Master Burn-In/IR/Break In Thread Part II: All Posts Here Only - Page 82

It is not always easy to see, whether or not you notice it will often depend on the content you are viewing at the time. I have only noticed IR from gaming or from "black bars", never any from logos or sporting events.

IR still happens but it goes away much easier and quickly as the panel ages.

Greetings,
I've been a happy owner of a PN50B550 since January '10. I broke in the screen, calibrated via blu-ray disc and have been religious about taking care of it.

I recently had a housesitter and forgot to mention that they should not watch too much SD content. Now it appears as though they watched about 4 hours of 4:3 SD content and I have bands down both sides.

I ran the scroller for about 90 minutes and a loop of HD video for another 90 minutes and can still see a faint difference in the pixel brightness.

I've read about turning on the side bars to white while there is no signal to compensate:

"If the burn-in is the result of black bar usage, you can sometimes reduce it by reversing the image of the screen. For example, let's say that you have the middle of the screen burned in because you used black bars when watching 4:3 content. Just put up the light grey bars or white bars for the side and don't display anything in the middle. How? Just unplug your STB from the unit when in 4:3 mode. The time it takes to "erase" the effects of burn-in will be in direct proportion to the amount of time that was spent watching 4:3 content with the black bars."

Does anyone have any experience doing this with a Samsung?

The problem I am having is that when there is no signal, the "no signal" graphic and the input indicator graphic stay on the screen. I don't want to leave these on for any length of time. Does anyone know how to turn them off?

Any other ideas?

I've learned my lesson with having people operate my A/V gear! Damn!

So can I do a combination of normal TV watching/blu ray watching/ video games while using the break in images when not using the TV (which will be approx 17 hrs a day) or do I have to break it in without any other TV use?

If I understand your circumstances correctly then there is no possibility of permanent damage. It may take a while but the lighter side bars will dissipate with full screen usage.

Ok I'm almost considering returning my pn50c680g5f 3D Plasma after reading Samsung's official site. I really don't want to, since it seems to be the only good 3D in our price range. Not to mention the color depth compared to just about all the LCDs and many of the LEDs.

I've had the TV on lower brightness and contrast since owning it for about about a week, I game quite a bit, and I've noticed ghosting (or is it IR?) that seems to go away pretty damn quickly, so I never thought it was an issue as mentioned here and other places for the most part. However the TV does seem to ghost extremely easy.

However I read Samsung's official website and they almost wrote as if that will eventually ruin your picture.. and the most disturbing of all was that it suggested you limit games, and channels like ESPN and other stock ticker channels to under 5% of total viewing.. are you kidding me?

I'm a pretty hardcore gamer, so I'm going to be playing 20-30 hours a week, which means I'm supposed to limit (assuming my TV is on 24/7 all week) to 8.5 hours a week!?

Can anyone reassure me? I mean this seems like owning a really nice car that you can't drive, and I'm having a hard time believing it for the most part.

Question what is one to do for watching movies that have a 2:35:1 aspect ratio?

It has not been a problem for me so far, but I'm keeping an eye out for it. I bought my Kuro in mid-july and over the last 12 weeks or so I guesstimate I've watched 5 letterboxed movies per week. I don't have cable tv and my rabbit ears antena only pick-up 2 local hd signals so I only log about 5 hours of tv per week. I know, I know... rabbit ears on an Elite Kuro.. tres chic.

As far as movies are concerned, I've been trying to maintain a letterbox-to-fullscreen ratio of 1:1. 1.78:1 movies are rare but I compensate by renting tv series on dvd. On my set 1.85:1 movies displayed in "full" mode fill the whole screen and in "dot-by-dot" the black bars are less than an inch thick so the orbiter takes care of working all the pixels more or less evenly.

What you realy don't want to do is watch multiple letterboxed movies in a row. And always enable the pixel orbiter. Black bars aren't an IR or burn-in risk per-se but they will cause uneven pixel wear over time. Thats why you want to keep the orbiter enabled. It will prevent any sharp delineation in brightness of your panel. If you ever notice the top and bottom of your screen are a little brighter than its center: don't panic. Just watch full screen content exclusively until your panel evens itself out. The rate of wear for phosphors decreases over time. That means the least worn(brighter) parts of the screen will wear faster than the rest and the panel will naturaly tend to even itself out. Or so I've been told... I'm on my first plasma and like I said; I've had no problems so far.

Bottom line is at least 40% of my viewing has been letterboxed movies for 3 straight mounths now and still no sign of uneven wear. I did however break-in my set for 150+ hours before ever using it to view actual content.

thats a relief, I'll need to buy one of those break in dvds but i plan to watch alot of my movies via the pc since i don't have a bluray player but do have a bluray disc player in my pc.

If the TV has a USB input you could maybe download the individual slides used on the break-in DVD and then run it as a slideshow from a thumb drive or external HDD. I have an HD Media Player that allows me to play an .iso image as if it were an actual DVD, so I just used that instead of a DVD player.

And I need someone to help me out please!

After much debate and research i decided to purchase my first flat screen last night. I ended up buying the Panny G20 50" plasma from Best Buy. I came on here to take a look at something called calibration (i didnt know what it was till a few hours ago.) I then saw everyone talking about a break-in.

Can someone break it down for an idiot like me? I have a ps3 and a panny blu-ray player. Where do I start? What do I do? I know there are some slides or something i have to download but I dont know where to start or where to get them or anything at all!

Do I burn it to a Dvd-R and play it on my ps3? Or how do I go about it?

Also is it ok to watch a football game on sunday between the break-in or is that too risky?

Any help would REALLY be appreciated. I just dont want to mess it up and I'd like to get the most out of my set as possible. Thanks everyone!!!

I've got some annoying IR/BI from yesterdays college football on ESPN & ABC. The damn score area (not the ticker) has left lines. The set is about 18 days old with about 180-200 hours use. I'm really reconsidering this plasma idea.

You should lower contrast level for the first few hundred hours of your set. 200 hours is still pretty green for plasma panel. If you're using one of the torch mode presets like vibrant then IR is bound to happen. Good news is it should clear itself after a while. You could try running the screen-wipe routine and see if it helps. Also lower contrast level until you hit ±500 hours of tv/movies/games to be safe. You could speed this process up by running the break-in slides found in this forums.

I use some lower settings...I hate torch mode.

I spoke too soon. I ran the scrolling bars and break-in slides (which I use when not watching)...it's ok, now.

I am writing this post to in hopes that some of the more experienced plasma owners out there can help assuage my fears and also provide some advice potentially.

I purchased and installed a Panasonic TC-PVT20/25 on 11/1/10 and have been absolutely thrilled with the picture quality. I did NOT have it professionally calibrated, but I did do some research and adjusted my picture settings to some of those I found posted within these forums and CNET. I am work so do not have exact details. However, I know that I run the TV in THX mode with some adjustments.

So that being said I was totally thrilled with the Pandora app found on the TV. I have used Pandora at work and on my phone, but enjoy the functionality of having it on the TV. It is convenient to connect to my stereo system. Also the ability to skip songs or thumb up/down from across the room was awesome.

I was aware that you needed to be careful of static images on all plasmas and was initially not even going to use Pandora. However, I had it on screen for a couple of minutes when I noticed it went to a rotating image. I thought, "problem solved", there will be no BI/IR with a rotating image like that. That being said I used it for several hours while I cleaned and cooked in preparation for some company and later that evening discovered some of the images from Pandora were BI/IR. Specifically the title of the station is on the top right, the thumb up/down are along the right side, and the large menu bar crosses the screen towards the bottom.

I have used the TV's anti-image retention wipe multiple times and it does seem to have improved. For example I cannot see the thumb up/down anymore, but I can still see the station name and the menu on some screens. It should be noted that I cannot see these at all during any normal viewing. Specifically I can only see them when a static image is present and light colored, for example the Viera Cast menu, or the Pandora sign in menu.

So some of my specific questions would be...

1) Is there any hope of these images going away?
2) Will running the break-in DVD's I have been reading about help with this issue?
3) Will I always have to be hyper-paranoid about what I watch?

The screensaver lulled me into a false sense of security. I really didn't think that BI/IR could happen that rapidly. So now I am terrified of watching football/ESPN/playing games, etc.

Any help would be appreciated.

Also, does any other TC-PVT20/25 owner experience the same issue with Pandora?

Thanks

1. More than likely the retained images will go away. New plasmas are very susceptible to IR and it takes longer for IR to go away making it all the more noticeable.

2. Running the break-in DVD can be used as a safe "wash". Run the slides with a maxed Contrast setting. You should notice the retained images lighten after doing this. Be patient however, it may take a week or two to completely remove IR depending on the situation.

3. Doesn't hurt to be hyper paranoid while the plasma is new. This will not be the case over time as the plasma will be more resistant to IR as it ages and when it does occur it will go away more quickly. The key is to be aware that IR does happen and to mix up your viewing content. I game, watch sports, and anamorphic content without issue for the most part since I don't overdo any of them. I just mix things up and since I've had my VT25 since June, IR goes away pretty easily now.

I'd like to ask a general question regarding IR & burn-in if I may.

Do the lower end to mid-level plasma lines have more of a chance of IR & burn-in than the higher end lines even if you correctly break in your plasma and be careful by mixing up what you watch/play?

[This is cross posted but I thought it might help someone here]

I had some really bad IR when our plasma was brand new from my son watching Sesame Street. It was the first thing we watched on the new TV... And he watched a couple hours of them. (They put "ei" on the upper right in black surrounded by a white circle.)

What fixed mine was putting the 120 Break in slides on a USB thumb drive and playing them overnight. (By morning it was mostly gone. After a few days it was completely gone. I watched normal TV during the day and ran the breakin slides at night.)

I later realized that I was using a setting that had pixel shift disabled... And that I would have been better off running 100 hrs of break in slides before watching stuff with very contrasty logos. After 100+ hours of break in slides and 100+ hours of normal TV viewing the IR is way better on Sesame Street. (Probably gone in 5-10 mins.)


I downloaded the breakin slides from here and put them on a USB thumb drive.
http://www.webapalooza.com/plasma/index.php

(Note that my TV was a Samsung PN50C8000)

Hello all. I just got a 46 inch g25 from the store and have been using it for 2 days. We got a 10% discount because it was the floor model, and the guy "said" he has had it for 2 weeks.

At the store it was running a loop of full screen, and widescreen (with black bars on the top and bottom). I thought great, I won't have to wear it in for 4 days. After I got it home I installed it in our spare room, downloaded the 120 slide show, and have had it running that for a while now. I took one break to watch an hd movie with my girlfriend before bed.

My problem is, when I do the slide show, I can pretty easily see a brighter color on the top and bottom of the TV where the black bars normally. Like so,



I don't know if I should just continue to do the slideshow for a couple more days, or if at this point it is going to be permanent. What do you guys think? Should I wait for them to get re-stocked, return it, and get a new one after I get my pay check?

Thanks

P.S. Other than the brighter bar area, I really enjoy the TV.

hey guys i'm really new to this burn in procedure and am trying to learn through research. i bought a LG 42PJ350 42" 720p plasma today and want to do the burn in procedure. I have lowered the contrast and brightness to about 36 (am i overdoing it?) and i dont leave the same channel on for more than an hour. am i doing fine so far? i want to try the burn in procedure so i downloaded the pictures from webapalooza.com/plasma but what do i do now? i kno i have to tranfser the images as a slideshow and each image shud stay for 10 secs each but how long do i let the slideshow keep going per day?

1 more question - bcuz i watch alot of sports, would zooming in enough so that the scores and ticker dont show help for the burn-in procedure?

i know its alot of questions.. i hope someone can help me, thanks alot

I took a quick look at the 42PJ350 manual. On pg 58 it says if you pick a folder on a USB memory drive and select Slideshow that it will play thru all the pictures. (Might just put 2-3 pictures in a folder first and make sure it never stops repeating. It is important that it repeats / starts over after the last picture and never stops. Then go with all 120 if it repeats continuously.)

As for the duration, it looks like the TV has some presets for "Slide Speed". I'd just go with the one that is closest to 10 seconds. (I don't think it matters much though. You would just get thru them faster at a faster speed.)

I don't think it matters much on brightness/contrast. I brought mine down a bit just for normal viewing. (It only really matters if something is statically on the screen.)

I enjoyed the TV normally during the day. And ran the slides overnight each night till I got to 100 hours total.

(I didn't do any special stretching, limit my watching, etc. I just checked at the end of the day if there was any IR... If I saw some IR at night then the breakin slides would normally take care of it by morning. If I still saw IR in the morning, which I never did, I might have changed my habits a bit. Also I left the burn in prevention stuff on.)

If you read thru this thread you'll see that it's 50/50 on if this burn in process is even necessary. But I figured it wouldn't hurt anything, as long as the slides never stopped, so I did it anyway.

(Btw. My TV is a PN50C8000, but it should be similar for all plasmas.)

What should I consider about the PN50C7000?

@rdellar17 - Dang you left ur tv on that long?? isnt that bad to watch it normally (7-8 hours?) and then still leave it on the whole overnight? couldnt it fry or something?

also so u think that i dont have to leave the contrast and brightness that low (38)? bcuz its pretty dark but i mean i will live with it for now if it will be better for future once i raise it to normal.

1 more thing - they say that u definitly shouldnt play video games within the 100 hours except i've played it about twice except its was no more than hour each time, should that be fine?

Leaving it on for 12-15 hrs per day didn't hurt mine... We probably only watch 4-5 hrs of TV during the day so it had quite a rest period. (Also every so often one of the slides is full black which they claim "rests" the screen. I think one of the days I left it on for 24+ hours. Just think about the TVs in Best Buy, etc that are on 12+ hours each and every day...)

I put my contrast / brightness at normal levels for watching TV. Which was significantly less than the defaults for my Samsung. (You might look at the page where you download the slides they might talk about brightness / contrast. I know they talk about it in this thread.)

I played video games all the time while I was breaking it in at night. None of them had a fixed HUD though... (I'd just check it on a dark screen at night and see if you have any IR and compare in the morning.)

Most likely you aren't going to be able to "hurt" the TV unless you leave a fixed image on it for a long time and disable the burn-in prevention... The supposed purpose of the burn-in is to make it so the entire screen ages evenly and that IR goes away quicker... IR goes away quickly for me now, no idea on the aging thing guess I'll know in 10 years.

Finally got my Panny TCP54S2 set up. Watched "Tears Of The Sun", black bars top and bottom I might add. Then 1.5 hours of COD, 10 minutes of slides another 1.5 hours of COD and no IR at all. Settings are 50 and 50 for contrast and brightness. I am so glad I went plasma over LCD/LED this time.

Don't know how comfortable I am leaving my TV on overnight with slides running so I will probably forego that adventure and just run it when I'm around.

The first thing I did with my pio was run the break-in slides non-stop for a whole week. Its doing fine.

I just recently bought a Samsung PN50C550 and am loving it so far. I have a question about the break-in that I hope hasn't been asked yet, I've hunted and haven't seen it asked so far.

I have an Xbox 360 and if you have music stored on the HDD, while you are listening to music you can turn on full screen visualizations, which randomly displays different colors and shapes (much like whats on Windows Media Player)

My question is would this be just as good as using the break-in DVD/picture slideshow? The images are constantly moving and using different colors.

Thanks for any replies.

I really appreciate the big help man. The only question i have left now is that i read in this page that you should put the contrast 100 when running the slides, should you?

And by burn-in prevention on your tv, do you mean the pixel orbiter? Because that's basically the only burn in prevention i see on my LG tv, does yours have other things?

I'll be getting a new plasma (Panasonic P42U2) soon and was just wondering a couple things about the break in period.

I'm planning to set up the TV as I do my 37" LCD right now, which is to be connected to my pc as a secondary monitor for viewing videos, as well as to the PS3 for games/movies. Could I just play a video file I have on my computer that fills up the entire screen and keep it on loop for a few hours every night during the break in period? I would guess it would be better to play a different file every night so the same colors aren't displayed for hours on end during the break in period.

What would be the best kind of video for this? Muted colors (like Drama-ish shows/movies)? bright/popping colors (cartoons, CG material)?

Also, could I watch pillared SD material in between (no HD service from my box) for maybe 2-3 hours at a time, as long as I turn the black borders to gray? Or would this hurt the break in period? I'm guessing the same would be true of letterboxed movies such as I'm watching on my LCD now on bluray, though I've read for some reason letterboxed content doesn't affect burn in due to the pixels/phosphors not being ignited or something...

edit: I run Windows7 with a theme that automatically rotates through several different wallpapers every xx minutes. Would this be just as effective for burning in as any other method?

This thread is frustrating to read. I thought IR/BI were a thing of the past.

My Samsung PN63C8000 is being delivered this week and I'll be breaking it in for 100 hours as recommended here but I have some questions.

Some people advise breaking in on a torch setting and others advise against this due to unnecessary wear that this causes. Does it really matter how high you have the TV dialed in during break in?

I know of three slide collections, one with 20 slides, one with 70 slides and one with 120 slides. I assume the 120 slide collection will break the TV in most effectively?

Is there any harm in running the set 24/7 for four days to break it in? If so what is the longest stretch at a time I should run the break in slides? I'd like to get the break in out of the way as quickly as possible.