Watching 4:3 on a Plasma screen.

[Crow550]

Went to my friend's house. He has a new Plasma screen and we watched Puppet Master & there was annoying Grey bars on the left & right?

I thought burn-in was fixed? Anyway to have proper black bars? Grey is so annoying.

Anyone have this issue? Also stretching it to wide screen is bad for any 4:3 content.


Any Plasma owners?

He just bought this LG a few weeks ago.

I never heard of such special things you have to do for a TV. LOL! Uh he might want to opt for an LCD or OLED....He's the type that prefers a set it & forget it approach. I don't think he knows the info on the stretching everything & keep brightness high the first 100 hours & that Plasma's lose brightness as time goes on.

when you watch a lot of tv shows and such. It adds up. One of the big points of owning a big TV, is being able to watch any aspect ratio in it's original aspect ratio without being too small or any distractions.

As for Grey bars. Could you go to the cinema and get use to seeing small Grey bars?

I looked in his TV settings and couldn't find an option. It irked me bad.

 

[mmntech]

Most TVs have the option to use either grey or black bars. He's probably got it on the wrong setting.

There's usually a utility in the TV's menu that gets rid of after images. It's not burn-in. All phosphor displays can have this problem. Even CRTs.

 

[Crow550]

I looked in the settings and could not find a way to change it.

 

[sivart]

Was it possible the station broadcasting the gray color? Was it every channel or just that particular channel / show.

There should be a setting somewhere unless the TV is old (I.e. 5+ years old). My Vizio 3 year old Plasma has no setting, but the default is black. My guess is it was the broadcast. I remember local stations sending a gray bar in their signal about 4 years ago.

As for the theater, they just bring the curtains in closer to get rid of the bars. They are constant image height (I.e. 2.35:1 are the same height but wider than movies in 1.85:1).

 

[Fallen Kell]

Actually burn-in still exists in plasma, just as with any phosphor based display. It is simple physics.

For example:
BaMgAl10O17:Eu2+ (BAM), a plasma display phosphor, undergoes oxidation of the dopant during baking. Three mechanisms are involved; absorption of oxygen atoms into oxygen vacancies on the crystal surface, diffusion of Eu(II) along the conductive layer, and electron transfer from Eu(II) to adsorbed oxygen atoms, leading to formation of Eu(III) with corresponding loss of emissivity. Thin coating of aluminium phosphate or lanthanum(III) phosphate is effective in creation a barrier layer blocking access of oxygen to the BAM phosphor, for the cost of reduction of phosphor efficiency. Addition of hydrogen, acting as a reducing agent, to argon in the plasma displays significantly extends the lifetime of BAM:Eu2+ phosphor, by reducing the Eu(III) atoms back to Eu(II).

ZnS-based phosphors in CRTs and FEDs degrade by surface excitation, coulombic damage, build-up of electric charge, and thermal quenching. Electron-stimulated reactions of the surface are directly correlated to loss of brightness. The electrons dissociate impurities in the environment, the reactive oxygen species then attack the surface and form carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide with traces of carbon, and nonradiative zinc oxide and zinc sulfate on the surface; the reactive hydrogen removes sulfur from the surface as hydrogen sulfide, forming nonradiative layer of metallic zinc. Sulfur can be also removed as sulfur oxides.


Yes, as stated above, there are ways to mitigate the issue, but it doesn't eliminate it. Over time, the coatings used and doping molecules will diffuse through the material, and their effect to mitigate the burn-in process will degrade.

Now, in this case with it being a new panel, you could be witnessing some break-in period issues. Typically the first 100-400 hours of a phosphor display can show some strange behavior as the the crystal matrix of the phosphors align themselves to the electric current being applied.

Also, grey bars are used now because they will cause the phosphor to receive a uniform burn-in across the entire screen, which non-uniform burn-in being the main culprit for people noticing problems with the screen. The areas with the black bars would receive less excitement, and thus would degrade slower than the center portion of the screen.

 

[EightySix Four]

After 150 hours or so my plasma was far more resistant to IR, and I haven't had any legit burn in issues. You have to be intelligent about it though.

 

[Crow550]

After 150 hours or so my plasma was far more resistant to IR, and I haven't had any legit burn in issues. You have to be intelligent about it though.

Well, I don't know how HDTV smart he is.... I tell him to watch HD Nation. LOL.

He has not bothered yet....

Maybe Plasmas should have a giant sticker that says what you need to do.

 

[kalrith]

I would say that burn-in is pretty much gone, but I wouldn't call this issue burn-in; I'd call it uneven phosphor wear. Uneven phosphor wear is when there's an image on part of the screen and complete blackness on another part. This would be 4:3 images with black bars on the left and right and letterboxed films with black bars on the top and bottom. This is a complete non-issue if you vary your content. However, if you were to watch, something like 50% of your content with black bars, then the phosphors displaying the picture would then be older or more aged than the phosphors that usually display black bars.

For example, after 6k hours of viewing with 50% being 4:3 with black bars, the phosphors on the left and right would only be 3k hours old, whereas the phosphors in the middle would be 6k hours old.

This is probably the biggest risk of "burn-in" to plasmas, and it's the only one I've ever seen in person. I watched a 16:9 movie at a friend's house with a first-gen plasma, and I could notice the left and right areas being brighter than the middle. It was quite annoying.

This was several years ago when HD content was just starting to be provided by cable/satellite providers, so a vast majority of their viewing was probably 4:3 SDTV. I don't know of anyone who's serious about HD yet watches 4:3 content the majority of the time.

Like I said before, if it's not a large majority of the content, then you're fine with black bars, assuming there's even an option for that. I used the gray bars on my plasma when I first got it. I went to turn them off the other day, and I couldn't find the setting for it.

 

[simonizor]

I always stretch my screen when watching 4:3 content on my Panasonic plasma. Even if burn-in is pretty much gone, I don't want to risk it.

 

[heyheybooboo]

I think LG has a setting that will periodically 'jitter' to prevent image retention.




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[simonizor]

I think LG has a setting that will periodically 'jitter' to prevent image retention.




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Basically all new plasma's do, but just because you have that enabled doesn't mean that it will never burn in an image no matter how long you leave it on there. Use common sense and all will be good.

 

[sswingle]

Mine shows black. I do notice some retention if I play a game for a while. The static HUD items from the game will show a little if the scene is bright. This goes away after a few hours.