[JP]

After owning crt's for so long and now making the switch to lcd (vt540) I still find myself worried about static images. I don't pretend to fully understand the technology behind lcd. One thing had me thinking though. This projector has a PIC MUTE option where the whole screen basically goes black. I can see of course that the lamp is still turned on. My question is this: Does using PIC MUTE in any scenario actually cause less stress (if any) to your projector. I mean the way I understand it is that the lamp is either ON or OFF. There is no in between and it basically suffers the same amount of stress regardless of the projected image. So pic mute, a static white image, or a moving image (movie) should really all be causing and equal amount of stress. Does this sound accurate for lcd's?

 

[Gary McCoy]

While it's true that an LCD projector subjected to a static high contrast image for a prolonged period will briefly display a "memory effect", simply continue to use the projector with a non-static image and it will fade in a few minutes. (This information can be found in the VT540 manual on page 24.) The difference is this is a temporary memory effect versus a permanent CRT phosphor burn.


I would avoid "Picture Mute" which blackens the panels totally, the net result is almost all the light gets turned into heat in the LCD panel. I would speculate that a total white image would in turn reduce this heat to a minimum - unfortunately that's not one of the color selections available on the projector menu for PIC MUTE, but if you are driving the projector with a PC, you could of course use white with a screen saver.


Gary