Burn-in on plasma TVs {Engadget HD}

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.