One Tip A Day » Plasma

How To Avoid Plasma Screen Burn

Tony Williams — Sat, 24 May 2008 11:25:02 +0000

I have a friend who has a very expensive Plasma TV, but because he didn’t take steps to protect his screen he’s suffering from screen burn. It’s easy to suffer from screen burn; just watching your favourite TV channel for too long can result in the logo being permanently displayed.

Although modern plasmas don’t suffer from screen burn as much as older screens, it’s still prudent to be careful in the first 200 hours of viewing when the screen hasn’t been burnt in. Things you should be careful of is to not display static logos or images for too long (more than 30 mins). If your screen has a zoom mode then use it so that when you are watching standard programmes they fill up the whole wide-screen.

If you want to burn your screen in quicker, then you can follow this guide from hdtv:

Adjust the brightness and contrast correctly on your plasma TV. If you don’t have calibration material just set them to slightly below half of the maximum possible.
Display a pure white image covering the whole of the plasma screen. Reference Materials, Title 14 (System Evaluation), Chapter 6 (100% Flat Field) in Digital Video Essentials works well, just make sure you don’t display the pause button too.
Gradually increase the hours during the power-on/ power-off cycles (i.e. do this for 2 hours then switch the TV off for one hour; then 4 hours on, 2 hours off; then 5 hours on, 2 hours off; and so on and so forth). This way the phosphors can stabilise properly, and you can catch any potential problem before it becomes worse.
50 to 100 hours of power-on running-in will age the phosphors sufficiently to minimise the risk of plasma screen burn.

This method works by burning the phosphors EVENLY by displaying the same intensity across the whole plasma screen, so that they get a good even workout.

Great HD Wallpapers

Tony Williams — Thu, 22 May 2008 22:29:52 +0000

I’ve just taken ownership of a super sexy 50″ Plasma that didn’t break the bank that I’ve connected to my PC to watch HD movies. I’ve been searching for some great HD wallpapers to display on my 1080p display and below are a selection of my favourites.

I’ve organised my collection of Great HD Wallpapers into categories to make it easier to find HD wallpapers for your PC.

Abstract HD Wallpapers

Nature HD Wallpapers

Here are HD wallpaper sites that I recommend include:

myHD Wallpaper.com: This website not only provides normal resolution wallpapers, but it also includes wallpapers in HD formats and resolutions up to 2560×1600. I’m using Free Wallpaper Changer to rate my favourites, including the stunning image below:

Cool HD wallpapers
Deskcity

Don’t Waste Money Buying Expensive Digital Video And Audio Cables

Tony Williams — Tue, 24 Apr 2007 22:58:15 +0000

Many of us are slowly building our dream home AV setup, although a few lucky individuals are able to purchase a complete setup in one-go. Buying a plasma, home entertainment center, receiver, Xbox 360, PS3 etc isn’t cheap, and unfortunately the cables don’t tend to be cheap either.

However, many retailers take advantage of naive consumers and force them to buy expensive HDMI, optical, Component, co-axial cables, promisng better quality video and audio on their shiny new equipment. This happened to me just today, and I had fun with the sales assistant as I asked him to explain why a $100 cable was better than a $5 on eBay.

Basically, there is no difference. Remember that the signal being transmitted down these cables is a digital signal i.e. a data stream that tells devices what sound or image to play or display. The same message will be transmitted using ‘cheap’ cables as via ‘expensive’ cables i.e. the quality will be exactly the same.

So, don’t waste your money on expensive cables. Instead, save your money and put it towards something fun like a Nintendo Wii!