Do I need to break in a Plasma??

[bigbassdave]

My Dad just bought a 50" Panasonic Plasma and I'm wondering if he needs to break it in. I have heard from a couple people where I work that you dont want to turn up the brightness for a certain number of hours. Is this true or just a myth?? He takes delivery of it in the next week or so. Any advice is appreciated thanks!

[Johnny Canuck]

I just got the 42". Watching Family Guy DVD, after the show ends, dark background, I see a burned image for a few seconds, then it fades. Had it a week. mauybe my brightness is too high, but the "vivid" picture is best, brightest too.

[ozdvduser]

Low settings and no lengthy periods with fixed images for around the first 200hrs, after that they are ok.

[BMXTRIX]

Just a ditto of everything already said!

Go through the setup menus. Turn brightness and contrast down. Make sure burn-in-protection is on. So, read the manual BEFORE turning on the display!

Then run the first couple hundred hours in one of the full screen modes like Panorama or 16:9 - just so you don't have solid black bars on the left/right side of the screen.

Heck, I always watch full screen. Things are distored, but it fills the screen, protects my purchase, and after a while, you really do get used to the people on TV looking more like you instead of the normal stick figures they try to portray.

[justmegee]

Originally Posted by ozdvduser

Low settings and no lengthy periods with fixed images for around the first 200hrs, after that they are ok.

How much time is lengthy? i just got the 50" Panasonic plasma and
definitely want the first 200 hours to go good. I’ve turned down the
picture to 0 (+30 - -30) so that’s at 50% as is brightness, color and tint.
sharpness is at +10, color temp normal. Does anybody see anything that
should be adjusted.

Most channels these days have fixed images of their logos in the
corner. All football games have the score in the corner as well.
I remember some one mention change the channel every so often
for a few seconds during the game?

Any suggestions out there?

Thanks,
justmegee

[BMXTRIX]

I would turn shaprness down. Usually people get sharpness completely wrong as it is a very artificial enhancement and tends to increase contrast around edges. This is something you definitely want to avoid on your display - high contrast, right on the edges of lines.

Otherwise, it sounds like you have things under control. Really, as long as you are AWARE of burn in, then you are almost definitely not going to have issues with it.

[justmegee]

Thanks BMXTRIX,

I just brought down the sharpness to 0 (50%).
still not sure what lengthy periods with fixed images means,
10 minutes or 2 hours. Can I watch a whole dvd movie
with borders for two to three hours without worry? Just trying to
gauge a time frame for the first 200 hours.

Thanks,

justmegee

[Mort Corey]

I had your concerns when I first bought my display. Fixed images would be thigs like a station logo, stock ticker, or scoreboards on some video games. I'd stay away from video games completely at first. With widescreen movies, there's not likely to be any problem....BUT...since I was probably being a little bit anal, I just used the aspect controls and blew them up to full screen at the beginning. Things like scores showing on a sporting event aren't going to be problematic as they usually aren't up there that long and there's always a commercial just around the corner anyway.

Don't worry the enjoyment out of your new toy...it'll be OK now that you've lowered the settings. You may see a ghosting sometime when it's new, but that's not burning in anything and it'll go away when you switch sources or channels. Relax and enjoy your new toy.

Mort

[justmegee]

Thanks Mort,

Sound advice. Will follow and enjoy my new toy.

Thanks again,
justmegee