We had a nice plasma tv that we purchased from Costco. People commented that the quality of the picture was great, but it died after four years, leaving a sour taste in my mouth. My consumer durable purchases usually much last longer than that. I think the 4k resolution sets are compelling and would like to wait for those to come out and come down in price before upgrading which I guess would take at least 12-24 months after the initial roll out , thoughts?The death of plasma is an incredible success story for LCD technology, but it's also a sad reminder that disruption doesn't always meant the best products win: no LCD TV has ever looked as good as the best plasma TVs. Just go down the list: Pioneer's Kuro plasmas were so amazing that CNET still uses them as a review reference years after they were discontinued in 2008. Pioneer couldn't make any money and sold the Kuro technology to Panasonic, whose high-end plasmas were widely considered the best until late last year, when the company stopped making them in favor of LCDs. (The remaining stock is in high demand; used 55-inch sets are selling for $3,000 and up on Amazon six months later.)
But if you can handle waiting, you should let the TV industry breathe for a couple more years before spending any money. TV makers are dying to push higher-resolution 4K sets on people (which would kick off a hugely profitable upgrade cycle) but there's virtually nothing to watch on those TVs apart from Netflix series like House of Cards and Orange is the New Black. There's no point in buying a high-res TV with so little high-res content available. And there's other interesting new technology in the works like Dolby Vision, which creates such stunningly bright images that I actually thought I felt the heat of an explosion when I watched a demo earlier this year. It was pretty cool. And maybe, just maybe, LCD sets will catch up with the quality of plasma.
Edited to add: This was what we bought in 2008, the 50 inch plasma Panasonic Viera , that Costco was selling . http://www.amazon.com/Panasonic-Viera-T ... roduct_top . It's not technically the same model, since Costco usually gets unique models for sale, but this was the closest analogue.