Well after 5 years and nearly 9000 hours on the original bulb I was starting to notice a lack of "pop" in the picture and so decided to take the plunge and order a new bulb.

I went with Bluestar-online as they seemed to have the best price (plus free two-day shipping) and pulled the trigger.

Bulb arrived on schedule two days later via USPS in a plain box. Just the bulb, not the housing so I spent about ten minutes swapping out the bulb from the housing from my set. I also took the time to clean off the housing as quite a bit of dust had managed to build up over the past five years.

Once the new bulb was in the housing, I put the set back together and everything worked like a charm. I then went into the service menu and reset the bulb counter.

The new bulb has definitely restored the punch that the image was lacking and just in time for the Olympics.

Still a great set, five years and counting.

Nice. Sure got your monies worth out of that first bulb. I have a Sammy HLS 7178, often thought about having a spare bulb on hand for the inevitable. Curious, when you said lack of pop, did the pic just look dimmer?

Dimmer and a bit washed out due to the lower light output. The new bulb fixed both of those problems.

I kept to old bulb (since it hadn't burnt out) so I have an emergency back-up just in case the newer one gives out.

Five years on the first bulb took me a bit by surprise. I can only hope the second one is of similar quality.

5 yrs? Nice! I got about 18 months out of my first bulb (Sony RPLCD). But that was my fault, I was a RP Newb and didn't realize that I needed to leave about 4"s of space behind the TV to allow ventilation. I had my TV flush against the wall LOL