I am a new owner of a Pioneer 5070. Yay! Love it. I've seen lots of break-in related posts where its recommended not to play video games during that period. But come on people!? No video games for 100s of hours? There must be a better way.

I was wondering what Xbox 360 games people play that are plasma friendly - ie. have no static parts on the display or limited HUD (Heads Up Display), basically during gameplay there is full motion video onscreen only.

I'll start ....

Tomb Raider Legend. Looks/plays great and HUD elements appear briefly when you change items/use weapons and then disappears.

Highly plasma friendly and I don't see any reason to avoid it during the first few hundred hours of your plasma's life.

Gears of War

FIGHT NIGHT 3...looks great and no HUD
Project Gotham Racing 3 ...there is an optional download where you can get rid of the HUD. Very nice.

I was happy to learn that there's an option to make the Gears of War HUD auto-hide. That said, everytime you shoot, the HUD is back and LOL I dunno about you but I do *alot* of shooting in this game.

May be worth using caution playing this game in the first few 100 hours. I've read a couple posts where people found they were getting IR with this game.

**** the break in period. I did gaming from day 1 with my Panny 50" and no burn in and only slight IR after hours of playing. My first week I must have played at least 25 hours of games on the plasma. Don't worry about this burn in crap. At worst you will get some IR that will last at most an hour or two. Mine usually goes away after 10-15 minutes.

**** the break in period. I did gaming from day 1 with my Panny 50" and no burn in and only slight IR after hours of playing. My first week I must have played at least 25 hours of games on the plasma. Don't worry about this burn in crap. At worst you will get some IR that will last at most an hour or two. Mine usually goes away after 10-15 minutes.

Agreed.

An hour? Maybe that's a bit much, but the longest IR I ever had was about 5-10 minutes after playing Madden.

It washes away quite quickly. Burn-in seems to be a problem of the past.

My Pio 5070 has been through gaming hell. 5 hour blocks with people over, and not even a dent.

Plasma friendly games? That's a contradictions, like Rap Artist or Fresh Frozen.
Can there really be a XBox game that is plama friendly?
I sure know there is no such thing as a Rap artist :-)

Project Gotham Racing 3 allows you to completely disable all HUD's for a true 100% moving picture while racing. This is the only game I play when I'm trying to cure uneven wear.

Though it's not 100% moving, Rainbow Six Vegas uses a dark green/dark red HUD that I've used for considerable amounts of time with no uneven wear on test images. Though do not take my experience as word of law.

Gears of War is NOT Plasma Friendly unless there's an option to disable the ammo/weapon hud in the upper right. I have uneven wear from that frakking weapon hud as do a ton of other people.

If possible I recommend avoiding gaming all together unless you breakin in your plasma on torch mode settings with full motion video for 100-200 hours. Full motion video at torch mode settings accelerates the break in process. Getting uneven wear in is such a frakking headache, as it can take a long time for phosphors to catch up.

On my PDP4270HD (the 42" version of the TV you have) I currently have uneven phosphor wear from 3 Xbox 360 games.

- Gears of War ... Decided to play this for 2 sessions, about 4-6 hours each, on Standard settings at about 80 hours into the PDP's life.
- Project Gotham Racing ... Decided to play this for 1 solid 8 hour session, on Game mode Save 2 at about 120 hours into the PDP's life
- N3 ... Decided to play this for 2 sessions about 4-6 hours each on Game/Save 2 for about 200 hours into the PDP's life.

All three of those games have caused uneven wear. It's really only apparent on a solid yellow test image (or yellow derivative), and sometimes when you are CONSCIOUS of it and looking for it during a very bright movie. I've been doing a ton of washes/movie looping and after about 72 hours, which have noticeably reduced the IR (it is however still there.)

If you think your plasma has no burn in from Xbox games, you can always check by creating a yellow test image (1366x768 MS paint picture solid yellow), put it on a flash drive, and put it full screen on your TV with the lights off. If you have any IR , that yellow image will make it clear as day.

Ignorance might be bliss though!

Lodrin. You say you have the 42" version and it seems like you got some significant IR. I had the Panny 42" version and did get IR from gaming. Thats where I got my 1-2 hour number from. At worst I had IR for about 3 days from Dead Rising. Anyway the 50" version of the same TV has given me at most 20 minutes of IR after playing games for 4-5 hours straight. I think 42" plasma are more prone ot IR then the bigger sets. I think that the 42" sets are driven harder then the 50" set. Also I can confirm that after having owned the exact same model in both a 42" and 50" set. The 42" set was a little brighter and had more contrast which could be the reason they are more prone to IR Id rather have 8" more then a slightly more punchy image.

Project Gotham Racing 3 allows you to completely disable all HUD's for a true 100% moving picture while racing. This is the only game I play when I'm trying to cure uneven wear.
...
Full motion video at torch mode settings accelerates the break in process.


Lodrin, the purpose of my post was to try and identify xbox 360 games that - during normal gameplay - display full motion video 99% of the time without IR causing static display elements. This should be no different than watching a full screen movie or other video content.

We have so far identified - in addition to PGR 3 - that both Tomb Raider and Fight Night 3, during gameplay are essentially full motion video. And should therefore allow for stress free gaming.

I've seen a number of screen captures from the King Kong game (which is cheap now too!) that give me the impression that it should be safe too. I'd like confirmation though.

No need to avoid any games on the 5070. Just enjoy the set.

Guys - what I'm trying to come up with here is a list of games that are compatible with the viewing recommendations normally associated with a plasma break-in period.

I've noticed that for every person who feels strongly that plasma break-in is necessary, there seems to be another that feels equally strongly that its not. If you want to debate this, please find another thread.

This thread is for those people that are trying to perform a break-in, and would like a list of games that they can play without feeling stress that they are risking IR or burn-in.

Project Gotham Racing 3 allows you to completely disable all HUD's for a true 100% moving picture while racing. This is the only game I play when I'm trying to cure uneven wear.

Though it's not 100% moving, Rainbow Six Vegas uses a dark green/dark red HUD that I've used for considerable amounts of time with no uneven wear on test images. Though do not take my experience as word of law.

Gears of War is NOT Plasma Friendly unless there's an option to disable the ammo/weapon hud in the upper right. I have uneven wear from that frakking weapon hud as do a ton of other people.

If possible I recommend avoiding gaming all together unless you breakin in your plasma on torch mode settings with full motion video for 100-200 hours. Full motion video at torch mode settings accelerates the break in process. Getting uneven wear in is such a frakking headache, as it can take a long time for phosphors to catch up.

On my PDP4270HD (the 42" version of the TV you have) I currently have uneven phosphor wear from 3 Xbox 360 games.

- Gears of War ... Decided to play this for 2 sessions, about 4-6 hours each, on Standard settings at about 80 hours into the PDP's life.
- Project Gotham Racing ... Decided to play this for 1 solid 8 hour session, on Game mode Save 2 at about 120 hours into the PDP's life
- N3 ... Decided to play this for 2 sessions about 4-6 hours each on Game/Save 2 for about 200 hours into the PDP's life.

All three of those games have caused uneven wear. It's really only apparent on a solid yellow test image (or yellow derivative), and sometimes when you are CONSCIOUS of it and looking for it during a very bright movie. I've been doing a ton of washes/movie looping and after about 72 hours, which have noticeably reduced the IR (it is however still there.)

If you think your plasma has no burn in from Xbox games, you can always check by creating a yellow test image (1366x768 MS paint picture solid yellow), put it on a flash drive, and put it full screen on your TV with the lights off. If you have any IR , that yellow image will make it clear as day.

Ignorance might be bliss though!

If it's only noticeable during a yellow screen... I don't know how relative it is to real viewing. I've checked on an all black screen, and an all white and have seen nothing. All gray doesn't even show up.

That HUD disappears on and off and I haven't even had IR with that game. I've played Marvel Alliance.. or at least a group of my friends played that game for 5 hours straight.

HUDs on all four corners for like 80 percent of the game. There was definete IR... but now there's not even a trace.

Sorry for your troubles.

We have so far identified - in addition to PGR 3 - that both Tomb Raider and Fight Night 3, during gameplay are essentially full motion video. And should therefore allow for stress free gaming.

PGR is only full motion video if and only if you disable the HUD. You should change your list to games that can be tweaked to be plasma friendly, and not just a list of plasma friendly games. The majority of people coming here will not make that distinction on their own. They'll see PGR3 and begin playing it and they'll have IR left and right unless they disable all HUD elements (which makes the game considerably less fun o play btw)

If it's only noticeable during a yellow screen... I don't know how relative it is to real viewing.

My biggest IR problem is from N3, the hud element it uses is a bright yellow circular arc in the lower left side of the screen to represent hitpoints. This IR has dimmed the yellow phosphors of those pixels compared to the ones around it.

N3 Hud - http://home.comcast.net/~lodrin/1155250391.jpg

Here is N3 in action. when I first noticed the IR, I was able to see virtually all UI elements. Notice the bright yellow for KILLS and the hp arc in the left? Those are the dimmest pixels. Combo/Max combo was also there, but after 72 hours they are much harder to notice (Combo is almost gone)

If I watch any movie with blankets of color based on yellow in the lower left, the shadow caused by that difference in brightness is visible to my eyes. If I watched a movie in a bright yellow desert, or a space movie with a orange sun etc, and I look there, yeah it's visible. It's only noticeable when there's enough of that color in that location that allows you to compare the dim phosphors vs the brighter neighboring phosphors.

whats the point of having an Xbox360 if you only play the few games with no HUD? im sorry, but PGR3 and FightNight3 are not the games to play on this console. The great games - GOW, Oblivion, RS:Vegas, GRAW, etc. have HUDs.

play games you like, for God's sakes. just be wary of how long you play.

if you only play a few games (and the crappy ones at that), you wont enjoy the 360 fully. so, again, sell the darn thing if you're too scared to play it.