Disturbing findings re the status of today's tv panels

[Seeker47]

I came across this YT channel: https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=rtings.com
(not sure where I discovered it -- possibly from a thread at Reddit or AVSforum ?)
but so far I have only watched this video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Chcwz5LYiHs&pp=ygUKcnRpbmdzLmNvbQ%3D%3D

Not sure how long I've had my Panny plasma panels -- a 42 incher and a 56, from their then top of the line -- without digging into some receipt files. A rough guess would be something like since ~ 2009 ? But this video piece makes me so glad that they are still functioning rather well. Even though they top out at a 1080 resolution. I just hate spending big bucks on things that don't last, and / or perform well over time !

In due course, as plasma receded into history as an ongoing technology, OLED, QLED, and whatever else emerged. Promising greatly improved resolution and detail, revealing the pores on a person's skin, and ostensible cures for the motion blur and True Black issues. I recall seeing these sets around in the larger screen sizes at prices hitting the $5,000 range, or more. Quite possibly those prices came down quite a bit over time (?) -- at least until tariffs might start a pendulum swing in the other direction. Whatever it may be, that's going to be way too much money for a short product lifespan and an early trip to a landfill.

Now this video did seem to concentrate on what I thought to be lower end TVs: like Hisense, Insignia, TCL. But Sony did come in for a mention. Is the trend for these things really going to be this dismal ?

[Alwyn]

TLDR: what's the issue?

[betwixt]

Some technologies have a recognized deterioration rate, particularly plasma. Its physics, nothing to do with the name on the front. LCD is cheaper to make, capable of higher quality and much less power consumption and in theory has an almost infinite longevity. LCDs do have a problem with failing or slowly fading backlights though, particularly ones with CC tubes, LEDs are better. They are a light blocking rather than light producing technology. When the LED is the pixel light source (OLED) rather than backlight, it suffers the same slow drop in brightness all LEDs exhibit but the power consumption is even lower than LCD because it only needs as much power as needed to provide brightness. LCD backlights are full power all the time although some TVs dynamically adjust the backlight level according to average picture brightness.

The only current technology that has predictable lifespan is plasma, others depend upon purity of materials and how hard they are driven. I don't think you can say 'short lifespan' on the more modern types of display, they should last much longer than old technology ones.

Brian.

[Seeker47]

@ alwyn: Did you watch that video ? They were talking about catastrophic failures, often in much less than 2 years. On a lot of different panels. No reading required: that YT video runs 7 minutes.

[Seeker47]

Some technologies have a recognized deterioration rate, particularly plasma. Its physics, nothing to do with the name on the front. LCD is cheaper to make, capable of higher quality and much less power consumption and in theory has an almost infinite longevity. LCDs do have a problem with failing or slowly fading backlights though, particularly ones with CC tubes, LEDs are better. They are a light blocking rather than light producing technology. When the LED is the pixel light source (OLED) rather than backlight, it suffers the same slow drop in brightness all LEDs exhibit but the power consumption is even lower than LCD because it only needs as much power as needed to provide brightness. LCD backlights are full power all the time although some TVs dynamically adjust the backlight level according to average picture brightness.

The only current technology that has predictable lifespan is plasma, others depend upon purity of materials and how hard they are driven. I don't think you can say 'short lifespan' on the more modern types of display, they should last much longer than old technology ones.

Brian.

Thanks for your reply. Seems like a lot of careful research will be needed pre-purchase, in the hopes of avoiding getting too soon burned by those types of failures.

[aramkolt]

I've seen modern TVs fail due to a LED backlight module going out or components on the power supply going bad. Both are fixable, but depending on the TV's construction, they can be difficult to get at and not something most people are going to want to mess with. I think actual panel failure is much less common, but my experience is really just anecdotal and based on random YouTube repair videos which may not highlight panel failures since they aren't something that can be repaired economically without a donor TV of the same model.

[cholla]

I never had a plasma TV so I can't comment on those.
I could locate receipts but probably won't.
The only LED TV I have had fail is a 2008 Sharp & that was in 2023.
I replaced it with another Sharp.(About 3 years old now). Still looks good to me.
I have a couple of the bottom line Scepter TVs & they still look good also at 5 & 3 years.
I also have a Hisense a little over 2 years old & it still looks good.
Not too scientific but I have had what I would call good service from LED TVs.
I still miss my old CRT that I played old video games on.
It failed about 10 years ago now. I did not replace it with a new CRT or a used one.

[Alwyn]

Did you watch that video ?

Nope; TL,DW . My LG LCD from 2019 is still going like a champion.

[usually_quiet]

I watched the video. According to the host, 2+ years of being "on" 24/7 before failure is equivalent to over 18,000 hours. ...or over 8 years for someone who watches 6 hours of TV per day on average. That doesn't seem like an overly short life to me.

[jagabo]

They were talking about catastrophic failures, often in much less than 2 years. On a lot of different panels.

Note that they were running accelerated testing. The TV's were on about 18 hours a day, at full brightness, and power cycled 8 times a day. The video source was CNN which has a logo and news scroll most of the time -- about the worst case for burn in on plasma and oled displays. They estimate two years of that testing represents about 10 years of real world use.

Our ~5 year old LG OLED shows no obvious signs of burn in. But it's usually watched in a dim room and mostly at night. Its brightness is set at about 20 percent (which is still too bright for night time viewing, but a good compromise for mixed day/night viewing).

[betwixt]

Its important to clarify what an 'LED' screen really is:
LEDs emit light, LCDs block it. When a TV is described as LED it usually means the backlight is LED but the picture technology is LCD. Think of LCD as being lot of shutters (pixels) that either pass or block the passage of light. To be visible there has to be a source of light as bright as the brightest part of the image and the LCD fully or partially block the light to make the darkest parts or shades between them. Older LCD TVs used cold cathode ('CC') tubes to provide the white backlight, they are similar to domestic fluorescent tube room lights but much thinner and they work on higher voltage and without heater elements at each end. Like domestic tubes, they dim over time and the high voltage inverters are prone to failure. CCs are also difficult to dim rapidly so they can't easily adapt to the picture content to give improved contrast. When bright white LEDS became cheaper, instead of CC tubes they became the preferred way to prove back lighting. LEDs are smaller, far more robust and can be distributed around the screen better to give consistent lighting over the full area, this is particularly beneficial on larger screen sizes. Moreover, LEDs run on low voltage and their brightness can be almost instantly adjusted so there is no high voltage inverter and dynamic brightness changes are possible. So when you see an 'LED' TV it is almost certainly really an LCD screen with an LED backlight.

OLED (Organic Light Emitting Diode) are completely different, there is no backlight, the pixel itself is an LED and it emits light. It sounds like the solution to all display problems but there is a catch (isn't there always!), each pixel is tiny so they have to be driven hard to produce enough light. The harder you drive an LED, the faster its light output degrades. The life expectancy of an LED, excluding breakdowns, is measured in various ways but typically how long it takes to drop to 50% light output at it's recommended drive level. For power indicator LEDs where no color matching and exact brightness isn't too important it is usually predicted to be about 50 years of continuous operation. For OLEDs though when they are driven as hard as possible and part of an image that needs consistent brightness and color matching, it can be as short as a few hundreds of hours before mismatching becomes noticeable. I have OLED displays here that at full brightness have become unusable in as short as one month.

Brian.

[Seeker47]

They were talking about catastrophic failures, often in much less than 2 years. On a lot of different panels.

Note that they were running accelerated testing. The TV's were on about 18 hours a day, at full brightness, and power cycled 8 times a day. The video source was CNN which has a logo and news scroll most of the time -- about the worst case for burn in on plasma and oled displays. They estimate two years of that testing represents about 10 years of real world use.

Our ~5 year old LG OLED shows no obvious signs of burn in. But it's usually watched in a dim room and mostly at night. Its brightness is set at about 20 percent (which is still too bright for night time viewing, but a good compromise for mixed day/night viewing).

I must have glossed over the intensive, end-to-end, "torture testing" part.

Still, the 10/18 post by betwixt leaves me wondering: what is currently the "peak", least compromises, performance (and longevity) leader -- regardless of price ? With the realization that by the time I need to plug in this advice, the tech-type answer could well be different.

[_Al_]

It does not matter, it is perhaps build from the same parts anyway, though not buying the cheapest and also expensive ones. For 50", max $400, not less than $200. Go to the store to pick it up yourself, so at least eliminating rough transport further shock damages a bit.
Watch for sales, sometimes they can knock off some $$$: https://www.costco.com/televisions.html?keyword=Valid