Best Plasma TV

There are two types of people interested in plasma TV burn in. One type is made up of those people that want to buy a plasma TV, heard from various sources about the plasma TV problem called "burn in" and are a bit worried if it’s a serious problem. The other type is made up of those people who actually had the bad luck to end up with a plasma TV burn in. Now, if you are in the first category I have good news for you. I will teach you what you need to know about plasma TV burn in - including how to avoid it. If you are in the other category the news are not so great.

What Is Plasma TV Burn In?

Plasma TV burn in is a permanent disfigurement of one or more areas of the screen, caused by still images being displayed for long periods of time. In many cases the still image that caused the burn in is either very bright or very dark. Now, to really understand what burn in is, imagine that you have a torch and a piece of wood. If you pass the flame of your torch back and forth over the wood fast it will take a while to burn it really bad. If however you keep the flame still so that it burns a certain spot, you will make a visible burn much faster. Plasma TV burn in occurs the same way. The plasma TV screen is made of many tiny containers filled with a special gas. When you turn on your TV the electric current transforms this gas into plasma of a certain color and with a certain amount of luminosity. If the whole screen is white then all those little containers of gas are white and are "burning" at maximum intensity. An average gray color displayed on the screen will make the gas "burn" at half its maximum possible intensity (brightness). With time passing by, your plasma TV screen will wear up diminishing in brightness. If it wears up uniformly, then you will most probably not see it. If however in a certain area it will wear up significantly more or less then the rest of the screen you will notice it. That is the "burn in".

Is it a serious problem? Should I be worried?

No it is not and you should probably not be worried about this, especially if you follow the steps to prevent it. It seems that very few people actually experience this problem and in most of the cases it happens because they didn’t tried to prevent it at all. Lately, most of the top brands have enhanced their plasma TVs resistance to burn in either by improving the gas inside the panel or by moving the image on the screen very fast so that the static parts of it don’t remain in the same place. This technique makes the screen ware up more uniformly and at the same time is invisible to the human eye. Latest plasma TV models also have menu functions to "wipe" the screen. So if you notice a bit of shadowing you can use this function to prevent it from becoming a serious burn in. This function basically moves a white bar on your screen to ware up the pixels uniformly and make the shadowing go away.

Common Factors That Generate Plasma TV Burn In

In most of the cases the burn in is generated by the TV channel logo, horizontal or vertical black bars that appear on the top and bottom or on the sides of the viewed content (when you watch content that doesn’t have the aspect ratio of your plasma TV) and can also be generated by static images from your favorite game. I must point out that by static images I am not referring only to images/pictures (like the ones you shot with your digital camera) but also to parts of the viewed content that don’t change in time - like the crosshair in a FPS game, or the HUD, menu bar, map overlay in a strategy game. The channel logo is also a static image - it is always displayed in the same place (in a corner). You can see some examples of static images you could have on your plasma TV screen here, here and here. Does that mean you can’t play games on your plasma TV, and that you can’t watch TV channels because they have a logo? Of course not! It just means those are the factors that have the highest probability to generate burn in. I will tell you in a moment how you can reduce the chances of plasma TV burn in no matter what content you are watching on your screen. You should keep in mind that burn in is not a problem many plasma TV users experience. Actually very few people end up with burn in on their displays so you shouldn’t worry to much about this as long as you take the required steps to reduce the chances of burn in.

How Can Plasma TV Burn In Be Avoided

This is the best part of this guide. I will teach you how to avoid the burn in and make sure your plasma TV will have a long and nice life. 

• First of all make sure you buy your plasma TV from one of the top brands. This way you know you get the latest technology because some of the 2nd tier brands usually are a bit behind with technology. Keep in mind that quality matters.
• You should take extra care with your plasma TV in the first 200 hours of its life. This is a critical period in witch the plasma TV can be affected more easily by burn in. See the following points for more details.
• Adjust your plasma TV contrast and brightness under 50% at least for the fist 200 hours of use. I do not recommend using your plasma TV at 100% contrast and brightness after the 200 hours either, but doing so in the first 200 hours of use will have an impact on it’s lifespan and will increase the chances of burn in.
• Watch only full screen content for the first 200 hours, this way you avoid getting burn-in in the black bars are on top and bottom or on the sides of the content.
• Change the color of the black bars on the sides or on top and below the content that doesn’t fill your plasma TV screen. A medium gray color is the best (it wears up those areas of the screen approximately at the same rate as the actual content does). I also recommend leaving them like that after the 200 hour period.
• Don’t play games with static images in the first 200 hours of functioning. After that make pauses from time to time and switch to a full screen picture without static areas or activate your plasma TV anti burn in feature. If you are a hardcore gamer that plays all day long then you might consider buying an LCD TV instead of a plasma. Those don’t get burn in.
• Don’t leave the same channel on for more than an hour if it has a non transparent logo, news ticker or any other type of static image overlay.
• Do not leave your plasma TV to display static images for more than one hour. Do not pause videos/DVD for more then 30 minutes at a time. If you are not watching it make sure you turn it off. Make sure you use your DVD auto-shutdown function because if you fall asleep and the DVD menu remains on the screen for all that time you will probably end up with a burn in from it. If you watch photos from your digital camera on the plasma TV make sure you don’t leave the same photo displayed on the screen for a lot of time. Also don’t use your plasma TV as a painting or digital photo frame leaving the same image a lot of time on the screen. If you want to use it like that make sure the image changes with another.

Now, you should be aware that doing all this doesn’t guarantee you will not end up with plasma TV burn in. Also, not doing it doesn’t necessary mean that you will get burn in. There’s no guarantee, but since you pay a lot of money for it at least follow the suggestions I recommended for the first 200 hours.

What If I Already Have Burn In On My Plasma TV?

Preventing is easier than curing. So, if you already have this problem it’s much harder to fix it. You can use your plasma TV anti burn in features for an instance. Some people that experienced burn in reported that using the anti burn in function for a long time made the "shadow" from the burn in area less visible. This seems to work rather well in the case of vertical and horizontal bars burn in (generated from watching non full screen content).

If you are in the first 200 hours of functioning it may not even be real burn it but just shadowing or image retention. Shadowing and image retention are different from burn in because they are not permanent (but they can transform in permanent burn in), so using the anti burn in feature will "wipe" them out. They disappear even from just watching content without static parts for some time.

Well, that’s it! There is nothing else I can think of about plasma TV burn in. If you have questions or care to comment about this subject feel free to post your comments.