Your friend is pretty smart. Now you have to dispose of the E waste.

True, but there are places that will pay you $ by the pound for it!
I was going to suggest there was no way the original fuse was 8 A, I mean that's nearly 1kW at 120 V. But then I realized it's a plasma TV, so very plausible. No wonder people stopped buying those things.
I also wanted to point out that "dim bulb testers" suggested by others don't work on circuits designed to draw 8 A. If he had disconnected the power supply from the load/TV, then it might (but would the power supply be designed to start without it's normal load? who knows). They work great for things like audio amps, where you think there might be shorted output transistors. An audio amp will draw very little power after the initial surge, if you don't have speakers/load connected. They also work for SMPS with a minimum load on it, but not with a plasma TV trying to load it.