this is about justification. The current thing works fine but I would like the new expensive thing. I cannot justify expense of replacing working thing, but if it would die, then it's justified expense.

it isn't about that it's more economical purchase when it dies, but I even saw people breaking stuff just so they "had to" buy new thing that they want.

Perhaps you’ve noticed this already but having bought my last TV in 2008 I had no idea how cheap they’ve gotten! Checking Amazon right now I see a 50” 4k Samsung for $450.

Expense doesn’t always mean purely financial. There is an environmental cost to buying something new as well, and a social cost in supporting the manufacture of electronics that may have less than perfect supply chain ethical standards.

I’m not saying this to be snarky or judgemental - your comment genuinely made me think about the issue and this was my response.

Yes absolutely.

An inevitable consequence of consumerism: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Throw-away_society

Back in the day, there was a strong public perception/rumor that plasma screens would fail much sooner than other kinds. Maybe it was just a FUD campaign, after all.

Plasma did have an issue with 'burn in' on static images. If you did a lot of gaming on them, you could see it. Same with banners on news programming.

If you watch a lot of movies, it isn't an issue. Plus, the TVs came with a 'burn in' reduction program that you could run a couple times a year, but that operated by sweeping an intense white bar across the screen, so you were effectively 'wearing' the pixels down to a similar level to reduce the obvious burn in. If you ran that cycle to often, it would kill the maximum brightness.

Could have been FUD from manufacturers looking to push thier LCD TV over the competition plasmas.