The only thing I disagree with you on is the "if it dies" part. you can certainly buy the bulbs for a plasma. They range in price but they're at least $200+.
TLS, you are mistaken. A plasma doesn't use a bulb at all. The panel is made up of hundreds of thousands of ultra-tiny pockets of ionized gas. An electrical current flows through them and they glow red, green or blue. The basic technology is not dissimilar to an fluorescent or neon tube, just a hell of a lot more sophisticated, complicated, precise, compact and expensive. You can't repair the panel. If it dies, it dies. You have to replace the whole thing, which isn't worth it. You chuck it instead.
A LCD TV works by shining a light through red, green and blue LCD pixels on the display panel. It is essentially a solid state device, with only the light bulb likely to wear out. It's usually field replaceable and is certainly more serviceable.
The following articles might help.
How a plasma TV works
How a LCD TV works
Plasma does have an advantage as a mature technology. We think of it as ultra-modern, but it has actually been around, essentially unchanged (although certainly improved and refined), for almost twenty years. Economies of quality, production and reliability are definitely in play. In some respects, it is already yesterday's technology. Companies like Fujitsu and Pioneer no longer make their own displays. Fujitsu was a huge player in the game and couldn't compete with the new, lower price manufacturers. They got out. Pioneer is now using a Matsushita (Panasonic) made panel. But for us electronic junkies, a mature technology has advantages. It's proven and will probably work well for years and years. Panasonic now says you can get over 100,000 hours (that's 3 hours a day for 90 years) on one of their panels before the image significantly dims. That was as little as 10,000 hours a dozen years ago, especially on Fujitsu panels.
LCD is just getting rolling. They will continue to improve dramatically over the next half a dozen years. Don't be surprised if they totally take over the market in that time.
New technologies like OLED (Organic Light Emitting Diodes) might beat everyone, though. It's been the "next great thing" for half a dozen years and is finally now just hitting the market. Sony has some small, very expensive OLED TVs for sale. OLED, like all new technologies, will get cheaper and better. It promises to be the TV you can roll up like a window shade. The panel itself is currently millimeters thick, and could well be even thinner in the future.
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