Plasma Question

[mjgeorge]

This is a plasma burn-in question. I know that most people say that modern plasma sets have overcome the burn-in problem, but does this require that the sets always use the justify modes that stretch the image to fill the screen?

I have seen some really good prices on Panasonic plasmas for black Friday, but I dislike watching images in justify modes. I prefer to watch things in their original aspect ratio, and was wondering if this would be a problem with plasmas?

[aud19]

First and foremost if you buy a plasma get it out of "torch" mode and calibrate it. This will go a long, LONG way towards preventing any image retention.

Second, most (including Panny's) have pixel orbiting which also helps with this. Not a bad idea to have on though it helps more with things like video games than letter/pillar boxes.

Third, for the first month or so just do your best to not watch vast amounts, all in a row of programming that has any stationary imagery (pillar/letter boxes, video game life meters, stock/sports score bars etc) until the set is broken in. This doesn't mean you can't watch any, just don't watch like 8-10 hours straight of 4:3 material. Watch a couple hours, then some HD etc.

Fourth, if you do get ANY image retention try and wipe it as soon as possible with say a full whit field.

[littlesaint]

After playing video games for several hours I get some retention on my Panny, but running the sweep clears it right up. 4:3 material can leave some retention as well, but as soon as I switch to fullscreen stuff, it's unnoticeable and fullscreen material will wipe anything left behind. I'll second aud19's rec to do a proper calibration.

[mjgeorge]

Thanks for the input!

[whoaru99]

Yeah, I get some IR on my three-year-old Panny but I have no permanent burn-in. I don't game however, as far as TV viewing, I don't take any extreme measures/precautions.

[John Holmes]

We have a Vizio plasma in the bedroom. My wife prefers to watch tv in there (which is fine by me :B ). She watches CNN as well as ESPN all the time.

Like other's have stated, yes, there is some IR but, no burn-in. And the IR is only slighlty visible when the TV is turned off. As soon as a new image is on the screen, it's gone.