Does anyone know about TV's?

If you cant fix the current TV, I would stay away from Plasma. There have been improvements to reduce the "Burn-In", but it is still an issue. Life expectancy is also an issue, remember, "Up To 100,000 hours" means it "Most Likely will be much less". But when it comes down to it, go to some stores and look at them. Make sure they all have the same Video source and pic the one you think looks the best. If you want a Plasma ask about a "Burn-In" guarantee.

I think people are going to sell you what they want to sell you not necessarily what you want. There are benefits to all of the tvs - for awhile the Plasmas had great refresh rates and contrast ratios. Leds and Lcds have closed in on that department and from what I understand from a human perspective I don't know if the difference is noticeable. As far plasma bulb times and crap like that, Plasmas have shaped and provide any where from 50,000 - 100,000 hours of viewing. Just for a reference 1 year = 8 765 hours I think mostly because of the price point if I was going with a tv because I want to game on it more than anything else. I am not a tv expert but I have done some research on my own to know right now I'd probably be going plasma. Also in my case cost is a major issue.

What's wrong with your current tv? Brand, make, model? Symptoms? Age of TV? I had my Samsung DLP go out on me and was able to fix on my own. Was a fairly simple problem just didn some homework on repairing before I attempted but I saved myself a $600 repair bill and/or having to buy a new TV.

Last year my brother in law got a plasma TV and within months, L4D was burned into it. And he only plays once or twice a week, maybe 3 hours a clip!

If you get plasma, you really should adjust the settings correctly (for instance contrast and brightness are almost always way too high out-of-the-box). Also you should break-in the plasma tv for 100 or so hours (can do this while sleeping or at work). Here is a good idea of what needs to be done from the avforum.com site: http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=608677 Burn-in really isn't an issue with plasmas anymore, but there is something else called Image Retention (IR), which may be mistaken as burn-in, except it can be corrected. It sucks about Venom's friend... I wonder if it was IR? Or did the contrast/brightness get dialed back, or was the TV properly burned-in. Whatever you decide, make sure to read the manual for your TV and do everything they suggest. You really cannot just plug a TV in and go nowadays! Oh, and what kind of room are you planning for the plasma? If there is a lot of light in the room (like from windows), you'll probably hate the glare you get from the plasma. In this case an LCD is a better bet. My next TV is going to be a plasma, I still feel it offers the best performance for the price, and the only issue in my mind is glare, which is a non-issue in my basement! :)

The lamp was probably the cheapest fix. The color wheel can be done by yourself too, but that is probably more money, and might not even be the fix. I assume no image at all appears on the screen? When you turn on your TV is there any pattern on the power-on light on the tv itself, or something that may look like it's spitting out some error code? Look up your TV online and see if you can find what that code means, or it might be in the manual too. Also, there is probably a hidden menu for your tv, which you can look into. But if no image is showing up on the screen to begin with, this may not help.