My HID bulb replacement on my 06 prius

That should be even more incentive to keep good customer relations and avoid bad press from some little bulb thats so cheap but cost the customer so much.

For what its worth, Isn't Sylvania the OEM make of the bulb?

I spent about 350.00 on Florescent bulbs for my house "to replace incandescant".... these bulbs are supposed to last for 7 years as even stated on the product

.... Its been about one year, I've already replaced about 9 of the 16 sylvania bathroom bulbs I purchased. True, its the round globe type that go bad "that go over the mirror" I suppose there may be allot of heat trapped inside the globe, but nevertheless I've gotten to where I just keep a double pack and staple the receipt to the package and when I have bulbs go bad, I put them in the old package.. when I get two, I march down to Home depot for a refund/exchange and I buy another brand.
Funny, Home Depot doesn't carry Sylvania any more in flourescants!

Point is.. I suspect Sylvanias QA is out the window and they may be still living off thier name charging big prices for products that may in fact be better from china that cost 1/10th the price.... or even 1/20th now that hidhideout.com has been discovered.

Seems all that has to happen is for a good company to sell to an unscruplulous money grabber who has no principles and there you have it!.... QA goes out the window "that cost money you know!" and they milk the name till its dead... I see it over and over again.

 

Now that brings up an excellent point..... How many different manufacturers are we dealing with concerning HID bulbs starting from 2003 forward?

Maybe we should start a poll asking what brands are involved in the failures.
I'll have to go home and check, but I thought my was sylvania.

 

I stand corrected Cgates... I went and look at my one remaining "good" OEM bulb and its like yours "Phillips Germany".
Apparently thats the brand thats the culprit... that does make me wonder if there are other brands that are giving abnormal rates of failures.

 

I know Stillenmaxima98 will take 69.00 for sure for 2... he bounces his prices back and forth so something is always on sale.
I wrote him once and ask him how was I supposed to tell other people what his price was if he was moving it all around... he replied and told me to tell them to simply make a bid for 69.00 and he would accept.

As for lower..... who knows?

I expect the others on ebay are just as good.... just make sure they are advertised as D4R's. And make sure they have an impeccable feedback rating.. you shouldn't go wrong.
pick the 4300K if you want as close to stock color as you can get.... I prefer that.... if you go lower, you start getting into green and even yellow if lower than that, and if you go higher, you start getting blue and into purple.
But 4300K is the closest to a sun blinding white color.
Go Blue, if you want twinkle little star! LOL!

 

cgates, Its just the nature of any bulb that would have such a hot fireup temp.
Its not as big enough an issue to go out of your way to not turn them on when you need.... its just big enough that you shouldn't turn them on and off when you don't need.

Running a short period I don't think is the issue,
Its a matter of once the lights are up to full brightness "and heat" turning them off and quickly turning them back on exposes them to much more intense heat than they would normally have to endure since the the initial fireup sends a very high voltage blast to the bulb to get things started... if the bulb is already hot from just being on when that happens, its really tough on the bulb.

At least give it a few seconds "10 - 15".... enough for a cool down if your really worried.

Keep in mind if your having these symptoms and your driving down the road and one light goes out, I would definitely opt to quickly turn them off and back on to get them fired again verses pulling off the road and then back on.
And you obviously don't have the luxury of leaving your lights off for any time at all while driving.

I don't think its critical enough enough to lose sleep over or take risk to save a few hours on the bulb.

 

Yea... for 30 bucks, the worst that go happen is they go bad.