I have had my samsung plasma since March of this year and i properly broke the tv in by running the break in dvd at low to medium settings. Now i still get image retention very easily say i pause a game for less than 2 minutes and when i resume i still see the highlighted resume option from the menu on the screen only if it is in a bright background, for example, white or sky blue, etc. An example of this was when i played forza motorsport 3 last night and i paused the game to do something on my pc for 2 minutes or less and the resume option in the pause menu was highlight with red and the letters of resume were white. When i selected resume i could see the word "Resume" when the area was in the bright light blue part of the sky.

I always have my brightness and contrast settings to below 50 and my sharpness below 10 since i read having it up high puts the tv in "torch" mode and I have pixel shift on 4-4-1min. Now i know the images are going to stay on the screen for a short period but with all the hours i have put in to the tv is this normal? I remember i played a game for hours in a week and the health bar is white so that burned in for awhile until i got rid of it after about a week or so, stupid i know but i learned. Basically i am asking if this is normal or is there anything i can do to reduce the retention from happening quickly?

As a former (and technically speaking, current) owner of a PN50A550 I can say that my set had (has) the exact same issue as yours, even after a panel replacement and over 1000 hours of use on the second panel. No matter what I did, how careful I was, and even with a proper calibration, this issue never ceased. To be honest, I think it got worse as time went on.

I checked some of the newer B models on display a while back and they seemed to be a mixed bag. Some would retain images after a few minutes, other seemed to hold up OK.

This issue (and the poor black levels) was too much so I grabbed a Pioneer before they disappeared (for pretty much the same price as the Sammy). I have not had any issues with image retention since;)

My friend has an LG plasma and he said he has never gotten any burn in or retention and he has left a game paused for at least an hour and there was nothing. The picture quality on my plasma is absolutely stunning, especially while watching Planet Earth Ocean Deep or any Planet Earth episode. It is not really a big issue since i am very careful but it is annoying having to play games for a short amount of time then again most of the games i play i don't have any retention issues. It is strange that we have this issue since i read that newer plasmas are difficult to burn in.