I was reading some of the posts on Insignia's message board this morning, and found one in which the writer asked how long the display panel of his new Insignia TV (plasma) would last. The answer, from an Insignia product specialist, was 60,000 hours, which is the same life expectancy quoted by LG (manufacturers of "Zenith" branded plasma flat panel televisions) for their sets' plasma displays. This works out to over 20 years with an average of eight hours' daily use, or even longer if the set is used less than that. The company's LCD displays probably have similar life spans as well.
The use of LED as opposed to CCFL backlighting in almost all recent LCD flat panels also means the backlighting system will last much longer, although in both cases (backlight and the panel itself) these are expected to outlast the rest of the TV; when the set develops any kind of problem requiring service, the problem will very likely be found on the chassis -- with the display and LEDs still having plenty of life left in them. If the backlight fails, the problem will likely be found in the circuits that control the LEDs, rather than the LEDs themselves opening or shorting -- although the latter is certainly possible, as is dimming of the LEDs over time.
I am not implying or trying to imply by any means that LCD and plasma displays in today's flat-screen HDTVs will last forever (nothing does), but I am saying that today's LCD/plasma panels can have life spans approaching that of CRTs, thanks to improved designs (the increasing use of TFT, thin film transistors, for example), and the use of LEDs rather than CCFLs for backlighting.
Another issue that occurs to me as I write this is the future of TV repair shops. With NTSC CRT televisions now obsolete and flat screens becoming standard in American and Canadian homes (I think the last figures, several years ago, were something on the order of 75 percent of homes in North America having exclusively FPs; that figure is probably closer to 80 or 90 percent or even more nowadays), more and more TV shops may be finding themselves being forced out of business because they cannot service this new type of TV receiver.
TV shops which are managing to stay in business are almost certainly doing only warranty repairs on FPs, refusing to even look at any set that is even one day beyond the warranty period. Repairing an LCD or plasma HDTV can be very expensive, the cost of the repairs often equaling or even exceeding the price of a new set, so there is really no sense in putting money into continued repairs of FPs after the warranty expires. It's bad news for repair shops, of course,
but unfortunately, in today's world, that's the way of it.