I've had my Sony KDF-55WF655 for about 27 months, and up until the last few months I've never had any issue of any kind with it; I WAS totally happy with my purchase.

However, just the past couple of months, I noticed a strange blue-ish swirling occurring around the center of the screen, and it's gotten worse. At first I thought it was dust/cloth streaking from wiping it down. Then I thought my color settings reset to some bizarre configuration.

Nope...my screen has been the victim of BURN-IN. The blue swirls I see are from the default "wallpaper" displayed by my DVD player when the disc is stopped or when no disc is inserted. Hearing all the problems with people and their bulbs, I figured it was better to just keep the TV on nearly all the time when I'm home (provided I plan to watch it at some point within a few hours), to hopefully do less harm to everything during startup/warm-up periods. As a result, the default Sony "wallpaper" that displays light and dark blue rippling water in an oval configuration has left a permanent sky-blue image of itself on my screen, which is mildly visible during many scenes, and HIGHLY visible and distracting during blue ones.

WTF???? I thought LCD rear projections were exempt from this type of phenomenon. Screen burn-in was the single biggest reason I decided against getting a plasma.

Anyone else experience this? Should I contact Sony and complain about this? The TV was advertised as not being susceptible to burn in. Well, I'm here to say it is VERY much susceptible. Especially since I've been at home a lot the past few months, and have just left the TV/DVD player on nearly all the time... It's gotten worse.

Any thoughts or advice? I think I got the extended 3-year warranty on this thing through Good Guys, who was taken over my CompUSA. Wonder if this kind of thing is covered...

Didn't think it was possible.....How long would you say you left a static image on the screen? My dvd player, Xbox 360 and even my DVR go dim or rotate screen saver modes so I doubt I would ever have that happen but good to know. I've seen burn in on laptop screens before but never heard of this of RPTLCD.

Not sure if your EW will cover that but give it a try. Maybe don't mention what you do and just that you have some wierd stuff on your tv screen. If you caused it I doubt they will cover it. They will claim it's not the manufacturers responsibility especially because the manual does not say its impossible to get burn in.

Keep us posted to what they say.

Probably just image retention. This can happen on LCDs. It can also, often be fixed. Try putting on a white background for a long time (hours). If it helps at all, repetition of this process will probably do the trick. I am sure there are more advanced variations of this process, so you might want to dig around for one.

yeah, its kinda like the liquid crystal is "stuck halfway"

like those opaque privacy windows that run on a current to obscure whatever is behind it..

i've heard that leaving a white background will help (becuase all the pixels are lined up so the light passes thorugh...

but, a black, will also help them (unstck) bu allowing them to close (eg, rotate to not let light through).....


-jl

Yes, I guess it was just retention. After looking at my setup again a few hours after I posted, I decided to use a black screen as default. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to tell if this solved the problem because the screen started acting strange, showing VERY faint light purple bands near the bottom and yellow bands around the middle (all horizontal from end-to-end). EW to the rescue! I've never gotten an EW on anything, except for this TV. Well-worth it, as it appears the color engine was crapping out. Called GE, had a tech out the next day to take a look and pull some numbers, then he returned in a week and replaced the color engine.

I asked him to replace the bulb at the same time, but I was told that Good Guys lied when they said Sony allowed ONE free bulb replacement (which was confirmed my GE and CompUSA), so he couldn't do it. It still works fine, but the tech said it'll more than likely die in another few months. He's surprised that it's lasted this long, given the fact that the TV's on so much.

I was a bit upset with the tech. In all the years I've had this TV, not a single finger has ever touched the LCD and I've never used any chemicals on it - I just dry-dusted it with a Swiffer thing every week. Well, in examining the color bands, he pushed in on the screen to see what effect it would have. *sigh* No harm done, but it killed my record, plus I had to use some mild cleaner to remove his oily fingerprint from the screen. Grrrr....

In any case, the TV is 100% again. The black default screen solved the problem. Thanks for the advice, guys!

BTW, to answer someone's question, the time that "retention" started really becoming a problem was after I'd gone for the day and accidentally left everything on. A total of about 14 hours with that blue-swirled wallpaper. Typically, I'll usually have something playing just for background noise.