Burn-in on plasma TVs
The burn-in issue on plasmas is something that just won't go
away. Manufactures have tried hard to prevent it as much as possible but still, it is a side effect of the technology.
There is a group of consumers down under (in
Australia) that purchased plasmas before the holiday's and left them on for hours days causing the stations logos to be burned into the screen. Yes, we know plasma this and plasma that, but there are easy things to prevent burn-in.
- Burn-in is most likely when the TV is the brightest making the first 24-36 hours of life critical. Even some manufacture set-up screens can cause nasty image retention. (not burn-in but rather, ghosting for a short period of time.)
- Turn down the brightness past 50%. Plus, you will get a lot deeper picture.
- Avoid static images. This does not mean the ESPN banner or ABC logo
but rather the Window's Start Bar or OS X's Dock. Use the plasma as a TV because you WILL get burn-in if used as a monitor. If you pause the Xbox, turn of
the TV.
Do not be afraid to buy a plasma because of the chance of burn-in. There are tools and techniques to remove burn-in but if you plan on using the plasma as a TV rather then a computer monitor, then you should never ever experience it.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Tod @ Jan 24th 2006 9:45AM
LCD's do not suffer from "burn-in". Although Apple may call it "burn-in" (just because it appears to the consumer to be the same thing), it is not. What is actually happening is called image sticking. It is from the liquid crystal molecules (somewhat) reorienting the polyimide alignment layer while the LC molecules are held in a particular position (under applied electric field). When the field is removed, the LC's prefer this previous image, as the anchoring condition has changed. The "solution" as Apple states, is to turn off the monitor (zero-field) for about the same amount of time (or longer) it was left in the "burn-in" state. This is to cause the LC to reorient the polyimide in the zero-field state back to restore the initial anchoring. In summary, LCD's do NOT "burn-in" but they can exhibit image sticking (especially if the polyimide is not completely cured (or solvents aren't removed)-generally an issue with QC during manufacturing). Plasma displays however, DO burn-in and there are various tricks to get around this, or at least to fool the eye by uniformly burning in the area adjacent to the fixed graphic such as wobulation. I hope this clears things up.
rothgar @ Jan 24th 2006 1:03PM
I will stay with my Samsung DLP thank you very much!
I have been using it as a monitor for my computer for the past few weeks. It looks great from the couch.
NNTPgrip @ Jan 25th 2006 4:28PM
got a plasma. contemplated hooking something up to the ol' VGA port. (mac mini or something) went with a Nokia 770 instead. That little internet tablet allows me to hit the web while watching the TV, all the while avoiding burn-in. screens a little small though.
Now if we could just appeal to broadcasters to use translucent station bugs only. (a la cbs, nbc, abc). Or none at all, different ones periodically, or change the position every now and then.
But then if I had my way, all the analog channels would be anamorphically 16:9. Make the 4:3 sets have to zoom and contort the image already. My FOX affiliate did this once during a football game 2 years ago by mistake, not bad.
janderson @ Feb 23rd 2006 9:25AM
Burn-in is not a correct term and I hate when it is used. What is really happening is the phosphor is being unevenly aged. All phosphor-based displays will have a half-life of the phosphor, meaning that the phosphor will loose "brightness" over time. That CRT display you bought 10 years ago is probably less that half as bright as when you first turned it on. The same happens with plasma. Think of a plasma display as millions of tiny CRT without the electron guns (SED technology will be just that millions of tiny CRTs). When applying a high contrast, bright image to a plasma display, especially during the first 100 hours of operation, there is a possibility of station logos etc. to age the phosphor of the pixels that are displaying the logo faster than the pixels that are not. Once the display is "broken in" it is highly unlikely there will be any image retention unless the image is left on for a very very long time or you play many hours of video games or use the display as a computer monitor. The latest generation of plasmas have better methods to combat uneven aging not limited to pixel rotation, better, modern phosphor etc. I prefer the plasma technology to DLP, LCD etc for viewing angle and better picture quality in my opinion.