Son in law just bought a 42 inch plasma TV.
I realize that he just spent beaucoup de bucks for the thing. And he is (as I would be if I paid that much money for something) -----maybe overly sensitive to the issues about plasma and irreversible screen damage.
But he would get seriously upset if anyone paused a DVD for any length of time. According to him anything more than a minute or so of pause would destroy his very expensive toy.
True? Or is he overeacting?
Awesome picture by the way.
Tempted to buy one myself.
I’ve got a plasma screen (Panasonic PW6) and he’s overreacting. I wouldn’t leave a picture on for an extended period like overnight, or even over lunch, but 5 minutes or so is fine on mine - I’ve not had need to try more. Burn-in is a real danger, though and if I need to pause a DVD I’m playing for any significant time, I turn the screen off.
Plasma has the ability to reverse any burn-in by just playing more video afterwards, and in a few minutes any image retention is blurred back to normal again.
My DVD player ki8cks in a screen saver after about 10 minutes on pause, and that helps alleviate my worries about burn-in possibilities. So yes, he is overreacting, but the way it was talked about when plasmas first came out, I’m not surprised - there was quite a bit of scaremongering.
Not always, but sometimes. On mine, I once fell asleep during a movie and left the splash screen for the movie up all night. The image was gone within several days. OTOH, I have no idea when or how it happened, but someone burned in black bars on the top and bottom of my screen. Whatever was left up there coulnd’t have been up there for more then 8 hours, and theese lines have been there for a few weeks now.
My plasma has a ‘cleaning’ feature where a very bright white bar slowly traverses the screen. It’s supposed to get rid of stuff like that.
I’ve read of some people that will either take the culprit image, if they know what it is and load it onto their computer (if they don’t have the image, they’ll draw one as best they can on the computer) then use their computer to display the NEGATIVE image for a while. Now, they say this reverses the damage, but I still wonder if it’s acutally ‘burning in’ the rest of the screen to match what’s already there so you don’t notice it.
Makes sense. In the “bad old days” of video cameras, a way to un-burn an image from the orthicon tube was to aim the camera at a very brightly and evenly lit white wall for a day.
But as far as burning a plasma screen, normal use won’t harm it. You might have difficulties if the thing shows static images all day long (or things like stock tickers that don’t change position) or if you exclusively watch broadcast TV in 4x3 sidebox mode.
You got it Joey P, using the burn-out feature on any type of regular basis isn’t recommended. The “burn-in” feature just does a terrific job of burning in a white screen. Although it cures the “burn-in” problem, it decreases the overall life of the screen.
Something I’ve wondered, is it not recommended to hook up video game systems to plasma TVs? Games can have static graphics (such as scores or status bars) on the screen for long periods.
I have heard that this is a bit of a problem, or at least that some have warned of the potential problem. But if you are only playing the game for a few hours, and then watch regular TV, then go back to a different game, and mix it up a bit like that, you shouldn’t have too much of a problem.
Not being a gamer, I’m not sure if that behaviour is common - perhaps 12 hour marathons for three weeks on the same game might be what really goes on, in which case burn-in is probably more likely.