Can LCD monitors suffer from "burn in"?

[mjrpes3]

I have a Dell 2005FPW and noticed this weird thing right now, where it looks like my taskbar and icons on my desktop have "burned in" to the screen. If i hide the taskbar, I can faintly, but noticably, see my start menu and quick launch bar icons where they were previously. Also, I keep my recycling icon on my desktop in the same place, and if I move it I can see it faintly etched into the screen where it previously was. I rebooted my machine and it's still there.

Any ideas? I thought burn in only happened on old CRT monitors.

 

[mjrpes3]

BTW, I am running my display through DVI.

 

[imverygifted]

LCDs dont burn in i have been led to believe. im not sure what your noticeing i've never noticed this on my 2005fpw
edit, actually a quick google search turned this up:
http://www.dslwebserver.com/main/fr_index.html?/main/lcd-screen-burn.html
the burn in is not permanent, just read the article

 

[mjrpes3]

Crap, looks like it could be permanent if I'm not careful.

Thx for the link.

I'll have to make sure my screensaver starts up more quickly.

 

[Gamingphreek]

It is not possible on LCD's to have burn in AFAIK. NO offense but i think you are imagining it.

-Kevin

 

[bjc112]

Originally posted by: mjrpes3
I have a Dell 2005FPW and noticed this weird thing right now, where it looks like my taskbar and icons on my desktop have "burned in" to the screen. If i hide the taskbar, I can faintly, but noticably, see my start menu and quick launch bar icons where they were previously. Also, I keep my recycling icon on my desktop in the same place, and if I move it I can see it faintly etched into the screen where it previously was. I rebooted my machine and it's still there.

Any ideas? I thought burn in only happened on old CRT monitors.

LCD's can't burn in..

Change your wallpaper to a solid color and see..

 

[Matthias99]

Originally posted by: Gamingphreek
It is not possible on LCD's to have burn in AFAIK. NO offense but i think you are imagining it.

-Kevin

They don't "burn in", but they can get pixels that don't untwist fully if they are held in the same state for an extended period of time (thus resulting in a faint afterimage when the background changes).

I've only seen it on older/cheaper LCDs, and ones that are showing the same thing (like a login screen) 24/7 for weeks/months at a time. This is rarely permanent, in any case. It usually goes away in a couple hours at most if you display something else.

 

[mjrpes3]

Originally posted by: Gamingphreek
It is not possible on LCD's to have burn in AFAIK. NO offense but i think you are imagining it.

-Kevin

The link is correct, and it confirmed that such a thing is possible and that LCD manufacturers are aware of it.

It's been almost a day since I moved my recycling bin icon, and between that time my monitor has been off for most of the day and I have only actively used my computer for about 2 hours. Yet I can still clearly see a ghosting image of the recycling bin icon where I had placed it before. The start menu is also still ghosting. In fact, I don't see much improvement in the ghosting image going away.

It's also possible to change input modes on the 2005FPW, I did so and could still see a slight ghosting, although less so because a black background hides it a bit. This confirms that it doesn't have anything to do with my computer or video card.

I'm starting to get worried that this might be a permanent thing. I guess I will have to wait a couple of weeks to find out, and in the meantime do things that the manufacturers suggest like leave the monitor off for an extended period of time.

This is not my first LCD monitor, and the previous one I had (for almost two years), never showed any signs of this, even though my computing habits weren't any different than they are now. I've had the 2005FPW for a total of 2 months. This could be something specific to this LCD model, maybe even just this batch.

 

[ChuckHsiao]

The LCD matrix itself can get screen burn (actually, it's polarization, but the effect is the same, i.e. residual image left behind). LCD monitors use an inversion scheme though whereby the polarity of the voltage is reversed every frame. Unfortunately since this is hard to get exactly right (it's hard to get the exact same magnitude on both positive and negative directions), there's some net "buildup" of sorts which accumulates over time. Usually this gets cancelled out in regular use, but if you have the same image displayed all the time, then it doesn't, leaving a residual image once the image changes to something else. Unlike CRTs though this should be fixable by leaving the screen off (or as mentioned, using the complementary colors of the previous screen, but that's no small feat) so it's not permanent, i.e. not a "burn" the way it is with a CRT.

You can test for inversion and find out more about it here:

http://techmind.org/lcd/index.html

(Scroll down to the "Inversion" section.)

Chuck Hsiao
Formerly of Amptron