Author Topic: An expensive TV is a poor investment, and people spend FAR too much on them  (Read 21872 times)

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Offline MK14

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Re: An expensive TV is a poor investment, and people spend FAR too much on them
« Reply #75 on: February 04, 2022, 10:12:25 pm »
Summary:
I'm NOT an expert on monitors/TVs (just an average user, with technical knowledge, which most EEVblog member have as well, who reads up on screen/monitor/TV technology/reviews sometimes). So take what I have been saying in this thread, as partly opinion/subjective. In my own personal experience, I've never seen an IPS screen play up, as regards image retention or screen burn.

But, I can believe it can happen, but I'd prefer to experience it myself.

But I've heard lots of bad things about OLED permanent screen burn damage. Also, I've seen pictures of image burn OLED screens, for sale very cheaply on ebay. Which puts me off OLED screens, especially for any somewhat stationary image uses. Maybe an OLED just for watching movies, isn't so bad, assuming there are no brand/channel advertising icons (or black boarders, on none 16 : 9 stuff), permanently on the screen, during the movie.

Just went on ebay. Found example of screen burned OLED tv ('PHILIPS 55POS9002 55 INCH OLED 4K ULTRA HD SMART TV - SCREEN BURN'  https://www.ebay.co.uk/rvh/165134163457?rt=nc&_trksid=p2047675.l48144  sorry but hard to link to properly, as ebay insists on showing new/fresh auctions, instead ), via completed listings search, in UK. Please Click below:
« Last Edit: February 04, 2022, 10:35:45 pm by MK14 »
 

Online coppice

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Re: An expensive TV is a poor investment, and people spend FAR too much on them
« Reply #76 on: February 04, 2022, 10:26:53 pm »
Plenty common with mono CRT displays, where you could read the fixed menu items power on or off. Also very common with early plasma displays, which would burn in logo places on the screen after a few months. Later ones came with a screen burn removal mode, which simply ran all pixels at full brightness in a slow moving band for a few hours. Brightness much higher than the display would normally allow, and limited to a small band so as to not overload the power supplies.
Some old computer systems were notorious for this. The console of a TI990 mini-computer displayed the same menu all day long in most cases, as they were widely used in applications where the console was merely used start things up in the morning, and shut them down at night. They constructed the menu entirely from high brightness characters, and had no screen saver mode, to ensure the screen wore as fast as possible.
 

Online coppice

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Re: An expensive TV is a poor investment, and people spend FAR too much on them
« Reply #77 on: February 04, 2022, 10:31:22 pm »
"IPS" flat-panel displays can also suffer from burned-in images when the image does not change.
-hp- explicitly denies warranty for such displays used with unchanging images, such as surveillance monitors.
Some LCD panels also suffer from a kind of pseudo burn in, that is not permanent. I have a Dell 27" monitor that is a good example of this. You can often see a shadow of windows that were previously displayed when the screen is just displaying plain white. However, over a few hours to a few days those shadows will fade and be replaced by shadows of newer windows which have been displayed.
 
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Offline tooki

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Re: An expensive TV is a poor investment, and people spend FAR too much on them
« Reply #78 on: February 05, 2022, 01:07:00 pm »
Summary:
I'm NOT an expert on monitors/TVs (just an average user, with technical knowledge, which most EEVblog member have as well, who reads up on screen/monitor/TV technology/reviews sometimes). So take what I have been saying in this thread, as partly opinion/subjective. In my own personal experience, I've never seen an IPS screen play up, as regards image retention or screen burn.

But, I can believe it can happen, but I'd prefer to experience it myself.

But I've heard lots of bad things about OLED permanent screen burn damage. Also, I've seen pictures of image burn OLED screens, for sale very cheaply on ebay. Which puts me off OLED screens, especially for any somewhat stationary image uses. Maybe an OLED just for watching movies, isn't so bad, assuming there are no brand/channel advertising icons (or black boarders, on none 16 : 9 stuff), permanently on the screen, during the movie.
Plasma TVs suffer similarly if used for static images (I’ve seen some awful burn in on plasmas used as airport departure boards, for example). But used for video, absolutely not a problem. My Panasonic plasma is from mid 2009, and there is not even a hint of burn-in, not even a difference on the edges from the black bars on 4:3 content, which I watch plenty of. (Practically 100% of my viewing is via an Apple TV box, which shows a screen saver after a few minutes, including when video is paused, so the TV is never exposed to long-term static images.) While I do suspect that OLED is more sensitive than plasma, I know I’d be comfortable buying an OLED now.
 
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Offline MK14

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Re: An expensive TV is a poor investment, and people spend FAR too much on them
« Reply #79 on: February 05, 2022, 05:21:29 pm »
Plasma TVs suffer similarly if used for static images (I’ve seen some awful burn in on plasmas used as airport departure boards, for example). But used for video, absolutely not a problem. My Panasonic plasma is from mid 2009, and there is not even a hint of burn-in, not even a difference on the edges from the black bars on 4:3 content, which I watch plenty of. (Practically 100% of my viewing is via an Apple TV box, which shows a screen saver after a few minutes, including when video is paused, so the TV is never exposed to long-term static images.) While I do suspect that OLED is more sensitive than plasma, I know I’d be comfortable buying an OLED now.

To check my understanding. Are you saying you'd be happy to buy an OLED TV, but only if it is used for Movies (and other non-static content) ?
Or would you be happy to buy OLED TVs, for massive static image content, such as computer/gaming/live-TV(station channel icon burns) uses ?
Which many households would do, depending on who lives in that household.

The later Plasmas, especially the Panasonic ones, with a claimed (and probably true), 100,000 hour screen life and advanced image retention/burn protections. Would probably have made good purchases at the time, they were readily available. I think the issues were more that mud sticks, and Plasmas had got a bad/poor reputation, from the earliest Plasmas, which did sometimes cause screen issues
But those would have been (the earliest), before the screen manufacturing techniques improved (as regards screen life time), and anti-burn technologies were introduced, and possibly other advancements, to limit/protect the later Plasma TV screens.
 

Online tom66

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Re: An expensive TV is a poor investment, and people spend FAR too much on them
« Reply #80 on: February 05, 2022, 05:33:54 pm »
I just checked our plasma in the test patterns mode.

I can just about see some signs of burn in on the red/green patterns, from a channel logo, interestingly the blue phosphor is perfect (not sure why it would last longer?)

But it's so subtle you need to really look for it, and you can't see it on ordinary images or on the full white screen.

Certainly Panasonic seemed to have cracked the burn in issue if a 10-year old TV is still almost factory perfect.  I wonder how good OLED will be in the real world.
 
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Offline MK14

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Re: An expensive TV is a poor investment, and people spend FAR too much on them
« Reply #81 on: February 05, 2022, 06:30:31 pm »
I wonder how good OLED will be in the real world.
Now you mention it. I think in some past thread on here (that I didn't participate in), explained or mentioned that some modern OLED TVs, have (what I think), is a very clever innovation.
They are able to either remember how much each pixel has been used, and then using maths formulas, keep the entire set of pixels in calibration. By automatically balancing out the intensities (presumably, more use=needs intensifying, less use = needs attenuating intensity).

Alternatively, they have some way of sensing how much each pixel, has worn out. Perhaps (following is speculation on my part), during a special calibration/anti-burn in fix mode, it electrically measures each pixels, voltage/current/hence-resistance/other-measurable-characteristics, and hence makes the screen look perfect or nearly perfect.

If I remember correctly.
« Last Edit: February 05, 2022, 06:32:12 pm by MK14 »
 

Offline KaneTW

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Re: An expensive TV is a poor investment, and people spend FAR too much on them
« Reply #82 on: February 05, 2022, 07:59:20 pm »
The Sharp LCD panels' datasheet I have here explicitly says that static images should not be displayed for longer than two hours, otherwise damage to the liquid crystal may occur.
 

Offline Nusa

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Re: An expensive TV is a poor investment, and people spend FAR too much on them
« Reply #83 on: February 05, 2022, 08:11:31 pm »
The thought that a TV is an investment at all is the real problem here. Unless you're in the business of buying wholesale and selling retail, and even then you don't want to buy more than you can sell in the very near future.
 
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Offline MK14

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Re: An expensive TV is a poor investment, and people spend FAR too much on them
« Reply #84 on: February 05, 2022, 08:20:25 pm »
The Sharp LCD panels' datasheet I have here explicitly says that static images should not be displayed for longer than two hours, otherwise damage to the liquid crystal may occur.

Apparently, newer LCD screens, can also suffer from some kind of image retention. Most sources seem to say it is a temporary effect, but maybe it can be permanent. The following link, talks about it further and gives a picture, where it has happened.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Screen_burn-in

I suppose these technologies are changing all the time. Sometimes for the better, other times to save production costs, and it will not necessarily be good for the user and/or the product life expectancy.
 
I'm use to somewhat older LCD screens, which may not represent the latest, modern LCD panels. Perhaps they have got worse in later years.
 

Offline james_s

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Re: An expensive TV is a poor investment, and people spend FAR too much on them
« Reply #85 on: February 05, 2022, 08:52:41 pm »
I've never actually paid money for a TV, but if I ever do buy one it will be OLED. They just look THAT much better than LCD, the deep inky blacks and vivid colors. The screen burn problem is mostly due to those stupid channel logos all of the broadcast channels have now, I haven't watched cable/satellite/broadcast TV in years now largely because of the annoying logos. CRT based projection TVs which used to be the only way to get a big screen were notorious for screen burn. Same with plasma, and to some extent even regular direct view CRTs were prone to it if used long enough at a high enough brightness. OLED is no different really, use it for watching video without static elements and it isn't an issue.
 
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Offline james_s

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Re: An expensive TV is a poor investment, and people spend FAR too much on them
« Reply #86 on: February 05, 2022, 08:59:27 pm »
Backlight LEDs are the new vacuum tubes.

That said, what was the economic life of a vacuum tube TV back in the day? Not how long it could be made to last but how long it was worth the average person getting it fixed every now and then. And the relative purchase cost compared to a normal TV nowadays? Mum and dad's first TV in 1957 seemed to last forever, a lifetime in fact. And when I was 12 it did.

They weren't as reliable back then, but they were very expensive so it was worth getting them fixed and it wasn't unusual for people to keep a TV for 10-20 years. The very first color TV sold in the US came out in the 1950s and cost the equivalent of around $15,000 today. Even in the 70s a basic 19" B&W TV was around $200 and that's equivalent to around $1200 today.
 

Offline KaneTW

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Re: An expensive TV is a poor investment, and people spend FAR too much on them
« Reply #87 on: February 05, 2022, 11:41:44 pm »

Apparently, newer LCD screens, can also suffer from some kind of image retention. Most sources seem to say it is a temporary effect, but maybe it can be permanent. The following link, talks about it further and gives a picture, where it has happened.


Right now there are only a handful of these panels in existence so I don't want to waste them, but once we have some more I'll run a static image test and see if it actually occurs. These are pretty bleeding edge panels with ~1.2k PPI, so it wouldn't surprise me if they have to make longevity tradeoffs to get the PPI that high.
 
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Offline rsjsouza

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Re: An expensive TV is a poor investment, and people spend FAR too much on them
« Reply #88 on: February 05, 2022, 11:50:26 pm »
Owner of a 2008-era 55 inch Sharp LED TV still going strong, which was the biggest motivator to get another Sharp in 2015 (a 70 inch 3D) model. Both work incredibly well, but the image on the bigger one is less consistent.

MK14, is this the thread you had in mind?
https://www.eevblog.com/forum/repair/oled-tv-panel-broken/

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Offline MK14

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Re: An expensive TV is a poor investment, and people spend FAR too much on them
« Reply #89 on: February 06, 2022, 12:46:30 am »
MK14, is this the thread you had in mind?
https://www.eevblog.com/forum/repair/oled-tv-panel-broken/

I don't think it was. I vaguely remembered it being user Wraper, who mentioned it.

Ironically, in a similar thread to this one, with identiclal OPs (eti).
https://www.eevblog.com/forum/chat/why-do-backlight-leds-burn-out-and-go-blue/msg3806399/#msg3806399

The OLED stuff, is dotted about that thread, all over the place, but I pointed to one of the mentions, related to measuring the OLED parameters to calibrate out the screen burn. In that (or other posts), they say that some OLED repair threads on here (I think you found one or a similar one, in your link), mention about calibrating out the screen burn.

EDIT: I tried somewhat extensive googling and youtubing, but not found out much more. Except the OLED TV itself, explains about it. It says something about measuring the thin film transistors (tft) voltages to recalibrate itself and fix the image retention/burn, or something. See here (At around 2 mins 35 sec):

https://youtu.be/dHwB1IDVzZU?t=155
« Last Edit: February 06, 2022, 04:43:38 am by MK14 »
 

Online tom66

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Re: An expensive TV is a poor investment, and people spend FAR too much on them
« Reply #90 on: February 06, 2022, 09:10:07 am »
A friend of mine had similar issues with image retention on his OLED.  He eventually started leaving it plugged in (normally it was powered off at night as he had one of those 'standby saver' devices that turns things off when his AVR is off.)

That apparently helps, because the Sony OLEDs are programmed to do a cycle a few hour after power off, which helps with image retention, once every couple of weeks.  You can't even really see it:  a very thin grey line marching up and down the panel for 15 minutes a few hours after the TV turns off.  No idea how that helps, but apparently it does.  Sounds similar to the "smoky OLED" story but a manually activated cycle.
 
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Offline BrianHG

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Re: An expensive TV is a poor investment, and people spend FAR too much on them
« Reply #91 on: February 06, 2022, 12:49:33 pm »
Warning, QD-OLED has just hit the market.

Unlike OLED, true pure colors (no stupid white pixels to boost OLED's weak brightness), 3 year no-burn in guarantee, brighter overall white level and also already available in desktop PC monitors.

Be prepared to pay the new adopter's tax, but it looks worth it.

 
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Offline m k

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Re: An expensive TV is a poor investment, and people spend FAR too much on them
« Reply #92 on: February 06, 2022, 02:21:07 pm »
I've seen a small Sharp color LCD so burned that I thought it was dim when it was actually off.
It's possibly still among us and now been off for few years after showing generally same picture for 20 years.
Advance-Aneng-Appa-AVO-Beckman-Danbridge-Data Tech-Fluke-General Radio-H. W. Sullivan-Heathkit-HP-Kaise-Kyoritsu-Leeds & Northrup-Mastech-OR-X-REO-Simpson-Sinclair-Tektronix-Tokyo Rikosha-Topward-Triplett-Tritron-YFE
(plus lesser brands from the work shop of the world)
 
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Offline tooki

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Re: An expensive TV is a poor investment, and people spend FAR too much on them
« Reply #93 on: February 06, 2022, 02:42:33 pm »
Plasma TVs suffer similarly if used for static images (I’ve seen some awful burn in on plasmas used as airport departure boards, for example). But used for video, absolutely not a problem. My Panasonic plasma is from mid 2009, and there is not even a hint of burn-in, not even a difference on the edges from the black bars on 4:3 content, which I watch plenty of. (Practically 100% of my viewing is via an Apple TV box, which shows a screen saver after a few minutes, including when video is paused, so the TV is never exposed to long-term static images.) While I do suspect that OLED is more sensitive than plasma, I know I’d be comfortable buying an OLED now.

To check my understanding. Are you saying you'd be happy to buy an OLED TV, but only if it is used for Movies (and other non-static content) ?
Or would you be happy to buy OLED TVs, for massive static image content, such as computer/gaming/live-TV(station channel icon burns) uses ?
Which many households would do, depending on who lives in that household.

The later Plasmas, especially the Panasonic ones, with a claimed (and probably true), 100,000 hour screen life and advanced image retention/burn protections. Would probably have made good purchases at the time, they were readily available. I think the issues were more that mud sticks, and Plasmas had got a bad/poor reputation, from the earliest Plasmas, which did sometimes cause screen issues
But those would have been (the earliest), before the screen manufacturing techniques improved (as regards screen life time), and anti-burn technologies were introduced, and possibly other advancements, to limit/protect the later Plasma TV screens.
As far as I am aware, even early plasma TVs were just fine when used normally for video, without any static images. Unfortunately, that was coincident to the advent of always-on channel badges. :/

Additionally, plasma displays also have temporary image retention, which people sometimes mistook for burn-in. (Like going into a shop, changing the source, and seeing a slight ghost of the prior image. If they waited 10 minutes it’d be completely gone.)

As for OLED, I’d be comfortable getting one for my usage as described above. I don’t watch enough live tv (as in, zero for over a decade) to really know how big an issue that is. Burned screens like the one shown earlier are likely from pubs and similar uses with high hours of very similar content that I doubt are representative of ordinary household wear and tear. I probably wouldn’t get an OLED as a TV to leave on in the background all day long as some folks do. (Just as I wouldn’t do that with a projector of any kind.)
 
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Offline tooki

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Re: An expensive TV is a poor investment, and people spend FAR too much on them
« Reply #94 on: February 06, 2022, 02:47:01 pm »
Warning, QD-OLED has just hit the market.

Unlike OLED, true pure colors (no stupid white pixels to boost OLED's weak brightness), 3 year no-burn in guarantee, brighter overall white level and also already available in desktop PC monitors.
Adding the white subpixel isn’t stupid, it’s smart. Any time you have all three RGB subpixels lit simultaneously, the “common” brightness level is just white. (E.g. if the RGB levels are 230/175/60, then you can subtract 60 from all of them and instead run the white subpixel at the equivalent brightness of 60/60/60, sparing the blue subpixel some wear.)

Mind you that like plasma, OLED really isn’t intended for high ambient light environments; LCD is better for that. But in ordinary household light levels they’re totally fine.
 

Offline tooki

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Re: An expensive TV is a poor investment, and people spend FAR too much on them
« Reply #95 on: February 06, 2022, 02:49:51 pm »
A friend of mine had similar issues with image retention on his OLED.  He eventually started leaving it plugged in (normally it was powered off at night as he had one of those 'standby saver' devices that turns things off when his AVR is off.)

That apparently helps, because the Sony OLEDs are programmed to do a cycle a few hour after power off, which helps with image retention, once every couple of weeks.  You can't even really see it:  a very thin grey line marching up and down the panel for 15 minutes a few hours after the TV turns off.  No idea how that helps, but apparently it does.  Sounds similar to the "smoky OLED" story but a manually activated cycle.
Reminds me of the folks who remove AC power from their inkjet printers to save money, not realizing that that causes the printer to do a slow, very wasteful deep cleaning every time, since it loses its memory of when it was last used. (With that memory, it will skip the deep cleaning if it was used within some time window).
 

Offline bw2341

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Re: An expensive TV is a poor investment, and people spend FAR too much on them
« Reply #96 on: February 06, 2022, 04:20:04 pm »
Warning, QD-OLED has just hit the market.

Unlike OLED, true pure colors (no stupid white pixels to boost OLED's weak brightness), 3 year no-burn in guarantee, brighter overall white level and also already available in desktop PC monitors.

Be prepared to pay the new adopter's tax, but it looks worth it.

From what I've read, Samsung is using inkjet printers to deposit the red and green quantum dot colour conversion material onto a blue OLED matrix. The high initial price must be due to the poor yields of a brand new process. Hopefully, they can get the hang of it and bring the price down.

It's too early to say how badly QD-OLED will burn in. It's still blue OLED at its core which would be the life limiting factor. The much higher luminous efficacy of the direct view blue and QD converted red and green should result in lower power levels and longer lifetime in direct comparison to LG's white OLED based displays. If Samsung cranks up the power to exceed the brightness of their own LCD based TV's, they'll use up a lot of the lifetime they've gained.
 

Offline BeBuLamar

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Re: An expensive TV is a poor investment, and people spend FAR too much on them
« Reply #97 on: February 06, 2022, 05:19:07 pm »
Unless you own a bar or restaurant or dentist office and need TV for your clients the TV is never an investment. But I do think expensive TV is worth the money.
 
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Offline MK14

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Re: An expensive TV is a poor investment, and people spend FAR too much on them
« Reply #98 on: February 06, 2022, 10:06:21 pm »
A friend of mine had similar issues with image retention on his OLED.  He eventually started leaving it plugged in (normally it was powered off at night as he had one of those 'standby saver' devices that turns things off when his AVR is off.)

That apparently helps, because the Sony OLEDs are programmed to do a cycle a few hour after power off, which helps with image retention, once every couple of weeks.  You can't even really see it:  a very thin grey line marching up and down the panel for 15 minutes a few hours after the TV turns off.  No idea how that helps, but apparently it does.  Sounds similar to the "smoky OLED" story but a manually activated cycle.

That's exactly what I heard, when I did my recent OLED research, for this thread. (Make dependent), as or similar to what you said. After around 4 hours of TV viewing usage, it activates the need to recalibrate the pixels. It then waits until the TV has next been turned off into stand-by mode. It then waits a further 4 hours (presumably to let the TV cool down fully and/or ensure a TV user is unlikely to immediately turn it back on again). It then draws the horizontal and/or vertical line patterns, that seem to measure and correct the 'thin film transistors' voltage levels. My earlier posts in this thread, detail some of the sources.

It takes around 1 hour to complete that pixel calibration procedure. Then after 2,000 hours has been reached, it does the same thing, but in a much more time consuming way.

There are differing opinions and information sources, as to if the recalibration procedures (manually activating them), reduces the maximum service life of the OLED panel. The people who think it does shorten the panel life, could well be right, but I don't know for sure.
 

Offline Bassman59

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Re: An expensive TV is a poor investment, and people spend FAR too much on them
« Reply #99 on: February 06, 2022, 11:04:58 pm »
"IPS" flat-panel displays can also suffer from burned-in images when the image does not change.
-hp- explicitly denies warranty for such displays used with unchanging images, such as surveillance monitors.

Are you really talking about IPS, or might you have meant OLED ?

I've yet to see any image retention or image burn on any IPS or LCD (IPS is a form of LCD screen, as well) monitor or TV.

I've seen it on CRTs though.

If you traveled through airports back when they used CRTs for the departure/arrival status displays, you saw a lot of burned-in images.
 


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