I was listening to a podcast interview with the head of Panasonic's
flatscreen TV division and he dismissed both the concerns about burnin
and lifetime for plasmas. I'll have to dig up the other review I was
reading where they talked about burn-in as well.
http://www.itconversations.com/shows/detail562.html is the link to the
interview. The guy sounded pretty knowledgeable.
David wrote:
I'd be interested in where you heard that, because from everything I see
burn-in with plasma is still a very real concern, and plasma sets are
much more sensitive than CRT's. With modern CRT's burn-in is almost a
thing of the past (not entirely, but practically).
What *has* improved with recent plasma TV's is half-life. For those who
don't know, the plasma gas used in plasma TV's has a finite life,
measured in hours (or thousands of hours). At their "half-life" they
are half as bright as when new. Brightness steadily declines over time
to the point that the TV becomes unwatchable and must be trashed.
While, say, a DLP bulb has limited life measured in several hundreds of
hours, picture quality is generally constant until the bulb burns out,
then after spending $200-$300 for a new bulb the picture is as good as
new again. You have no such recourse with a plasma -- when it's dead,
it's dead, you can't pump more plasma gas into it. You're left with a
very expensive wall ornament.
In the early days of plasma, when the smallest ones cost $10K-$15K,
half-life was somewhere around 2-5 years depending on the frequency of
use. Recent models have improved to a half-life of reportedly near
80,000 hours as I recall, which would be a half-life span of over 9
years if the TV was left running 24/7. Of course none of these newer
models have actually been around long enough to test that claim. :)
But while half-life seems to be a non-issue these days, burn-in is still
a major factor according to what I'm still seeing.
David
Matt Grommes wrote:
From what I understand, burn-in really isn't an issue with new-ish
plasma displays. Any more than with a CRT anyway. That was more of an
issue with the first few generations of products.
Peter Santerre wrote:
I'm getting a good deal on a last-years-model Plasma TV (NEC 50" MX3)
and will be hooking it up to my Myth box.
I'm very nervous about burn in, as this would be considered a very
large purchase on my current salary :)
What do other users of Myth do to prevent this issue, while still
keeping the WAF rating high? I guess I imagine while watching DVD,
TV, etc the screen would not blank, but if it was idle on a menu for
30s or so it would black it out. Sort of like MythMusic does I
guess. After 30s of no activity it goes full screen with my choice
of music display.
I know that plasma TV's are getting better and better about not
getting burned, and maybe I'm being over paranoid, but like I said,
this is a big purchase, and ruining it would be a very sad day :)
------------------------------------------------------------------------
_______________________________________________
mythtv-users mailing list
[email protected]
http://mythtv.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mythtv-users
