A similar question on another thread indicated that they are relatively short-lived, 10,000 hours... about 2 years or so for usual useage. Pretty expensive for that little life. We recently bought a 14" LCD unit (Samsung) for the kitchen. Excellent picture, but the sound is really tinny... I bought an inexpensive computer speaker set, including sub-woofer which works well. It just plugs into the ear phone jack. We got a good buy on it here in the U.S., at $375, but the larger ones run near $3,000 or more...