Plasma going away already

[kpzbee]

A friend of my brothers owns some appliance centers (mid to upper end) & was telling my brother, some of the manufactors of plasma tvs are going to stop making them. He said sales are not good & his return rates are high from burned out pixels & screen burn in. He's saying his suppliers are telling him this. The manufactors cannot seem to be able to lower their costs & without lowering the price to attract a broader range of buyers, the sets are doomed in the next few years. Anybody hear anything like this? I was thinking about getting a plasma set later this year but he says absolutly, don't buy one. So far, I've not seen an LCD set that I like. Maybe rear projection is the way for me. Front projection won't work because of to much ambiant light. Oh well, I'll keep looking... :(

[Woochifer]

Interesting because I heard that Pioneer was going to stop making RPTVs in order to focus on plasmas. I will agree that the technology's still relatively new and a lot of stuff is in development that may or may not eventually knock plasma out of the market, but what I've heard is that sales of RPTVs are flat and the biggest area of growth has been with the flat panel monitors like LCD and plasma. We'll see where the prices go, because the prices on plasma sets have been tumbling.

[wwwes]

Plasma tvs will slowly come down in price but since production cost is high I don't think they ever get to "bargain" levels. A tv engineer told me the production yield for plasma panels is under 20%.
In a few years look for OLED panels make their appearance at cheaper prices; they will replace plasma panels.

[kexodusc]

This is interesting, everything I've heard from people in the industry suggest that the technology and reliabilty are improving with plasma tv's. I know of a few A/V shops in my area that are quite convinced plasma's finally going to take off.
Wait and see I guess...it's tough in this business, new technologies don't usually take off over night, and compared to cathode ray TV's, Plasma is still very much in its infancy.
I'd love to see the cost breakdown of a typical plasma unit, though. I have my suspicions that business models, rather than R&D and raw materials, are the largest obstacle to lower prices.

[kpzbee]

My brother said he had a set there with the VH1 logo burned into the lower right corner of the screen. He had another one with CNN burned into it. Those are staions that have logos there almost the entire time. That's the most common complaint he has with the sets. The set with the VH1 logo also had a group of 4-6 pixels burned out close to the middle. I'll have to ask him if it's one particular brand or if it acroos the board. I to kept hearing better things about plasma. I guess I'll wait to see how things shake out. It sure would be something to see a breakdown of the cost on those. I'll bet the return factor is pretty high.

[Rhino]

DLP and LCD are the two technologies to watch, IMO. DLP is amazingly bright and sharp, has zero problems with burn-in, and is far cheaper than Plama. It's downside is it's not a flat panel, but then again, it's only about 1/3 the depth of an RPTV. LCD technology is coming along rapidly due to the computer display market and will continue to get larger and cheaper as time goes on. Some argue LCD displays suffer burn-in, but I've yet to see a computer display with and ghost images on it.

Plasma just has too many production problems and is too costly to ever gain wide acceptance. Maybe technological advances will solve the production and burn-in problems, but I'm betting they won't come in time to save plasma from the graveyard.

[ThreeDHomer]

Just think of what kind of mark up you would have to have on your 20 % yield to break even. The sets would have to cost pennies on the dollar to make. There is no reason to take a hit like that. It seems to me that is just a new imperfect technology that might or might not take off. Don't look too deep into a conspiracy theory.