Toshiba DLP Television Lamps: Always Carry a Spare

Newark, NJOh, for the days when you could just take your new TV out of the box, plug it in and expect years of trouble-free, worry-free service. Sadly, that has not been the case for hundreds, if not thousands of owners of Toshiba high-definition televisions, with defective lamps that appear to take the industry back to the old tube days.

Many will remember the era before solid-state, when a variety of vacuum tubes powered many aspects of televisions and radios. Tubes, akin to incandescent light bulbs, prone to failure after a certain amount of use. And because some aspect of the unit would fail according to which particular tube blew, it rendered your TV useless until the repairman came to fix it.

The arrival of solid-state circuitry kept the repairman in his office for a lot longer. By this point, only the picture tube could be an issue, and it could last for years, even decades before finally giving up.

However, with high-definition, have we turned the clock back to a more uncertain time? And with high-definition projection sets costing many thousands of dollars, that's an expensive trip back in the time machine.

Owners of 2005 Toshiba DLP televisions have been experiencing a great deal of difficulty with lamp life—the lamps that are integral to the operation of the set. It was originally determined that for hundreds, if not thousands of 2005 Toshiba DLP TV customers, their sets had shipped with defective lamps, a fact admitted to by Toshiba at the time. The manufacturer chalked it up to a bad batch, or lot of lamps and offered to replace free of charge any lamp that failed to live up to its expected lifespan of 6000, to 8000 hours.

According to various blogs, a few Toshiba bloggers wound up not having too much trouble with their sets out of the box. However, for the vast majority of frustrated Toshiba owners, their lamps were failing after only a few hundred hours of operation. While Toshiba offered to replace the lamps, there were so many requests that the lamps were on back order. Many owners had to wait weeks for a replacement lamp.

Meantime, their Toshiba HD projection TV costing several thousands of dollars, was unusable.

Some customers have had numerous bulbs burn out well before the promised life expectancy, prompting some to wonder if there might be a design flaw with the Toshiba sets themselves.

Sure enough, some Toshiba owners report that when their replacement bulbs were installed, Toshiba technicians (or other companies contracted to do the work by Toshiba) upgraded the unit's firmware to 'version 19.' This upgrade apparently improved the cooling of the bulb, and afforded other improvements that would extend bulb life.

However, some Toshiba owners report that there was no such firmware upgrade when their defective lamps were replaced. Others report being told by Toshiba reps at call centers that there was no such firmware upgrade happening, which only led to confusion amongst Toshiba bloggers and DLP TV owners.

Another source of confusion has to do with power settings. It is universally believed that operating the set on low power (a lower definition setting) puts less strain on the lamp and extends lamp life. Similarly, operating the set on high power, or on a higher definition setting, will limit lamp life. One salesperson reportedly told a prospective Toshiba owner that yes, lamps are expected to last 6000 to 8000 hours, and that one could achieve optimum lamp life by operating the unit at the lower setting. To wit, 8000 hours on low, vs. 6000 hours on high.

Makes sense. However, oddly enough owners of 2005 Toshiba DLP sets with the defective (original) lamps were reportedly told that a way to extend the life of the defective lamp was to run the set not on low power, but on high power. Incredibly, it seemed that running the defective lamp on low power was actually contributing to the early decline of the defective, original-equipment lamp.

All this has proven to be highly frustrating for 2005 Toshiba DLP high-def TV owners, who simply want to sit back with a beer and watch their favorite NASCAR driver, or WWE performer, or the Super Bowl.

Instead, for many, owning a Toshiba DLP high-def TV has proven to be an expensive, and/or frustrating experience that is more like work, than recreation.

An investment of several thousands of dollars into one's leisure hours is a suggestion of the importance of those leisure hours for people who work hard. People who work hard like to play hard, too. And after a grueling day at the office or at the plant, a guy feels that he has earned his rest, and the chance to relax and enjoy his Hi-Def experience.

Toshiba, when acknowledging the defective lamps, extended the warranty on lamp life for an additional year—for a total of two years—for owners of 2005 Toshiba DLP units affected by the apparent bad batch of lamps. However, for many Toshiba owners, the replacement lamps haven't been lasting much longer than the original lamps, and few have reported getting the promised 6000 to 8000 hours of life out of the lamp.

While the Toshiba picture quality is to die for, many have found that keeping the thing going can practically kill you.