If you put the projector in economy mode the life goes to 4000 I believe. They usually go beyond their life anyway. A replacement bulb is about $350. Rear projection TVs work the same way, the bulb burns out after a few years and you have to replace it. The reason I love projectors is the price per inch of screen is rediculously low and the picture is incredible, you just need a dark room to really use one.

I'm sick of pointless anti-wii posts like this. If you don't have anything productive or reasonable to say, SHUT UP! We all know you are insulting the wii's graphics. The wii is the same freakin' resolution as a DVD, but looks crisper because the image is not compressed. Many people buy HDTVs mainly for DVDs, are they wasting their money?? NO! So why the wii hate? A wii with component cables looks FINE on my 8 FOOT WIDE HD PROJECTOR SCREEN!!! I think it will look just fine on a 42" LCD or Plasma!

On the topic: If you don't get a projector, get an LCD or a rear projection DLP. Plasmas have what is called a half life, where after a certain amount of hours they are half as bright, half as colorful, and they also have serious issues with burn-in.

That's a load of crap, you people talk like pixels will burn in if you leave an image for 5 mins, It'd literally take hours to burn in a pixel,

Wii has a burn in reduction feature, if the Wii has had no CPU activity for so long it will assume a still screen is on and will dim the colours until a button is pressed, and more then most Plasmas these days also have features, my Plasma detects what pixels have stayed for too long without change and will refresh the screen. SHEEEEEESH!!!!

Get this through your heads! Please!

I've had my Plasma for a year and as far as I know there is no such thing as this half/life crap, maybe in proto-types. 

My Plasma is only on 50% brightness atm and turning it up 5 points hurts the eyes, it's incredibly bright, that's one of my favourite features of Plasmas, the colours are so bright and vibrant.

I have an AOC 32" LCD connected via component to my Wii and it looks kinda jaggy (aka lack of anti-aliasing) but otherwise perfect, clear and sharp.

There is a such thing as half life crap. It takes between 8-18 years to reach at moderate usage levels depending on the quality of the set, so it's not a HUGE concern, just a fact. I did high end custom home theater for 2 years, I've taken classes, I've read many articles, I've studied the different technologies. Most people don't even notice the decrease in image quality because it happens so slowly, you won't see any change at all because you've only had yours a year.

Burn in times vary depending on the type of plasma. Newer ones are somewhat better but not much. When I did home theater, our customers that watched a lot of CNN would have the CNN logo burned into their TVs within a few months. Another thing that can cause burn in is watching programming with side bars or dvds that have black bars above and below the image.

http://www.plasmasaver.com/burnin.html

Ok, 8-10 years in nothing to worry about seeing as I've still got another 50% left to play with if brightness ever does decrease before I upgrade, thanks for the info.

Since you know so much can you answer this:

At work the work computer has burnt in desktop icons, you can always see them faintly no matter what you do, and it's an LCD screen, are these burn ins?

The screens alwyas on desktop during the day and gets shut down at night, I'm guessing LCD can get burnt in pixels??

LCDs don't burn in becaue there's nothing to burn, but can have something calld retained pixel charge with cheaper models which may look like burn in. Try putting a pure white image on the entire screen overnight for a few nights.

Hyundai 42" LCD 1080p $1299.99

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16889179004

My best friend has had a Hyundai LCD PC monitor for the past couple years and it has a good picture and it has held up quite well.

Toshiba REGZA 42"1080p $1499.99

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16889253090

The Toshiba will actually be over your $1500 limit with Shipping Included.

Wow, for a system with sub-par "next-gen" capabilities you guys sure are going all out on the Hi-defness

Troll.