Want to ruin your expensive LCD/LED/Plasma TV?

[Shock]

Interesting thing I came across today. Watching the same channel for prolonged periods on your TV can cause the channels logo to burn into the screen.

I've disliked these logos since they were introduced, they are distracting and pointless. If your expensive TV was damaged by the channel should you be compensated?

Anyone had this happen?

[sunnyhighway]

Guess that's the ultimate reason for the commercials every 10 minutes or so. No channel logo during them... 

[jucole]

If your expensive TV was damaged by the channel should you be compensated?

sounds like a duff tv!  what make is it? how old is it?

[madires]

It might be not permanent (please see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Screen_burn-in#Plasma.2C_LCD_and_OLED_displays).

[amyk]

Make it display the negative image of the logo for long enough and the other pixels will burn-in by the same amount, reversing the effect.

[sunnyhighway]

My first flat-screen was a plasma-tv which had this problem too.
Luckily the tv manufacturer had an option with which you could "wipe" the screen. What it basically did was displaying a 50% luminance gray screen for an hour or so. To be honest, it did remove 90% of the burn.

[kolonelkadat]

My friends samsung led tv had this happen with the espn logo. Its only noticeable with certain colors such as the green from the opening scene of 'das boot' though, so it doesnt really matter.

[tom66]

Happens primarily with emissive displays (OLED and plasma) though is a lot rarer with modern plasmas (2008 onwards.) Plasma can also get temporary image retention which fades after a few minutes (only visible on pitch  black scenes.)

OLED (curved expensive TVs, 55 inch only for now) is horrible for burn in and may only require a few hundred hours of static content to leave a visible mark.

LED-LCD & CCFL-LCD is generally immune but can get temporary image retention like plasma. Some really crap LCD panels do also get burn in but that is due to VCOM setting error (manufacturing fault) rather than an inherent flaw in the design.

[NiHaoMike]

Some older LCDs had that issue but it seemed to be fixable by having it display a flashing black/white pattern when not in use. I have not seen any modern LCD with that issue.

Plasma is vulnerable to this issue and it can be very noticeable on instruments that are left on 24/7 for years in a test environment. I have also seen a LCD on an Agilent signal generator with a very obvious pink tint, but it appeared to be some failing component in the driver circuit rather than the actual LCD. Leave it off overnight and the pink tint disappears for about half an hour.

[Tinkerer]

Not everyone knew this? Well either way, plasmas are a primary culprit in screen burning.

I remember reading an ad once a few years back, someone was giving away a huge plasma tv, still worked and everything. There was a catch though. As a joke, the guy's roommates left an "explicit non-straight image"(you dont wanna hear the details haha) on the screen over the weekend while he was gone letting it burn in.

My first flat-screen was a plasma-tv which had this problem too.
Luckily the tv manufacturer had an option with which you could "wipe" the screen. What it basically did was displaying a 50% luminance gray screen for an hour or so. To be honest, it did remove 90% of the burn.

This is what they all should have had, it could be compared kind of to how CRTs had degaussing.

[marshallh]

Well designed LCDs dont have any burn in, except in extreme cases which go away quickly.
OLED can burn in depending on the type. OLED disaplys are particularly poor with muddy dark green colors.

[tom66]

Well designed plasmas don't burn in either.

I've repaired 8 x 2007/2008 Panasonic FHD 42"/46" plasmas, varying amount of hours from 4000~18000 hours.

Plus a Pioneer Kuro 9th Gen 50" panel. Made for watching movies (21:9 etc) due to cinema reference panel and has been doing so for at least half of its 12,500 hour usage time. So you'd expect burn in from the movie bars on the 16:9 screen.

How many had burn in? not a single one. I mean seriously. You can put these TVs on a full white pattern and every pixel has the same intensity, no dead pixels either.

I did have two LG plasma with some faint burn in from the Cbeebies logo (UK childrens channel.) The LGs seem to be the worst for burn in, not sure if this is a design characteristic or just a fluke. LG's plasmas have always been fairly basic units, with decent build quality but average performance in the best of cases.

[rdl]

Interesting thing I came across today. Watching the same channel for prolonged periods on your TV can cause the channels logo to burn into the screen.

I've disliked these logos since they were introduced, they are distracting and pointless. If your expensive TV was damaged by the channel should you be compensated?

Anyone had this happen?

I have an LCD that I bought around 2005 or so that has pretty bad burn in. To be fair, it's mainly because it has been used as a monitor more than a TV (and with no screen saver for a long time).

Those on screen logos first appeared back in the 80s (if I remember right). In those days most TV was via broadcast, cable wasn't very widespread, and in the US the government strictly regulated when and for how long those logos could be shown. They have gotten way out of hand in recent years. The National Geographic channel is one of the most annoying I have ever seen.

[dannyf]

If you have an "expensive" TV nowadays, you spend too much on a TV.

Anyone had this happen?

I have a 43" Plasma TV bought 10 years ago. Other than being on its 3rd power supply, no problem whatsoever. Supposedly those early Plasma TVs suffer from burn-in but at least on mine, no such phenomenon.

I also have a LCD calculator bought in the early 1980s, with supposedly a 10-year life on the LCD. Some 30 years later, it works just fine.

I wouldn't worry about those "issues".

[sunnyhighway]

Plus a Pioneer Kuro 9th Gen 50" panel. Made for watching movies (21:9 etc) due to cinema reference panel and has been doing so for at least half of its 12,500 hour usage time. So you'd expect burn in from the movie bars on the 16:9 screen.

Would be surprised to see black movie bars burn in, just like burning myself with a cold iron.

[TerraHertz]

As a joke, the guy's roommates left an "explicit non-straight image"(you dont wanna hear the details haha) on the screen over the weekend while he was gone letting it burn in.

Wouldn't the solution have been to capture the image, make a negative in photoshop, then leave that on the screen for the same amount of time?

If anyone wanted to know why he had a negative of a huge **** on his TV, he could just say it was a screen test pattern.

[tom66]

Plus a Pioneer Kuro 9th Gen 50" panel. Made for watching movies (21:9 etc) due to cinema reference panel and has been doing so for at least half of its 12,500 hour usage time. So you'd expect burn in from the movie bars on the 16:9 screen.

Would be surprised to see black movie bars burn in, just like burning myself with a cold iron.

Burn in/image retention is a statistical thing. So whilst the bars themselves wouldn't burn in the part of the screen that was more used would do, i.e. the middle 21:9 section as it is used by both 16:9 and 21:9 content. That's the theory at least.

As a joke, the guy's roommates left an "explicit non-straight image"(you dont wanna hear the details haha) on the screen over the weekend while he was gone letting it burn in.

Wouldn't the solution have been to capture the image, make a negative in photoshop, then leave that on the screen for the same amount of time?

If anyone wanted to know why he had a negative of a huge **** on his TV, he could just say it was a screen test pattern.

This is used on some high end plasma monitors but as far as I am aware it doesn't work too well because every panel changes slowly in a different manner, especially on the subpixel level, this means it requires a fair bit of tweaking to get right.

[SeanB]

I use a 19in CRT at work, and it has image burn in from a decade of having the same background. Not as bad as the mono CRT units we used to use, where the menu buttons were burnt in to the point where you could read them clearly even with the power off.

[Terabyte2007]

Interesting thing I came across today. Watching the same channel for prolonged periods on your TV can cause the channels logo to burn into the screen.

I've disliked these logos since they were introduced, they are distracting and pointless. If your expensive TV was damaged by the channel should you be compensated?

Anyone had this happen?

Plasma TV's are the mostly effected by this, but some LCD TV's can be effected also it just takes longer. If the burn-in is not too bad, placing an all white screen up for several hours can even out the effect and make it less visible. If the burn-in is minor the white screen wash can just about eliminate it completely but repeated viewing of the channel will cause the burn-in to occur again. This is very relevant with stations such as CNN and news stations that have tickers on the top or bottom of the screen. Most sets have burn-in protection which are pixel shifters, this function will shift the pixels on the screen several at a time in an orbital motion slow enough that it is not noticed. This helps, but does not stop the problem. Newer LCD panels don't really have the problem as much as the older ones so if you have a new LCD TV I would not worry too much. Plasma TV's are extremely susceptible to this, be very cautious of static images on a Plasma TV.

[edpalmer42]

I've heard that TVs often come from the manufacturer adjusted to give a bright, impressive picture in a brightly lit store.  This is sometimes referred to as 'Torch Mode'.  This can easily cause burn-in if the TV is left in that mode.  Turn down the settings (particularly brightness and contrast) to give a more realistic picture under living room lighting conditions.  Burn-in ceases to be a problem.

Ed

[tom66]

Interesting thing I came across today. Watching the same channel for prolonged periods on your TV can cause the channels logo to burn into the screen.

I've disliked these logos since they were introduced, they are distracting and pointless. If your expensive TV was damaged by the channel should you be compensated?

Anyone had this happen?

Plasma TV's are the mostly effected by this, but some LCD TV's can be effected also it just takes longer. If the burn-in is not too bad, placing an all white screen up for several hours can even out the effect and make it less visible. If the burn-in is minor the white screen wash can just about eliminate it completely but repeated viewing of the channel will cause the burn-in to occur again. This is very relevant with stations such as CNN and news stations that have tickers on the top or bottom of the screen. Most sets have burn-in protection which are pixel shifters, this function will shift the pixels on the screen several at a time in an orbital motion slow enough that it is not noticed. This helps, but does not stop the problem. Newer LCD panels don't really have the problem as much as the older ones so if you have a new LCD TV I would not worry too much. Plasma TV's are extremely susceptible to this, be very cautious of static images on a Plasma TV.

As I said before, whilst plasmas do get burn in, it appears to be a rare effect.  Unless you watch CNN almost daily, I don't see a modern plasma TV getting burn in. (The only exception is that some of Panasonic's high end sets do trade off burn-in resistance for picture performance... meh.)

I've heard that TVs often come from the manufacturer adjusted to give a bright, impressive picture in a brightly lit store.  This is sometimes referred to as 'Torch Mode'.  This can easily cause burn-in if the TV is left in that mode.  Turn down the settings (particularly brightness and contrast) to give a more realistic picture under living room lighting conditions.  Burn-in ceases to be a problem.

Ed

This is a well known effect, if you buy a new TV and plug it in, it asks you if you want STORE or HOME mode. The STORE mode looks better to the untrained eye, the HOME mode is often energy saving or in some cases similar to STORE but less saturated/bright. In reality they are both terrible and should be avoided. It takes very little time:
https://www.avforums.com/PicturePerfect/

[Terabyte2007]

I've heard that TVs often come from the manufacturer adjusted to give a bright, impressive picture in a brightly lit store.  This is sometimes referred to as 'Torch Mode'.  This can easily cause burn-in if the TV is left in that mode.  Turn down the settings (particularly brightness and contrast) to give a more realistic picture under living room lighting conditions.  Burn-in ceases to be a problem.

Very true, for LCD. Plasma is a completely different story. I have an older Samsung Plasma TV that is no longer used. Even with the brightness turned down to a comfortable level, any prolonged banner, logo or static image will leave a residual impression that can easily be seen when the picture is changed to a uniform bright color. It's just the nature of a gas plasma pixel cell.

[gnif]

My Galaxy S4 which has a AMOLED screen has burn in from the charging indicator. I was running a custom ROM that did not support the charging interface properly and the device would lock up on the charging circle thing when charging from flat, took a while before I noticed that the circle was burnt in, obviously completely my fault though.

[SirNick]

I've disliked these logos since they were introduced, they are distracting and pointless.

Since introduced, yes... but those old semi-transparent logos are the least of our problems now.  Some channels now have big, bright, full-color animations that take up the whole bottom third of the screen.  It really is getting out of hand.  Why not just go ahead and start showing commercials picture-in-picture?

Add all of that, the incessant commercials on paid cable stations, plus the horrible over-compressed (as in dynamics) audio, and it's getting difficult to justify subscription TV anymore.  May as well wait for release on disc or streaming services, where the quality is infinitely better and there are no ads.

[SirNick]

BTW, interesting page on LCD flickering.  Kinda sorta off-topic, but I had no idea this happened on modern screens until recently:

http://www.lagom.nl/lcd-test/inversion.php

[VK3DRB]

The old Sony Trinitron picture tubes tended to go purple when they wore out. Reason being the green gun cathode electron emission material would deplete first, where white = 0.30R + 0.59G + 0.11B.

This was particularly the case where the owner watched a lot of cricket over the summer (ie: a lot of green grass).

[EvilGeniusSkis]

I once had a CRT that had a yellow tint to it, percussive maintenance got  it back to normal for a while.

[gnif]

I once had a CRT that had a yellow tint to it, percussive maintenance got  it back to normal for a while.

This was rather common and usually caused by a dry solder joint due to how hot they would get inside. I had a CRT montior once that needed regular touchups around the flyback due to dry joints that would get the same yellow tint problem.

[German_EE]

I do not have this problem of burn in. The quality of German TV is so low that for most of the time my TV is either showing a DVD or switched off. My cable contract is up for renewal next month and I may switch to Internet only.