If I had to guess what 2 home entertainment products were most popular this Christmas it would be widescreen plasma HDTVs and TiVos. However when you put the two together some people start to worry that the TiVo menus may burn into the plasma screen.This is not something that should be keeping you up at night, but if you have bought a new plasma screen it is a sensible idea to "burn in" the screen during the first 100 hours of use to minimize the chances of any images burning onto the screen.
Modern plasma screens are much more resistant to burn in than older models. Burn in is usually only a problem when a bright static image is shown for several hours such as a bright static TV station logo that is on the screen for hours.
The issue was brought to my attention in the TiVo Community forum and I thought I would share with you some tips that popped up in the forum.
- Enable the "orbiting" mode which moves the screen around almost imperceptibly to minimize burn-in.
- Use "Low Power" mode for most of your viewing. This reduces the intensity of the display minimizing burn-in.
- Adjust your brightness, contrast, colors, etc. to lower intensities.
- Finally, run your TV's "white-out" option every once in a while.
- Use a burn-in DVD to help "break in" the plasma screen
1. This is not something that should be keeping you up at night, but if you have bought a new plasma screen it is a sensible idea to "burn in" the screen during the first 100 hours of use to minimize the chances of any images burning onto the screen.
The term you want here is "break in", not "burn in". But yes, it is pretty widely accepted that running the screen at 1/2 of its max brightness and contrast, or less, for the first 100 hours is the best way to prevent burn-in issues later. I did this with my 8th gen Panasonic (TH-42PX50U) and have had zero issues with my Xbox 360 or my cable co DVR.
In general though, common sense is required when using devices that display static images on a plasma. If you're going to be playing games for hours on end that display things like gun icons (GoW) or speedometers (NFS), don't run the screen at its highest contrast or picture settings.
Posted at 10:56AM on Jan 5th 2007 by Phil