Quoted from f3honda4me:If you have 5.0/7.5 boards and you haven't had an issue, that really should come with a "yet" at the end. If you've had the game for 3 or 5 years it doesn't really matter. It doesn't seem to be a time factor but a games played factor. I don't think we've seen any WOZ games with a few thousand plays on them with 5.0/7.5 boards that didn't have a board go out? I've searched for such an example, but haven't found one, so if anyone has one please share!
In my searching there were a fair number of used HUO buyers that have been burned on the old boards, buying from users who had their pin for years and never had problems, only to play a bunch of games and then have boards go out. It's just too much of a risk for me, unless the prices become more reasonable for that risk. 2.0 boards are the only ones that are truly 100% to last as long as any normal LED board should. I'm in the market for a WOZ myself right now, but the prices on HUO are too high given that 2.0 boards are $800 and about 12 hours of work to install them.
The 2.0 boards are not going to be failsafe. The (ALL) LEDs go out eventually including the 2.0 LEDs and anything Stern or other manufacturers use. The main thing the 2.0 system offers over the 7.5 buffered boards is a non-series configuration so if one goes out it does not take all the LEDs down the stream out until the bad one is bypassed.
I also would guess the brand of the LEDs is likely still the same and only the version is changed because they stop making the previous version every so often. I think it was Kingbright.