Hello everyone. Happy holidays to you.

Well, I finally took the leap. After months of research and waiting for a price-drop, I brought this big beautiful 50-inch px80u home. Needless to say, it's a startling difference from my previous TV, a 27-inch tube. A few questions & concerns that I would love help with:

1. I was playing around with the TV a couple nights ago, inputting the break-in settings, hooking up my Sony upconverting DVD player via HDMI, and re-setting the DVD player's settings as well. Then, last night I turned on the DVD player to check out the picture, and the people were short and stretched out. (The disc that happened to be in the player was my four-year-old's Barney disc...if you haven't ever seen a short, squishy, purple, dinosaur puppet before, you haven't lived the full plasma experience). I tried to re-set the TV & the DVD player, to no avail. The only way to create a normal picture is to have the TV in 4:3 mode, which is not only annoying to me but, as I understand it, is a no-no during break-in. The picture on OTA TV seems normal, or at least not as short and squished. How do I restore the DVD picture to normal? What settings should the TV & DVD player be at? My wife & daughter are going out of town for a few days, and I've got Iron Man & The Dark Knight lined up; it'll be testosterone heaven, but I'm certainly not going to watch them until this is fixed.

2. The picture on regular TV is not that great. I'm not that worried (yet) because I'm using a plain old rabbit-ears antenna; and I know that SD imperfections will show up a lot more on this TV. I'm in the process of ordering HD cable, so I'll judge more at that point. But, the picture isn't as sharp as I thought it would be. And, maybe it's my imagination but I think I can see some pixelation (I really wanted the pz80u, but it would've been $400 more; maybe I'm talking myself into seeing resolution issues where none exist, because, after all, I am about 10 feet away, and everything I've read tells me I shouldn't be able to tell a difference between 720 & 1080 at that distance). And Jay Leno's gray suit last night showed up as a collection of wavy lines. Is this a settings issue? A source issue? A resolution issue?

3. I posted this last week as a separate thread. My wife is hearing impaired and we use the closed captions & subtitles all the time. I was told by a big box employee that closed captioning will cause burn-in in a plasma and to go LCD. The people who responded on this forum assured me that captioning will not cause burn-in, which put my mind at ease and allowed me to pull the trigger on this TV. But, I have to ask again. I can see how DVD subtitles wouldn't be a problem, it's just moving text on a screen. But closed captioning is a different issue. It has the continuous black box that the text is contained in, and I'm worried that that WILL cause burn-in. So, I'm asking again.

Thanks everyone for your help with this purchase. I've learned a lot by lurking on this forum for the past few months. I may yet return this for a PZ80u, but not until I've seen it via cable.

I believe that displaying CCs on a regular basis will be problematic for a PDP, especially if the panel has only few hours of operation to begin with. From page 121 of the PDP-5020/6020FD owner's guide:

"7.3 Usage Guidelines

For maximum enjoyment of your Pioneer flat panel TV, read the following information carefully. Over the course of the flat panel TV’s lifetime, as with all phosphor-based screens including standard tube-type TVs, the luminosity of the screen diminishes very slowly. Also, static pictures shown over an extended period can adversely affect the screen image. To enjoy bright and beautiful pictures for many years to come, please apply the following guidelines.

• Set the flat panel TV to Standby when it is not being used.
• Avoid leaving a still image or frequently showing the same picture on the screen (e.g. closed-captioned images, games with static portions, etc.).
• Hide the On Screen Display (OSD) from a DVD player, VCR, or other device when not in use.
• Do not leave a picture freeze-framed or paused for long periods.
• Avoid showing a picture with very bright and very dark areas on the screen for extended lengths to time.
• Activate the GAME mode on the AV Selection submenu to play a game but try to limit using this mode for more than two hours at a time.
• View full-motion, high-action video in WIDE or FULL screen after playing a game or showing a still/PC image.

The recommended duration for showing the action video is three times as long as the game or PC image was on the screen.

• View full-motion video in WIDE or FULL screen after playing content with side, top, or bottom masking (black bars). Extensive viewing of masked content without this recovery process can cause uneven wear on the plasma cells."

How do I restore the DVD picture to normal? What settings should the TV & DVD player be at?You'll just have to explore the DVD player's settings a little longer.
My wife & daughter are going out of town for a few days, and I've got Iron Man & The Dark Knight lined up; it'll be testosterone heaven, but I'm certainly not going to watch them until this is fixed.Movies should play OK. Depends how smart your DVD player is.
2. The picture on regular TV is not that great. I'm not that worried (yet) because I'm using a plain old rabbit-ears antenna; and I know that SD imperfections will show up a lot more on this TV.

A source issue?In a word, yes. Rabbet ears or no, Over The Air HD looks great. I'm guessing your tuner hasn't picked up any Over The Air HD signals yet -- Over The Air analog can indeed be dreadful.

Confirm that the channels you're watching are HD, not SD.
3. I posted this last week as a separate thread. My wife is hearing impaired and we use the closed captions & subtitles all the time. I was told by a big box employee that closed captioning will cause burn-in in a plasma and to go LCD. The people who responded on this forum assured me that captioning will not cause burn-in, which put my mind at ease and allowed me to pull the trigger on this TV. But, I have to ask again. I can see how DVD subtitles wouldn't be a problem, it's just moving text on a screen. But closed captioning is a different issue. It has the continuous black box that the text is contained in, and I'm worried that that WILL cause burn-in. So, I'm asking again.Depends on how the Closed Captions are displayed. On some sets (like mine), the black caption window darts around the screen and doesn't appear in exactly the same position for every text posting. If it's like that, no worries.I may yet return this for a PZ80u, but not until I've seen it via cable.The problems you've listed, as described, have nothing to do with the display.

Both previous posters are saying essentially the same thing -- closed captioning *will* cause a problem if the text box remains in a static position. This is not something related to the PX line (in other words, Panasonic's PZ line won't make a difference). Pioneer's owner's manual issue a warning specifically regarding static closed-captioning.

For the other 'issues' -- again, not related to the PX line, but seem totally related to your source be it OTA or DVD player.

There are usually different settings for closed captions. You can make them transparent, which will help a lot. Honestly I don't think you're likely to have any problems regardless of the setting.

1. check your dvd player settings, you should be able to set it to know you have a widescreen TV, that will fix the squishedness.

2. source material issue, not the TV's problem

3. I would probably return it and get LCD if I were in your shoes. I wouldn't buy a plasma if my household's normal viewing habits were something that promoted uneven pixel wear

Glad to read some rational responses. Thanks optivity :cool:
Anyway, as others have said, you risk significant IR under the circumstances you describe.
I would get an LCD instead. There are many fine ones out there.

Thanks, everyone, for your input. Okay, so if I were going to go with an LCD, which ones would you recommend? We watch mostly movies and sports.

I've had the 50px80u for about 6 months now and have had no IR problems whatsoever.

I don't use CC, but my wife and I do watch a good bit of regular TV with bars on either side of the picture. I've seen no issues at all as a result.

I was careful for the first few weeks that I had the TV not to leave any static images on for very long (I have a TiVo HD and I avoided leaving it on the menu screens or paused for significant lengths.) Since then I've been less cautious and had no problems.

My 2 cents is that if you're careful at the beginning you'll probably be fine down the road. Blow everything to widescreen for the first few weeks and if you watch something with CC on, follow it up with CC off for a little while to make up for it. After a while you should be fine.

Thanks, everyone, for your input. Okay, so if I were going to go with an LCD, which ones would you recommend? We watch mostly movies and sports.Honestly, I think you'll be fine with CC as long as it's the kind I've seen, (moves to different postions on the screen) but if you really want recommendations on lcd's...the lcd subforum will be your best bet.;)

Thanks, everyone, for your input. Okay, so if I were going to go with an LCD, which ones would you recommend? We watch mostly movies and sports.

Check out the LCD forum. From what I've seen and read, the newest Sharps, Samsungs, and Sonys are the best.

OP, I second chrisherbert and highly doubt you will have any issues. Closed captioning is normal usage. These are extremely versatile displays, a few people seem to be scared on this forum for no reason.

CC is normal usage of the display and shouldn't be a problem. I would at least try it out, if you are getting IR that bothers you then you can return it. You will not get burn-in.

If you have no issues, enjoy the 50px80. One of the best values in HDTVs and you will find nothing on the lcd side that even compares with value-to-PQ. You will make significant trade-offs by getting a similarily-priced lcd.

Since you've already bought the thing, keep using it until your putative 30-day exchange period is almost up. You should know if it has issues with your captions (or anything else) by then, and can decide then.

But... You said you're getting a poor picture. Actually, rabbit ears should get you as good a pic as there is, provided you can receive Over The Air HD broadcasts. Try and verify that your tuner is getting the network's HD feed, not the SD feed -- which may be confusing if the display is "stretching" the SD feed to make it look like HD.

An earlier poster said the same thing until she realized she was using a discarded Cable feed as an "antenna" which was picking up snowy SD.

I somewhat agree with your post that we do not know exactly how phosphor wear manifests itself but I think there is a specific reason behind it that is different than your reasoning of people swapping their panels too often.

First of all, the new panels are rated at 100,000 hours to half brightness. That implies an astonishingly slow rate of loss of brightness in the pixels. You need not swap out a panel every year to avoid any issues with the drop, as after even 5 years of usage your panel will be nearly as bright as the day you got it. This makes uneven wear a much more difficult proposition to acquire or notice. Even after 10 years, in these days of fast moving tech, I feel this is the most amount of time a person could reasonably expect good performance out of their panel. Even if some noticeable uneven wear developed after this years, the period of critical viewing of the set may have passed anyway and the critical viewer (a person who wants good PQ) will be itching for something new.

A person who doesn't fit into this category will probably not notice any pixel issues as the drop in brightness on any phosphors in the panel is still quite low. And of course uneven wear is a proportional amount, with a ratio of brightest to least bright pixels. This of course is always going to be less drastic than the overall brightness drop of the most-used pixels compared to when they were new, as all pixels have been used at least somewhat, even for someone who watches the same thing almost all the time. Even the idle 'black' state sends a charge to the pixels that would wear them.

Also, a panel of any tech has components that have a decent likelihood of failing before uneven wear can manifest itself, much like the failure rate of PCs.

My conclusion? The advent of drastically increased pixel half-life's has likely made a real issue in very early plasmas in to a much more low risk scenario that may prove to be theoretical or completely useless to worry about. Our lack of owner reports of uneven phosphor wear of course must not be the only evidence because of short timeframes but I argue that it would take exceedingly long timeframes before the issue became noticeable on even a small percentage of sets (and I think those would be sets that displayed no 16:9 content whatsoever).

Isn't my PRO-150FD rated for 60,000 hours until half-brightness?

I agree that one has to basically "abuse" their panel in order to cause irreparable harm (BI/UW) to their PDP and that this technology has matured to the point where manufacturers have outdone themselves to protect buyers.

The most "critical" time period is during the first few hundred hours of operation and if people can/will cool their jets a wee bit during this time they can expect to be rewarded with many years of service.

I don't know about you... but when I get home from work each night I tend to go into "couch potato" mode and do my "guy thing," which is flip though the channels. I sometimes wonder what the long term effect will be from displaying the most common static image, my Cable provider’s EPG, on my PDP?

All those channels & still nothing to watch. :mad:

Your're right, the 2007 models are 60,000 hours. Most 2008 are 100,000, and I expect all will be by 2009. Hopefully this equates to merely an added layer of protection, cause I can't imagine putting 100,000 hours on my panel. But yes it is interesting that the first couple hundred hours are still relatively more important, I always wonder why the factory cannot age the pixels this tiny amount themselves. But I guess thats why we offer people the helpful basic precautions for new plasmas on this forum.

Also, I wondered the same thing myself, but the station logos and such can't possibly do any harm. The pixels are getting worked out, and the logos refresh often with breaks in content. Theoretically the type of burn-in they could provide is if it gets etched in to the glass, but of course this issue never, ever happens on new plasmas as it would take weeks of a continous paused image. Of course it could produce IR, but as you know the kuros IR resistance is near-perfect. I remember reading a post by xrox stating some panels can get long-lasting IR if really abused (like the pausing example) that appears as burn in, but it subsides over several days/weeks and is still a form of IR. I can't see how a station logo could present with true uneven wear though.

The bigger worry is constant watching of black-bar content. This is the classic case where uneven wear could be developed down the road imo, subject to the conditions of my last post. The funny thing is it would merely manifest itself as slightly uneven screen uniformity as there would be a slightly brighter area of the screen, which is a problem with countless brand-new panels people buy today (mostly lcds). So by this admittidely strange logic the uniformity issues presented by uneven wear would not even be a deal-breaker if they were guaranteed to occur. I think since the TV buying public is not concerned with blatantly obvious uniformity issues, this issue cannot ever be a big one even if it was happening quite often.

While every lcd and some plasmas have some uniformity problems, apparently people are still buying the worst offender. An interesting example is sharp sets still have readily visible banding after they were made aware of the banding issue about 5 years ago. They can't even get their hand-picked review samples free of banding. It shows how little some manufactuers take obvious defects seriously.

Your're right, the 2007 models are 60,000 hours. Most 2008 are 100,000, and I expect all will be by 2009. Hopefully this equates to merely an added layer of protection, cause I can't imagine putting 100,000 hours on my panel. But yes it is interesting that the first couple hundred hours are still relatively more important, I always wonder why the factory cannot age the pixels this tiny amount themselves. But I guess thats why we offer people the helpful basic precautions for new plasmas on this forum.But will they heed this advice?Also, I wondered the same thing myself, but the station logos and such can't possibly do any harm. The pixels are getting worked out, and the logos refresh often with breaks in content. Theoretically the type of burn-in they could provide is if it gets etched in to the glass, but of course this issue never, ever happens on new plasmas as it would take weeks of a continous paused image. Of course it could produce IR, but as you know the kuros IR resistance is near-perfect. I remember reading a post by xrox stating some panels can get long-lasting IR if really abused (like the pausing example) that appears as burn in, but it subsides over several days/weeks and is still a form of IR. I can't see how a station logo could present with true uneven wear though.About a year ago my wife managed to cause severe IR to a nearly 4-year-old 50PX50U by constantly watching QVC (now in HD :rolleyes:), which required many hours of full screen, non-QVC, content to eliminate.The bigger worry is constant watching of black-bar content. This is the classic case where uneven wear could be developed down the road imo, subject to the conditions of my last post. The funny thing is it would merely manifest itself as slightly uneven screen uniformity as there would be a slightly brighter area of the screen, which is a problem with countless brand-new panels people buy today (mostly lcds). So by this admittidely strange logic the uniformity issues presented by uneven wear would not even be a deal-breaker if they were guaranteed to occur. I think since the TV buying public is not concerned with blatantly obvious uniformity issues, this issue cannot ever be a big one even if it was happening quite often.Guaranteed to drive any self-respecting AVSF PDP enthusiast "nuts!"While every lcd and some plasmas have some uniformity problems, apparently people are still buying the worst offender. An interesting example is sharp sets still have readily visible banding after they were made aware of the banding issue about 5 years ago. They can't even get their hand-picked review samples free of banding. It shows how little some manufactuers take obvious defects seriously.I have been out of town this week visiting relatives in Hotlanta (http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=hotlanta). After watching my brother in-law's Olevia LCD TV w/Direct TV, I really mi$$ my PRO-150FD (and dare I say it?) w/Time Warner Cable. :eek: