Title says it all, but here's the longer version.
I just moved into a new apartment and my parents generously offered to buy me a nice HDTV for my bday. Based on the review in the wirecutter and other good reviews of panasonic plasmas I wanted to get a 55 inch TC-P55ST50. My dad is old school, and he likes to go into a retailer with no research, look at various tvs, let the salesman mislead him for 20 minutes and then buy something average in the end. Not my style.
Anyway when we were in the store, we found out that the TC-P55ST50 is discontinued, and they had none in stock, but they would sell the floor model for $400 off Amazon's price. I was immediately concerned about burn in, and was planning on buying a new set, not evaluating a floor model, but I did my best to check the panel out in the store, turning off "Vivid" mode and trying to tune to something less frenetic than the store's marketing video loop. In the mean time, my dad was getting pushed all over by the sales man and there was other drama that I don't want to get into going on so I was distracted, mea culpa.
Anyway I get the display home, and start watching stuff on it, looks great! lovely tv (once you reset it and put it in more reasonable picture settings than demo mode) but sure enough, the screen is burned. Only shows up with flat backgrounds, but now I'm seeing it all the time, especially in panning shots in movies/tv shows.
Seems the salesmen liked to watch ESPN when business was slow....
So... the question is, can this be fixed? Is the screen permanently screwed? $400 off this tv is nothing to sneeze at, and I want to save my parent's money, they're being too generous already, but I don't want to be slightly annoyed by this burn in for the life of the tv.
I'm currently running this plasma tv burnin video in a loop on the display to see if it wipes anything out. But I'm not optimistic.
Leaning towards returning and covering the price difference of ordering from amazon myself.
TIA for the help.
Edited by quux - 2/13/13 at 7:38am
I just moved into a new apartment and my parents generously offered to buy me a nice HDTV for my bday. Based on the review in the wirecutter and other good reviews of panasonic plasmas I wanted to get a 55 inch TC-P55ST50. My dad is old school, and he likes to go into a retailer with no research, look at various tvs, let the salesman mislead him for 20 minutes and then buy something average in the end. Not my style.
Anyway when we were in the store, we found out that the TC-P55ST50 is discontinued, and they had none in stock, but they would sell the floor model for $400 off Amazon's price. I was immediately concerned about burn in, and was planning on buying a new set, not evaluating a floor model, but I did my best to check the panel out in the store, turning off "Vivid" mode and trying to tune to something less frenetic than the store's marketing video loop. In the mean time, my dad was getting pushed all over by the sales man and there was other drama that I don't want to get into going on so I was distracted, mea culpa.
Anyway I get the display home, and start watching stuff on it, looks great! lovely tv (once you reset it and put it in more reasonable picture settings than demo mode) but sure enough, the screen is burned. Only shows up with flat backgrounds, but now I'm seeing it all the time, especially in panning shots in movies/tv shows.
Seems the salesmen liked to watch ESPN when business was slow....
So... the question is, can this be fixed? Is the screen permanently screwed? $400 off this tv is nothing to sneeze at, and I want to save my parent's money, they're being too generous already, but I don't want to be slightly annoyed by this burn in for the life of the tv.
I'm currently running this plasma tv burnin video in a loop on the display to see if it wipes anything out. But I'm not optimistic.
Leaning towards returning and covering the price difference of ordering from amazon myself.
TIA for the help.
Edited by quux - 2/13/13 at 7:38am
