? poor customer service? good economics?

[Jeffhs]

I can only hope my Insignia (rebadged Sylvania) 19-inch flat-panel LED/LCD TV lasts as long as your sets have, or at least longer than the warranty period.

BTW, what is the longest any flat-panel TV has lasted so far? Zenith/LG claims its sets' FP displays will last 60k hours, or over 20 years with average use ("average" being defined in their sales literature as eight hours a day). Someone mentioned here not too long ago, however, that the failure mode of many if not most FPs is defective electrolytic capacitors, not the panel. However, many FPs I have seen for sale on eBay are being sold as parts sets because of cracked or broken screens. I wonder if most FP displays, not just Zenith/LGs, would last 10-15 years or more if they are not physically abused or damaged by still images left on the screen for extended periods of time.

BTW (2): Speaking of screen burn-in, I recently asked one of the customer service representatives at Time Warner Cable whether the small, stationary network logos that stay on the screen during programs could eventually burn themselves into the screens of any kind of TV -- CRT or LCD/plasma. The answer was no, because the image behind the network logo is constantly moving. Test patterns or color charts, however, are a different story, as are program images that freeze on the screen due to problems at the cable headend. I believe most flat-panel TVs are designed to revert to standby mode if they do not receive an input signal for any length of time, but I don't know if this function works when a program picture is frozen on the screen.