Panny pulled out last year and Samsung is pulling out at the end of the year. Makes me sad. I love plasma technology. Looks so much better to me than LCD/LED crap. I hope OLED production starts ramping up and becomes reasonably priced within the next 3-5 years, as I'll probably be in the market for a new TV.

Samsung are finally bailing too? Damn . I should get one, but they're so damn pricey....

What's next up as the top-of-the-line big bad? OLED?

What are the new 4K TV's, are they LCD/LED or something else? Needed to kill some time a week or so ago so spent it in an electronics store here in Tokyo and I would estimate that 75% of the TV's on display were 4K, so I guess we could say that this is really taking off now. How about in the USA?

I've seen a few 4K LED HDTVs at my local Best Buy here in the US. It wasn't a substantial portion of them, but given how new the technology was, there were a fair few.

That's too bad about plasmas. Sucks that there won't be any more made.

From what I understand, OLED sets are currently expensive to make, but as the production process improves, they would cost less to make than LCD/LED or plasma sets.

Also, don't OLED sets have a shorter lifespan than other HD sets? It is my understanding that the R-G-B colors burn out at different rates, which would seem to make the improvement in black levels moot for the kinds of people who really care about presentation.

They're also only available in 55", so there's also that, but presumably we'll see more sizes if they catch on.

I do wonder if the short usable lifespan combined with dirt cheap production costs could possibly make them disposable television sets that you would use for a year or two, then buy a new one.

Back to CRT!

Yeah, this latest development blows. Nows the time to stock up on a back-up set before they're gone forever.

LCoS.

I always wanted to buy a plasma... but the added weight and cost was always a turn-off.

I still miss the days of amazing black levels on my Toshiba 16x9 CRT.

I guess i better stock up on some extra plasma in case it starts leaking out of my tv set

My Sony SXRD is still running good and looking great, fingers crossed.

That sounds way, way, way too good to be true.

I haven't kept up with the prices of Plasmas. I saw a 43" Samsung one marked down at Sears today to $299. I was giving it serious consideration based on the love people have for them and seeing this thread. I passed since I wasn't sure how good a deal it was and I thought about the conversation I would have with my wife about buying as others have put it, a back-up television.

This is fairly devastating news to me, as I own four different plasmas including the Pioneer KURO. I think plasma couldn't deal with the double whammy of the Japanese Yen's problems and the better economies of scale with LCD technology.

Well, you probably need one for the big closet. Obviously.

Don't LG make plasmas too, are they puling out as well?

If it's no better than a Panny LED, no matter.

They've never been considered on par with the Panasonic or Samsung plasmas.

How do the LG plasmas compare to LCD/LED sets from popular brands?

sad to see companies pulling out faster than a boy on prom night.

It's my understanding that Panasonic didn't think they could reasonably scale plasma technology to 4K sets in a normal timeframe. When they acknowledged that problem, the other companies realized they had no chance at it.

The push towards 4K is driving its sudden death.

4k is the worst vaporware trend in memory. There isn't any content available, yet it's killing hardware manufacturers? 4k is a travesty in many ways (it'll cause the death of disc-based releasing, it will be DRM-infested, and probably only supply-on-demand content).

I have a Panny plasma, Samsung plasma and Samsung 4k LED... all 3 are phenomenal and if you asked me to tell the difference, I couldn't. Then again, I've yet to get any 4k content at home.

All of which was said about HD at one time early on too.

By the time HDTVs were prevalent in stores and being marketed with any significance, the ATSC standard (which included the HD resolutions) had long been in place and a full-scale transition plan including massive infrastructure changes for the primary source of content that people watch on their screens (broadcast TV) was in full swing.

The same cannot even be remotely said of 4K right now. It was only earlier this year that the committee called for proposals for ATSC 3.0 which would potentially include 4K resolution.