/90s), but it wasn't the primary downfall.
Weight (which limited screen size) + power consumption (also put limits on screen size) + the bulk of the screen is what killed CRTs.
I can pickup a 24-27" LED display for my desk for under $300. My old 19" CRT cost something like $500-
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You don't have to tell me. I used to lug my 21" trinitron CRT to lan parties. My first LCD, a 17" NEC, was so I could bring that instead.
What what it's worth, my UPS says turning on my 28" LCD raises the load 75-80w, so these things can be power hungry too.
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You must change channel an awful lot. Even older models like yours shouldn't get burn in from a temporary box appearing and disappearing. Are you sure someone didn't leave it on screen one time? Years ago when I had cable sometimes the time-out on the channel info box would fail and it just remained there forever.
These days you have to be careful for the first 500 odd hours of viewing, then it's fine. Sometimes I get a bit of temporary retention after watching a channel like NHK World where there are no adv
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They're playing down the burn in issue, "[Burn-in] is a real issue, but it actually takes much longer use than any normal person would watch a single image". Our cable provider puts a square box at the bottom of the screen with channel info in it every time you change channels. I've had my plasma about 8 years and it has the shadow of that box burnt into it.
By the very nature of the technology, Plasma will always have a burn in issue.
When I was involved with displays back in the early oughts, The best displays were plasmas. And there were businesses getting the old burnt in ones and reselling them. Television progeams are bad enough, but Powerpoint programs with logos and standardized backgrouns made a real mess. We switched to LCD as soon as we could. They "weren't as good". But then again, it's hard to say that a screen with the old company logo, permanent
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We have a 42" plasma since 2007 without problem. The limit in lifespan I guess will be a problem eventually, although not the killer. I guess it's that I expect to upgrade TVs by the end of it, preferably to 4k resolution.
The bigger problem is electric usage. This monster uses ~335 watts. My older early 00's HD projection 60" TV uses ~140 watts. Electricity in my area is really expensive in the meantime so this is just a no go.
I know my LED computer monitors use 33% less than even my same sized fluores
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I had thought increasing sizes were offsetting the power reductions obtained by more efficient backlighting, but not really... a 55" LED uses about half the power of a 40" plasma.
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Have to be really carefully about the power consumption ratings for plasma, most of the manufacturers fudged a bit and the power ratings are not at anywhere near full brightness. The brighter the image the more power used, LCD doesn't vary.
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I have a plasma TV that's about 10 years old. I just replaced it with a new screen because it was getting to the point where the contrast was noticeably low. Still works just fine (and no burn in), just the picture isn't as good as it used to be. It's probably done I'd guess 20k hours and this is 10 year old technology - the plasma I replaced it with will last much longer.
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What size, and how's the power draw on that thing?
I'm looking at LED TVs for my next display purchase, although I might miss the "free" heat my LCDs grace me with; my office is downright toasty during the winter months.
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The old one was a panny 42" that weighed 70 something pounds and pulled nearly 400w! The new one is 50", 50lbs and around 140w. Still heavier and thirstier than an LCD but so much better looking.
Re:Because of the Limited Lifespan? (Score:5, Interesting)
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oh goddamn it (Score:2, Insightful)
CNET's very top TVs for image quality only are Panasonic plasmas :(
everyone i know who prefers LCDs have taken to heart weird ass rumors regarding plasma (unstoppable burn in; must sit exactly 10 ft from it; everything looks cell shaded; etc.)
hope my kuro doesnt die before someone makes a proper 4k set (only going to use it for large screen computer gaming)
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OLED (Score:4)
From the article:
It's a shame, because even though LCD tech has shown a lot of improvement, plasma displays have inherent advantages, primarily because the tech doesn't require a backlight -- unlike LCDs, which twist crystals in individual pixels to affect the light passing through, plasma pixels illuminate themselves.
And once big-screen OLED becomes cheap enough (OLED pixels, not just OLED backlit) then that advantage will dwindle away too.
Re:OLED (Score:5, Funny)
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Organic doesn't mean alive, it means it was grown without pesticides and manufactured without preservatives.
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OLED is a long way from being as good as plasma. It can do some very nice blacks but suffers from image noise and poorer colour accuracy. One of the major advantages of plasma is that everything looks very natural compared to LCD and even CRT. OLED tends to over-saturate somewhat because basically LEDs suck at producing subtle shades. There is a huge amount of processing and clever driving electronics that makes them look reasonably good, but not as good as a high end LCD and nowhere near as good as plasma.
They are only the best rated TVs... (Score:5, Insightful)
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Looks like the time to buy is coming up before they're gone.
Not the first time that a better technology has been driven from the market.
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It depends on what you mean by technology.
LCDs started off strong. This encourage more investment in fabs, which encourage more research on how to produce LCDs, which lead to better fabs, which lead to lower prices, resulting in stronger sales. A vitreous cycle ensures.
LCDs clearly have the better manufacturing technology. Now if we are talking about display quality..
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Clearly a vitreous cycle, as they are all made from glass.
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You must be blind then.
I love my Viera and was hoping to upsize.... (Score:4, Interesting)
We have a c.2003 52" Viera and love it.
The brightness is not an issue: it's on the North wall of the living room, facing a large window, and if it is "too sunny", I close the drapes. Done.
The viewing angle is amazing. Sunday night suppers are often prepared standing at the counter "just this side" of the family room, watching football.
I've stayed away from L[CE]D TVs because plasma just seemed like a better solution.
And now they will go the way of Betamax.
Silly consumers, believing hype and myth, buying poorer tech, and not saving a whole lot doing it....
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Yeah, that's what I came here to say. I liked the look of the plasma considerably better, and I'm very happy with my Viera. Brightness has never been an issue. I did have to fiddle with the out-of-the-box settings to remove some misfeatures and get the colors right, and its Internet features are slow and clunky, but it does almost exactly what I want.
I hope that by the time it finally dies, they've fixed all the fails with LCDs (motion artifacts, poor contrast, mediocre color.)
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Us silly consumers, preferring TVs we can watch with the lights on, at 2/3 the power consumption, and without any meaningful amount of burn-in - for the same price. (Source: "Panasonic TC-P50S60 50-Inch 1080p 600Hz Plasma HDTV" on Amazon for $680, "VIZIO E500i-A1 50-inch 1080P 120Hz LED Smart HDTV" for $648.)
It's cool that you enjoy your plasma TV, but you're delusional if you think the rest of us are hype victims for making different hardware choices than you did.
Good riddance! (Score:5, Insightful)
Plasma sets put out so much RFI that it makes working HF hell if one is in your neighborhood.
Cost and market (Score:5, Insightful)
In Europe and Asia energy costs are high, so using an energy hungry TV makes little sense. Once these markets start shifting, a portion of the US market is no longer a sufficient reason to keep a manufacturing line open
Target and Wal-Mart (Score:2)
Best Buy is still a Market leader in electronics in general, but Wal-Mart and Target continue to make up a large part of this market. They have a preference for LCD. The sales staff isn't trained to talk about video quality. Plasma doesn't burn in any more, but it can have temporary retention issues. That's more than enough for retailers like Wal-Mart and Target to take the path of least resistance.
For all of it's failings as a store, including the ill-fated DIVX rental model, Circuit City was really th
Betamax (Score:2)
I need to download the comments to this story and do a find/replace on "Plasma" and "Plasma TV" and replace it with Betamax and see how it reads.
Yet another superior technology undone by good enough.
Re:Betamax (Score:5, Informative)
I need to download the comments to this story and do a find/replace on "Plasma" and "Plasma TV" and replace it with Betamax and see how it reads.
I really don't understand how Betamax came to become one of the canonical examples of a superior technology brought down by a lesser competitor.
In its original form, Betamax was not appreciably superior to VHS in terms of resolution. The difference was maybe 5%-10% at most. A videophile might notice the difference, especially if he had an expensive Trinitron set, but the average viewer watching the tapes on an average TV set would not.
On the other hand, VHS was clearly superior to Betamax in one way that many consumers cared about a great deal: runtime. Remember that when home VCRs were first released, a blank cassette could cost $20 or more (and I'm not even adjusting for inflation). The earliest Betamax units could only get 1 hour out of a standard L-500 tape. In contrast, VHS started at 2 hours on the typical T-120 tape. Both formats eventually added extra modes which allowed more runtime in exchange for a slight loss of quality, and most consumers used these modes as soon as they were available. When the dust had settled, Betamax only managed to get up to 4.5 hours on the longest mode (Sony had also increased the standard tape length by 50%). VHS, in contrast, got up to 6 hours on EP mode on a standard tape.
Add to that the licensing issues (JVC licensed VHS to pretty much anyone who wanted it, while Sony was much more jealous about their format), and it's not at all surprising that VHS won. It wasn't about the marketing, it was that VHS offered a better cost/benefit ratio to the average viewer.
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Exactly.
My family was literally the first in town to own a VCR. This was in 1979, well before video rental stores started to appear in our area. ...And indeed, a blank tape cost about $20 and a prerecorded tape of a reasonably major motion picture cost about $80. We had a Toshiba Betamax-format VCR, BTW.
"Everyone" always said Beta was superior, but the only "first-hand" source I ever saw was a Sony advertising poster, though it mostly tried to demonstrate how U-load systems (such as Sony's Betamax and U-M
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Yet another superior technology undone by good enough.
Superior? Bah. Much like Betamax, plasma was good at one thing and that's visual quality, and it was a mostly negligible advantage in both cases. Betamax only had noticeably superior quality at Beta I speed, and plasma only really looked at its best in the dark.
It was each technology's other failings that killed them. In the case of Betamax, it was VHS's longer recording times and lower prices. In the case of plasma, it was power consumption, burn-in, and price. In both cases, the "superior" technolog
The "best" product didn't win. (Score:3, Interesting)
This is pretty much the end of another display technology. Panasonic and Samsung were the last two plasma manufacturers targeting the mid- to high-end display market with their own panels.
I love my plasma (Score:2)
I will definitely miss them. (Score:4, Insightful)
Brighter whites? Really? (Score:2)
Am I the only one who doesn't want brighter whites, and would even go so far as to avoid them?
On my smartphone, computer monitors, laptops, and even my old CRT monitors and TV I keep the brightness turned down. When I have opportunity to see LED TVs at my parent's place or elsewhere they always seem eye-piercingly bright, to the point where I don't care to watch them. The same goes for any LED based TV in a store -- or basically anywhere. This was one of the main reasons I was looking forward to eventual
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Sorry, I had LED's on the brain, but meant LCDs. If you would be so kind, please s/LED/LCD/g
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room lighting (Score:2)
It's simple... plasma doens't show well in retail (Score:5, Insightful)
Disclaimer: I own a top of the line 54" Panasonic plasma set from a couple years ago and enjoy its excellent picture quality.
If you walk into a Best Buy or any other retail store and head over to the TV section, what immediately hits you is the brightness of most of the LCD sets and the comparatively subdued brightness coming from any (remaining) plasma sets still on the floor. In the unscientific forced side-by-side comparison environment of a brightly lit store, the LCD panels just show better.
It's the same reason that many folks think they'll prefer shiny laptop screens or speakers that deliver booming lows and super highs. It all seems better in a snap judgment... It's not until you take it home and have to live with it for a few hours that you start to realize that matte screens are easier on the eyes, speakers with more natural frequency response are easier on the ears and that LCD TVs (usually demoed in torch mode) need to be turned down to a more tolerable brightness level (well within the realm of what a plasma can do) during extended viewing sessions.
Fighting Game Players Going to Be Bummed (Score:2)
A lot fighting game fanatics swear by the Plasmas for big screen displays. The input lag on a quality Panasonic is 16ms, whereas the lag on a quality LCD is 30-40ms (substantially worse on the cheap brands).
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I'm not a fighting gamer but I am sensitive to input lag, and my 50" Panasonic plasma was the answer to my prayers. Not only is the lag low, but there are real blacks and no ghosting. I might have to get another one before they shut down production. The downsides are high power consumption (it noticeably heats up my room) and the fact that they only come in large sizes, mostly greater than 50".
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It isn'
Was Halloween 3 weeks ago? (Score:2)
Because that's when this story first made the rounds. It was first mentioned on 8 October in the highly-regarded AVS Forums http://www.avsforum.com/t/1494093/panasonic-to-end-plasma-panel-production-by-april-2014 [avsforum.com]
So tired of getting stale "news" here lately. If /. went dark tomorrow I think I'd miss it less than I'm going to miss Panny plasmas.
Into the abyss (Score:2)
{-that being, that the image at the top edge is never the same color as the image at the bottom edge-}
A few years ago I "upgraded" my CRT Viewsonic monitors to new-fangled fancy widescreen LCDs. T
OLED is the only answer now for us (Score:4, Insightful)
The marketing spin has been incredible, specifically over the last 5 years against plasma, somehow the entire "LED vs LCD" thing managed to paint the LED lit panels as the definitive display technology (those of us who understand colour depth, contrast, banding and just plain old "moving nicely" / refresh rate know this is simply not the case)
I managed to pick up earlier this year the second best display in the 2012 / 2013 (ST50) series, 65" - I love the thing, apparently the last Panasonic the ST60 has display lag, bad for gamers- however that could be unfounded and surprising for a plasma.
So for those of us that detest LCD screens (and that's mostly the plasma buyers and video enthusiasts) - we all best hope the OLEDs take off. I finally did some actual research for about 8 hours a few months back to get a better understanding of OLED and yeah ok, I finally get it. We've got a plasma and CRT killer here, finally (LCD and LED were never in the running) the blacks are incredible, the colour range is apparently larger / wider than what the high end digital video cameras can even capture for film, the refresh rate is in the tens or hundreds of thousands of times per second (?!) it's also the thinnest and it uses little power. Viewing angles astonomical, Burn in is a potential issue (slowly getting better) and overall display life is also a potential issue (again, slowly getting better)
We finally have one available to actually buy, in TV form (55" OLED in Korea is now on sale, a measly $10,000) - but considering it's a new tech, I'm actually surprised it's that cheap. ... around 5 years, we'll see 70 / 80 / 90 / 100" OLED displays for about 2 to 6k$ - same old premium price for the big HDTV boys budget who can afford a new toy.
My guess is that in
I do hope to see them on PC desks eventually too. LCD / LED movement is horribly grainy and nasty, I just can't deal with it.
(One more thing, I'd heard Panasonic was doing a joint research lab with someone to move to OLED? So perhaps their days as a premium display manufacturer are not over)
Either way, hope my Panasonic doesn't die for at least 3 or 4 years.
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MeanwhilCathode Ray Tubes Still being Manufactured (Score:2)
Whatever happened to SED? (Score:2)
Whatever happened to SED, that technology that was similar to a CRT except that each pixel gets its own electron gun? Seems like the tech combines the good things about CRTs with the good things about flat screen displays.
Plasma: better picture, worse choice (Score:2)
It's clear to me that plasmas give better quality image but I still choose LCD. The plasma issue of burn-in is the main worry but they're also more power hungry and heavy too. Plasmas easily beat LCDs for black levels, colour accuracy, response time and viewing angles but LCDs are good enough. Even if my kids didn't spend hours playing video games I know somehow there would be burn-in and then I'd want to buy a new set ... which is just a waste. Plasma being the losing technology is not all down to mark
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Because you can't seem to limit yourselves to talking about how much you hate his healthcare plan (or anything else about him for that matter), even when it has absolutly nothing to do with the topic at hand.
You don't like his plan: everybody everwhere in the world has heard your complaints about a million times already; give it a goddamn rest.
Just save your two minutes of hate for the next "What's wrong with He
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See, to me, DLP has this rainbow effect on the colors, with the outer edges looking on the fuzzy side.
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My Mitsubishi 73" DLP was a steal a few years ago. I paid $1400 when similar LCDs were well over 2 grand.
Re:The Decline of Japanese Consumer Electronics (Score:5, Interesting)
The Decline of Japanese Consumer Electronics Continues...
As a consumer I'm fine with that - I just bought a great new plasma TV form a Korean manufacturer. As long as someone, somewhere, keeps pushing the state of the art. Longterm though I think Japan has deeper issues, with its ongoing demographic implosion (and the same thing would be happening in the US without immigration).
More on-topic: plasma is great, and remains great, if you're not shopping for the cheapest model line. Great color accuracy (not just the great blacks), no problems off-angle, and no problems with fast motion. I've yet to see an LCD as good at a similar price-point.
Still, OLED is the future (combines the picture quality of plasma with the lower power and weight of LCD), and has finally made it to top-end TVs as a consumer product. Absurdly expensive, but everything starts that way. (OLED was "the cool new technology sure to be in TVs soon" when Slashdot was new). Give it another 5 years, and merely "expensive" TVs should be OLED.
Re:The Decline of Japanese Consumer Electronics (Score:4, Interesting)
There is absolutely no comparison, on my LCD colours look artificial and 'hopped up' after watching the exact same video on my Plasma. I know network and cable streams suck, but I have my own HTPC, with over 8000 films, and there's a huge difference.
Especially on black and white films, and especially with higher resolution video, a-la Blu-ray.
I'm sad that Panasonic (the maker of the best plasmas) has decided to get out of the business, but hopefully in ten or more years, when It's time for me to look for a new screen, OLED will finally be up to todays plasma technology.
The naysayers simply haven't done their homework. Read any review, consumer level or Professional, and plasmas always have a better picture in every way then anything else.
Their only failings are slightly higher power consumption, not quite as bright, and highly reflective screens. Lifespan? meh, 100,000 hours to 'half-life' and as others have said, old cathode ray tubes were rated 25,000 hours.
Tis a sad day, but I knew it was coming, from insiders in the business.
jaz
Re: (Score:2)
You should have told them to give it a go for a week or so, it takes a little while for your brain to reset it's expectations.