OAR, Original Aspect Ratio - Black Bars and Burn-in

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Bob,

I have not heard anyone from Toshiba addressing the burn-in subject,
but when you look at how it works, I would suspect that it should be
as the risks of CRT with a bit of plasma mix together; we will find
out soon.

The market has been over terrified with duration of lamps, panels, and
burn-in of newer technology, and needs to focus in the perspective
that good old CRTs did not last forever at 100% level either, and were
subjected to burn-in under careless misuse.

I rather replace a lamp on a DLP to get the set renewed to close to
original conditions of light, than to replace 3 expensive CRT guns on
a RPTV to get it renewed.

A 60000 hrs plasma panel means over 50 years of 3 hrs per day viewing,
the last CRTs I have seen kept for 50 years are on the Smithsonian
together with the first computer I used to pay payroll, unit record
punched-card machines on the early sixties, anyone remember the IBM
407as well?

My best advice is to view material wisely with no fixed black bars or
logos left unattended in a continuous basis, regardless of the
technology you use. Use the image expansion features for 4:3 material
as much as you can tolerate.

I give you another example, on the early nineties, much before HDTV, I
purchased one of the first 16:9 Widescreen RPTVs, in 480i NTSC, a 56"
Toshiba with full anamorphic and image expansion modes, just to watch
my letterboxed laserdiscs with less black bar effect that a 4:3 set
did, and to get the widescreen feeling. I also watched 4:3 material.
A lot of black bars that I could not avoid with expansion modes.

The set is on my son's home (with my Allison's Ones great speakers as
well, and all the audio I had), he watches material with black bars as
well, and although it shows a bit the age of the tunes, it looks
great, no burn-in, almost 15 years of 16:9, black bars, and logos.

Best Regards,

Rodolfo La Maestra