"JANA" wrote in message
...
You cannot substitute the lamp. The original lamps have a specific
luminosity, shading characteristics, power and voltage rating, and colour
temperature.

In reality, these lamps are lasting about 800 to 1000 hours if you are
lucky. I know some people that are changing these lamps about once a year.

What I would recommend, is to sell the set, and get a new flat panel LCD
TV.
You will pay a little more up front, but the LCD should give you about
40,000 to 60,000 hours of service before it needs a new set of lamps and
ballast transformer. By then, you will be more than due for an upgrade
always. Under normal use, the new models of the LCD screens should last
about 10 to 12 years if used for only about 10 hours per day. This would
be
a much more cost effective way of watching TV.

To generalize that the lamps are lasting 800 to 1000 hours is overly
pessimistic. Most are lasting much better than that. It is likely that
the RCA had the same problems that Sony and others did with Philips lamps
for a while. Those problems seem to have improved quite a bit. The Osram
lamps used by other vendors still seem to last longer, but recent Philips
lamps seem to be much improved over those of a couple of years ago. The
life of this type of lamp has a great deal of variability. Some don't last
long and some do. I know lots of people that have thousands of hours on
their DLP lamps.

LCD panels have their advantages, but even the best still have artifacts
that are likely to be noticed by many more people than would find problems
viewing a DLP unit. The picture on the better DLP products is stunning.
Even the RCA DLP is far more watchable than even the best LCDs IMO. You
also won't get the size out of a flat panel LCD that you will from DLP
products.

Leonard