Re' Burn-in / Break-in
Phosphors "wear down". That is, they burn most brightly for the first few hours of use, but swiftly "decay" to a durable / stable level.
A "break-in" video serves to "burn" all the pixels to that plateau in a uniform manner. After it's been run, each pixel should be alike in emissions.
The "need" for this is largely history IMO. When folks started buying HD TV's they were still largely watching 4:3 broadcast TV. During their occasional use of HD media they noticed the sides were inappropriately bright -- because those pixels were so little-used they hadn't declined to the plateau.
I suppose someone watches mostly 4:3 these days, but aren't they a tiny minority? I use my computer to watch & DVR ComCast HD channels [via 4-stream CableCard] and it's only the occasional old movie (7 Samurai, etc.) on my Blu-Ray player that's side-bar'd. (Sure, top/bot' letter-boxing on movies is a similar threat.) So all my pixels are in use 99% of the time.
The other old issue of burn-in [logo or text] wasn't common unless you regularly left one frozen image on-screen for hours [cumulatively, for weeks] -- some game systems used to burn a message when folks regularly left the TV on. Well, my computer screen-blanks after disuse, and the Panny's "no-signal" dances around, so I've no such problem.
"Break-in" is an inappropriate term: it's cumulative hours of phosphor use that matters. If your unit shows uneven emission (= extremely uneven use of pixels), running those "break-in" videos at any time should push any little-used pixels onto the broad plateau of evenly lowered emissions. I don't see any reason to run the videos unless you're observing A Problem. This is not like "breaking in an engine" where service life is extended by proper breaking-in.
Of course, I could be blatantly ignorant and totally destroying your new TV's and your lives with this advice. :sneaky:
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