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Doug could you provide some additional information regarding these
screensavers on Sanyo's, Hitachi etcs?
How long of a pause does it take to hurt a Plasma picture? If Sanyo( How
about Hitachi, anyone know?) has as a minimum a 15 minutes lead time before
activating the Screensaver technology. They must feel that it takes a matter
of time before damage occurs.
On the old plasma sets I thought the time was much shorter.
James
Plasma Screen Savers
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James,
I don't have a lot of detail about the "screensaver" techniques used by
various plasma manufacturers. But moving the picture in 12-pixel increments
over a period of time isn't going to eliminate (or even minimize by much)
the burn-in risk. At best, moving a network logo by that small amount would
just change the nature of the problem -- instead of burning in a distinct
network logo, it would over time create a less distinct "network blob."
And it's worth pointing out that a network logo is really the least of the
problems for burn-in. A bigger issue would be something like the large
chunks of static screen real estate used on channels such as some of the
shopping networks. Or a video game left unattended. Here you're dealing with
much larger static image areas. Moving those sort of images around in tiny
increments isn't going to accomplish much.
As far as the risk for burn-in, it varies pretty widely, so it's difficult
to make any generalizations.
The first plasma I calibrated was a Pioneer Elite 1000. It came out of the
box with user contrast centered, but was still pumping out nearly 90
footlamberts at peak white (as opposed to around 30 footlamberts after
calibration).
When I started to work on this panel, I connected my signal generator toward
the end of my equipment set-up process -- when my HD signal generator is
powered on it defaults to a color bar pattern. Even though the color bars
were only on the screen for about 10 minutes, when I sat down to take some
initial reading and switched to some grayscale windows, clearly visible
color bar "ghosts" remained on the screen. Those "ghosts" only completely
faded away after about 90 minutes (whew!), but I have to believe that if
that pattern had been left on screen for an hour or more at the default
contrast level, that the likelihood of permanent damage would be high.
I've seen the same thing happen on the newer Pioneer 910 plasmas (at lower
contrast levels), though not to the same degree. Oddly enough, I've worked
on two of the 1110 models (50-inch Elites) and neither of them left any
ghosts behind. I've also worked on a number of Panasonic and Sony panels,
and never detected a problem with those during the periods where a single
pattern remained on screen for 5 or 10 minutes.
If the manufacturers were serious about protecting against burn-in on
plasmas, the logical thing to do would be to limit light output to safe
levels out of the box and ensure that even maximum-level contrast wasn't
going to cause an undue burn-in risk. But the name of the game on the retail
floor is picture brightness and nothing gets in the way of that objective.
Regards,
Doug
Clearly Resolved Image & Sound
James,
I don't have a lot of detail about the "screensaver" techniques used by
various plasma manufacturers. But moving the picture in 12-pixel increments
over a period of time isn't going to eliminate (or even minimize by much)
the burn-in risk. At best, moving a network logo by that small amount would
just change the nature of the problem -- instead of burning in a distinct
network logo, it would over time create a less distinct "network blob."
And it's worth pointing out that a network logo is really the least of the
problems for burn-in. A bigger issue would be something like the large
chunks of static screen real estate used on channels such as some of the
shopping networks. Or a video game left unattended. Here you're dealing with
much larger static image areas. Moving those sort of images around in tiny
increments isn't going to accomplish much.
As far as the risk for burn-in, it varies pretty widely, so it's difficult
to make any generalizations.
The first plasma I calibrated was a Pioneer Elite 1000. It came out of the
box with user contrast centered, but was still pumping out nearly 90
footlamberts at peak white (as opposed to around 30 footlamberts after
calibration).
When I started to work on this panel, I connected my signal generator toward
the end of my equipment set-up process -- when my HD signal generator is
powered on it defaults to a color bar pattern. Even though the color bars
were only on the screen for about 10 minutes, when I sat down to take some
initial reading and switched to some grayscale windows, clearly visible
color bar "ghosts" remained on the screen. Those "ghosts" only completely
faded away after about 90 minutes (whew!), but I have to believe that if
that pattern had been left on screen for an hour or more at the default
contrast level, that the likelihood of permanent damage would be high.
I've seen the same thing happen on the newer Pioneer 910 plasmas (at lower
contrast levels), though not to the same degree. Oddly enough, I've worked
on two of the 1110 models (50-inch Elites) and neither of them left any
ghosts behind. I've also worked on a number of Panasonic and Sony panels,
and never detected a problem with those during the periods where a single
pattern remained on screen for 5 or 10 minutes.
If the manufacturers were serious about protecting against burn-in on
plasmas, the logical thing to do would be to limit light output to safe
levels out of the box and ensure that even maximum-level contrast wasn't
going to cause an undue burn-in risk. But the name of the game on the retail
floor is picture brightness and nothing gets in the way of that objective.
Regards,
Doug
Clearly Resolved Image & Sound