# Anyone here have a plasma screen? Any worries about burn-in of the TiVo menus?



## DSCollica (Mar 12, 2003)

I don't know exactly what length of time it takes before a prolonged static/paused screen image might begin to "burn-in" on a plasma screen, but... I am looking into getting a plasma HDTV and my concern is that the TiVo menus might eventually "burn-in."

I don't ever have any TiVo menus on screen for more than like 20-30 minutes at a time, which I have heard is not long enough for burn-in to occur, but can this "burn-in" happen if you repeatedly have the same menu on screen for 20 minutes each time?

EXAMPLE: When I am scrolling through the upcoming movie listings (by title) it usually takes me about 20-30 minutes. I do this about once per week, so the repeated prolonged screen exposure would be the permanent parts of the "Search by Title" screen which could be on screen for a solid 30 minutes once per week, every week. Could this cause "burn-in"?

Any other possible causes of burn-in that I should think/worry about with TiVo?


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## hiker (Nov 29, 2001)

Newer plasma TVs are much more resistant to burn-in than the models of a few years ago. I would only worry about it if you are viewing a static, letterbox or pillarbox image for more than 2 hours.


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## drew2k (Jun 10, 2003)

I've noticed the white borders around many TiVo menus can linger for a few seconds if I go from the menu to a scene that's predominantly dark, but that disappears very quickly when the scene changes.

There are steps you can take to minimize these affects, which I've taken, so if your TV has these options, try the following:
Enable the "orbiting" mode. On my TV it's under ISM (Image Sticking Minimization) Menu, and 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, also minimizing burn-in.

Adjust your brightness, contrast, colors, etc. to lower intensities. My TV has multiple pre-set configurations (Daylight, Movie, Night, Sports, etc.) I use Daylight for most of my viewing, but switch to Night when I know I'll be working in the menus for awhile, as the white borders are less intense.

Finally, run your TV's "white-out" option every once in a while. On my TV, this fills the screen with a solid white image, negating any "burn-in" effects. I've pretty much gotten into the habit of turning white-out on whenever I know I'm going to pause my TiVo for 5 minutes or more.
I've had my plasma TV since October 2005 and other than the momentary menu-border linger affect I noted above, I've noticed nothing else to be concerned of.


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## ReidWings (Nov 1, 2004)

I have a plasma with my tivo (sadly an S2 though)

I'm a stickler about not leaving the menus up. If I am pausing a program for more than a quick moment, I will turn off the TV until I return to my viewing. I never leave the tivo menu up for fear of burn in. But I haven't seen any lingering effects yet. 

I am, however, running burn in DVDs to help break in my plasma (constant full screen colors, changing every 30 seconds). I'm over 100 hours of use now, and once I get over 200 hours, I'll be less crazy about it.


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## dianebrat (Jul 6, 2002)

IMNSHO the rate of burn in for those of us "common" consumers is minimal, 

I've only seen it in situations where units are on 12+ hours a day, and on the same channel, *especially* on "ticker stations" like CNNHN, etc.

I have a 42" plasma and don't even begin to worry about burn-in, the set will need replacement before I notice burn in.

Diane


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## Stormspace (Apr 13, 2004)

ReidWings said:


> I have a plasma with my tivo (sadly an S2 though)
> 
> I'm a stickler about not leaving the menus up. If I am pausing a program for more than a quick moment, I will turn off the TV until I return to my viewing. I never leave the tivo menu up for fear of burn in. But I haven't seen any lingering effects yet.
> 
> I am, however, running burn in DVDs to help break in my plasma (constant full screen colors, changing every 30 seconds). I'm over 100 hours of use now, and once I get over 200 hours, I'll be less crazy about it.


+1

I have noticed that the Dual Tuner S2 has softer lines on the menus, so the risk of burn in is less on that static border that shows up around every menu. Still, if I'm planning to pause a show long enough to walk out of the room, I'll turn the set off.

Also the white out option available on plasma's effect the life of your set. When you run that do it only for a limited time.


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## RexB (Apr 25, 2004)

As was said, newer plasmas don't have a burn in problem unless abused by something like a static game menu for scoring, or a bright static logo displayed by some stations that is on the screen for hours.

That said, it is still smart the first hundred hours, some say 200 hours, to at least turn the brightness (or 'picture') down to zero in the picture contro menu. Burn in DVDs are fine, although you can tune to Discovery HD (DSHD chan #76) and leave it on overnite, as DSHD doesn't leave static images on display. That's what I did for the first ~120 hours and have had no burn in or image retention problems at all.


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## drew2k (Jun 10, 2003)

RexB said:


> As was said, newer plasmas don't have a burn in problem unless abused by something like a static game menu for scoring, or a bright static logo displayed by some stations that is on the screen for hours.
> 
> That said, it is still smart the first hundred hours, some say 200 hours, to at least turn the brightness (or 'picture') down to zero in the picture contro menu. Burn in DVDs are fine, although you can tune to Discovery HD (DSHD chan #76) and leave it on overnite, as DSHD doesn't leave static images on display. That's what I did for the first ~120 hours and have had no burn in or image retention problems at all.


I've had my plasma for over a year and never tried any type of burn-in DVD. Will I gain anything by tuning to Discovery HD overnight, or has the boat sailed for me on breaking-in my plasma TV?


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## RexB (Apr 25, 2004)

The boat has sailed 

Your screen is already broken in, and if there is no noticeable burn in or IR then there is no problem 

These newer PDP's are great ain't they? And LCD's have caught up to them for viewing angle and contrast, so my next one could well be a LCD.

Egads, i hope this doesn't start a this vs that.


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## btwyx (Jan 16, 2003)

After I'd been using my first DTiVo for about a year, I noticed there was some burn in on my plasma display. To see it I had to play a 70% grey field from a calibration DVD, and then look very closely. There was the mearest suggestion of a ghost of burn in.

The DTiVo had very sharp 100% white borders on all its menus, about as bad as it can get ffor burn in. For a while I switched the display into negative mode when ever I went into a menu (using my programmable remote), in an attempt to reverse the burn in. I haven't look at the display critially enough for a few years to see what the state is. Any burn in is not visible in normal use.

I'm pleased the S3 has much more friendly menus, the lines aren't sharp, they're not 100% and the various screens vary the background colour.


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## reh523 (Feb 28, 2006)

ReidWings said:


> I am, however, running burn in DVDs to help break in my plasma (constant full screen colors, changing every 30 seconds). I'm over 100 hours of use now, and once I get over 200 hours, I'll be less crazy about it.


Plasma = High maintenance......


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## dianebrat (Jul 6, 2002)

reh523 said:


> Plasma = High maintenance......


Not so sure I agree with that, since it implies I would have to do maintenance.

While I have to do preventative and regular maintenance on many things in my life, I can't recall having to do anything other then pay a lil extra attention the first 100 hours, and that was NBD.

Diane


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## RexB (Apr 25, 2004)

reh523 said:


> Plasma = High maintenance......


LOL


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## ekb6 (Jan 9, 2007)

I have been using Tivo since the top model offered a max of nine hours of so-called high-quality recording. Now I'm using an HD Tivo with twin 300GB drives for 76 hour HD and God knows how many standard def hours.

Back in the old days, I never got a burned in or retained image on my CRT tube and in the past two years I've never gotten one on my plasma either.

Despite all the scare stories, spread by dealers who get a higher markup on LCDs than they do on plasmas, it is important to remember that a plasma is, in many crucial respects, very tried-and-true technology. 

What you see when you watch your plasma are glowing phosphers more or less exactly like those you used to watch on your old standard def CRT set. True the phosphors are illuminated by strange and exotic gases instead of electrical impulses fired from an electron gun, but the parts susceptible to burn-in -- the phosphors painted on the inside of a glass tube are the same (though the phosphors used by major plasma makers are many generations better, more stable and less likely to burn-in.)

That said, phosphors can suffer burn-in from a static image generated by something like a stationary security camera left on the screen for days and weeks. But, bottomline, if you never got burn-in on a CRT you will probably never get it on a plasma, either.


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## dthreet (Jan 18, 2006)

DSCollica said:


> I don't know exactly what length of time it takes before a prolonged static/paused screen image might begin to "burn-in" on a plasma screen, but... I am looking into getting a plasma HDTV and my concern is that the TiVo menus might eventually "burn-in."
> 
> I don't ever have any TiVo menus on screen for more than like 20-30 minutes at a time, which I have heard is not long enough for burn-in to occur, but can this "burn-in" happen if you repeatedly have the same menu on screen for 20 minutes each time?
> 
> ...


I have a Philips 42 inch Plazma tv I purchased about a year ago. I have screen burn since I usually watch 4:3 w/ black bars. It was getting so bad anytime there would be a light image on the screen you could see a diffrent tent where where the bars were. I started reading these post on screen burn in. I downloaded a calibration disc and burned it. There was alot of stuff that was supose to help. But from what I read most people recomended leaving the tv on a solid white screen. Well I have to say this works. I left the tv on a solid white screen all night and while I was at work for a couple days. Its not all the way gone but almost. I could not belive how good my tv pic looks now. It has made a world of differance. I think if I keep doing this it should be gone soon. I hope i dont have a stroke when i get the electric bill.

So for people saying newer plasma's dont have this problem, well mine did.


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## Worf (Sep 15, 2000)

Hrm.

I have noticed that my TiVo Series 3 idle time at the menus is WAY shorter than my old series 1 used to - the old series 1 used to linger idle at the menu for maybe a good 15-20 minutes before going to live TV. My Series 3 hardly waits 5... (I have both hooked to the same TV - LCD, so no burn in)

Then again, the new TiVos are probably designed to take into account people are using them with plasma TVs and the like... 

The only thing you REALLY have to be careful about is the pause! TiVo will hold an image in pause forever. So if you hit pause, you might want to dim/turn off the TV if it's going to be idle for a little while. That will probably do way more damage than any amount of surfing the TiVo menus (unless you routinely make it a habit of spending a few hours of "TiVo Play Time" just surfing the TiVo menus).

I'm not sure if TiVo has an automatic "screen saver" or "screen dim" in case of extended pause-lengths.


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## BobB (Aug 26, 2002)

No worries here. As the previous poster pointed out, all you really need to be careful of is not leaving the screen on for too long when you've paused a program, which is easy enough to do. Besides, my Pioneer has an orbiter feature that automatically shifts the picture around slightly (in less than one pixel increments so it's not noticeable) to further reduce the risk of burn.

The markedly better picture quality of the Pioneer plasma vs the best LCDs on the market far outweighed the burn-in risk in my purchasing decision.


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## dthreet (Jan 18, 2006)

dthreet said:


> I have a Philips 42 inch Plazma tv I purchased about a year ago. I have screen burn since I usually watch 4:3 w/ black bars. It was getting so bad anytime there would be a light image on the screen you could see a diffrent tent where where the bars were. I started reading these post on screen burn in. I downloaded a calibration disc and burned it. There was alot of stuff that was supose to help. But from what I read most people recomended leaving the tv on a solid white screen. Well I have to say this works. I left the tv on a solid white screen all night and while I was at work for a couple days. Its not all the way gone but almost. I could not belive how good my tv pic looks now. It has made a world of differance. I think if I keep doing this it should be gone soon. I hope i dont have a stroke when i get the electric bill.
> 
> So for people saying newer plasma's dont have this problem, well mine did.


I have now run white screen overnight and while I was at work for 4 days now. I have to say there is almost no sign of screen burn in from the 4:3 bars. There is still a little but you have took look really hard for it. My picture looks alot better. I guess Its such a slow process you dont realize it till its really bad. I still get the white part in the tivo menus that lingers sometimes. But usually fades away.


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## tommy275 (Jun 8, 2003)

regarding the white screen process, when you run it you are effectively burning in white over the whole screen, which will presumably affect the picture over time. blacks may not be as black, etc. i'd love to hear a reasonable explaination as how that's totally wrong, as I'd love to use the white screen function to get rid of the logos and TiVo menus (both are white) that are somewhat burned in.


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## btwyx (Jan 16, 2003)

tommy275 said:


> regarding the white screen process, when you run it you are effectively burning in white over the whole screen, which will presumably affect the picture over time. blacks may not be as black, etc. i'd love to hear a reasonable explaination as how that's totally wrong,


I don't think its totally wrong, I think its more or less correct, except for the bit about blacks.

The problem as I understand it is the phosphors which produce the light age as they are used. As they age, they produce less light. Burn in is when the phosphors in different pixels have aged at different rates, so some are darker than others. Burning in a white screen ages all of the pixels on the screen at an accelerated rate. Hopefully, after all the pixels have ages sufficiently, the variations in aging are no longer significant enough that you notice some pixels are darker.

The problem with that is you've aged the whole display, so the whole display is now darker than it used to be. This is not that much of a problem, becuase the thing you're going to notice least is how bright something is. You may not notice if something is 99% bright verses 98% bright. If it got down to 50% bright you'd only notice that its a shade or 2 darker than it used to be. You have very little ability to distinguish brightness levels at the bright end of things. (The same is not true at the dark end of things, 1% vs 2% would look like the same difference as 50% vs 100%.)

You're not going to see a difference in the blacks, as black is when the pixel is not emitting any light at all, so its not affected by how bright the pixel can display. Actually on thinking about this, burn in may make blacks blacker, the ageing should make the blacks a little darker, just like they made the whites a little darker. Darker blacks are more noticible, but darker blacks are better. It would depend on how you display displays black. Some like Panasonics have special circuits to makes blacks black by turning the pixel totally off. Some like Pioneers don't do so well and blacks are not quite totally off.


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## dswallow (Dec 3, 2000)

I've had a 50" plasma for almost 4 years; I routinely let the various TiVo's just time out to live TV from the menus. No problems with burn-in at all. It's just a non-issue for typical consumer uses... well, maybe if you have careless kids or kids-at-heart who leave static video game scenes on screen for hours upon hours upon hours at a time, you should worry some.

I've watched pillar-boxed or letterboxed material for many consecutive hours, too, with no ill effects on the screen. I use black pillar/letterboxes, not gray, too.

I've even left the TiVo paused playing back recordings at times, and forgotten I'd done so for hours at a time. Though when I do such pauses I do usually try to do them when there's no super-high contrast stuff onscreen, like white text on black background, etc.


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## tommy275 (Jun 8, 2003)

btwyx said:


> I don't think its totally wrong, I think its more or less correct, except for the bit about blacks.
> 
> The problem as I understand it is the phosphors which produce the light age as they are used. As they age, they produce less light. Burn in is when the phosphors in different pixels have aged at different rates, so some are darker than others. Burning in a white screen ages all of the pixels on the screen at an accelerated rate. Hopefully, after all the pixels have ages sufficiently, the variations in aging are no longer significant enough that you notice some pixels are darker.
> 
> The problem with that is you've aged the whole display, so the whole display is now darker than it used to be. This is not that much of a problem, becuase the thing you're going to notice least is how bright something is. You may not notice if something is 99% bright verses 98% bright. If it got down to 50% bright you'd only notice that its a shade or 2 darker than it used to be. You have very little ability to distinguish brightness levels at the bright end of things. (The same is not true at the dark end of things, 1% vs 2% would look like the same difference as 50% vs 100%.)


i just can't reconcile this explanation with my observations, and i do appreciate the input.

basically, if there's a white logo on the screen, i assume there are pixels blaring out some sort of bright white "color". if that imagine is static, that white image will "burn-in" and will always be noticeable (as a white image). using the white-out function does that to the whole screen. so, the whole screen will then be glowing somewhat whiter than it did before. since the white logo image is visible even when the TV isn't producing any colors (the black before credits roll, for example), i have to think that the black before the credits is now noticeably whiter (after the white-out process), assuming the logo was noticeably whiter than the rest of the screen was before running the white-out, which it presumably was since the user feels the need to make it go away.

again, this isn't the same as using the function to get rid of the black bars on the sides of the screen. the black bars show up because the pixels aren't being used, whereas the rest of the screen is, so those pixels on the sides are not aging. so yes, you can help them age by aging them with the white-out function, but at the end of the day you're still aging them with a bright white color, and I can't help but think the whole screen takes on some of the same attributes of the pesky food network logo in the bottom right of my screen: white.

i'm not sure that made any sense, but in my head it does.


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## Rich584 (Oct 22, 2003)

drew2k said:


> I've had my plasma TV since October 2005 and other than the momentary menu-border linger affect I noted above, I've noticed nothing else to be concerned of.


Fancy finding you here, Drew. What kind of TV do you have? I have 3 Panny plasmas that I bought about 6 months ago and have no fear of my HR20s leaving a burn in (screen saver, sadly lacking in my SD TiVos), but do not allow the image on the TiVos to sit very long. I think the menus default to a live station after a period of time. Is that correct? Still...

Rich


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## Rich584 (Oct 22, 2003)

I have 2 50" Panny plasmas and one 58" and never heard of a break in period. Mine are the Viera models and I just plugged them in and got an almost perfect picture and have adjusted nothing but the sharpness a tad. Got all three last March and early April. Still great picture quality. Guess I should have read up on the plasmas before I started using them. Dodged the bullet tho (I hope).

Rich



RexB said:


> That said, it is still smart the first hundred hours, some say 200 hours, to at least turn the brightness (or 'picture') down to zero in the picture contro menu. Burn in DVDs are fine, although you can tune to Discovery HD (DSHD chan #76) and leave it on overnite, as DSHD doesn't leave static images on display. That's what I did for the first ~120 hours and have had no burn in or image retention problems at all.


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## Rich584 (Oct 22, 2003)

RexB said:


> The boat has sailed
> 
> Your screen is already broken in, and if there is no noticeable burn in or IR then there is no problem
> 
> ...


What is a PDP?


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## Rich584 (Oct 22, 2003)

ekb6 said:


> if you never got burn-in on a CRTs you will probably never get it on a plasma, either.


I've been watching TV since 1948 and I have never seen a burn in or shadow image on any but the earliest sets. The shadow images disappeared after a few days. Did see a couple of really early CRTs with burned in images and bright colored splotches, but they resolved that. I waited to purchase a plasma until I started to see that the plasma burn in problem was pretty much cured.

First plasma I ever looked at cost $9000 and had a suggested $3000 service warranty. 42", don't recall the brand. Something obviously upscale. Guy across the street has a 42" Phillips plasma that cost $6000 and has never had a HD source hooked up to it. Sure have come down in price and up in quality.

Rich


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## Rich584 (Oct 22, 2003)

I gotta tell ya, using the TiVos on the plasmas scares me. At least with D*s HD DVR and my Sony DVD players you get a quick screen saver. I back up my Hi Def recordings on Series 2 TiVos but rarely watch anything on them.

About time they stopped the reboots and upgraded the software to include a screen saver.

Rich



dswallow said:


> I've had a 50" plasma for almost 4 years; I routinely let the various TiVo's just time out to live TV from the menus. No problems with burn-in at all. It's just a non-issue for typical consumer uses... well, maybe if you have careless kids or kids-at-heart who leave static video game scenes on screen for hours upon hours upon hours at a time, you should worry some.
> 
> I've watched pillar-boxed or letterboxed material for many consecutive hours, too, with no ill effects on the screen. I use black pillar/letterboxes, not gray, too.
> 
> I've even left the TiVo paused playing back recordings at times, and forgotten I'd done so for hours at a time. Though when I do such pauses I do usually try to do them when there's no super-high contrast stuff onscreen, like white text on black background, etc.


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