How dark is a plasma in a completely dark room

413x · 27 Sep 2012 at 13:38

Kind of an odd question but I got screen burn after watching a film from black bars the other day on my gt30

I was wondering how much glow a decent plasma puts out when displaying a black background?

I wasn't expecting screen burn as I thought the black bars would be completely black. (played through WMC via htpc)

Brightness on tv is just below middle
Brightness on amd panel is at default.

iamtheoneneo · 27 Sep 2012 at 13:58

you havent bedded in your plasma have you?

Superficial · 27 Sep 2012 at 14:24

had my gt30 since last may - screen burn is a non issue.

you need to run it in for at least 50 - 100 hours. be fine after.

413x · 27 Sep 2012 at 14:26

I've had it up and running more than 100 hours. I didn't do anything special regarding bedding in

iamtheoneneo · 27 Sep 2012 at 14:39

so you didnt put it in a low brightness mode?
might be part of the issue here. I did mine for about 50 hours and havent had any problems at all.

413x · 27 Sep 2012 at 14:43

iamtheoneneo said:
so you didnt put it in a low brightness mode?
might be part of the issue here. I did mine for about 50 hours and havent had any problems at all.

Nope just using it in thx mode with brightness below normal from the outset. How black should a plasma be if it has no picture in a blacked out room? Mine almost looks like an LCD with a back light. I'lltry get a pic ttonight

iamtheoneneo · 27 Sep 2012 at 15:31

mine is black black for sure. basically if my room is dark its hard to tell whats tv and whats the black bar.

413x · 27 Sep 2012 at 16:21

iamtheoneneo said:
mine is black black for sure. basically if my room is dark its hard to tell whats tv and whats the black bar.

Oh great. What's going on with mine :-\

Superficial · 27 Sep 2012 at 18:17

iamtheoneneo said:
mine is black black for sure. basically if my room is dark its hard to tell whats tv and whats the black bar.

This is how mine is also.

Can't recall if gamma is available to alter on THX mode but this would effect it.

not sure about your image burn though.

gitbags · 27 Sep 2012 at 20:54

Is it actual burn in or is it image retention? If its the latter it will clear with normal use. I still get it on my gt30 and that's been running for a year now ( I even followed the bedding in advise for the first 250 hours) that said depending on what I've been doing; gaming, watching a film or TV seems to affect the time it takes.

Film with bars - 10-20mins
Gaming (Batman aa 2 hrs

) 2 days!

I've also found that viewing distance plays a big part in whether you notice it or not. I'm only 2m away from my 42 and so its easier to spot. As others have said just tone down your settings for a while longer and it should become less of a issue.

413x · 27 Sep 2012 at 21:23

It's image retention not burn. That itself isn't the issue its the glow from the set. Avforums people seem to say that all plasmas have some glow when displaying no picture.

I'm only a couple of metres from the set.

gitbags · 27 Sep 2012 at 21:51

With the black background on the unused inputs on my set i get a slight glow, but if its a black image during a film or game its not quite as bright.

413x · 27 Sep 2012 at 22:08

Best pic I could get.
That is Microsoft paint full screen black

If anything viewing it on my phone screen the picture looks betterthan the real thing

gitbags · 27 Sep 2012 at 22:11

looks about right to me.

PikeyPriest · 29 Sep 2012 at 23:08

It will fade with time. Ive fallen asleep and had static teletext on for 4 hours before. Noticable image when turned off afterwards, but it faded completely after watching normal TV for an hour.

TheOtherOption · 30 Sep 2012 at 22:44

Yea to be honest it's not a problem - just change over to analogue and leave the black and white scrambled image on screen for a while and it'll be right as rain - or just go back to watching normal tv and it'll soon sort itself out.

413x · 1 Oct 2012 at 08:46

It's the fact it got it that concerned me, I thought the black bars would be completely black therefore no ir

The issue for me is that the tv isn't very black when on a black imag . On av forums they seem to think it's normal

DeathStorm · 1 Oct 2012 at 11:06

al4x said:
It's the fact it got it that concerned me, I thought the black bars would be completely black therefore no ir

The issue for me is that the tv isn't very black when on a black imag . On av forums they seem to think it's normal

Unfortunately I think you'll only find those true blacks with a CRT or an OLED screen.

lucid · 1 Oct 2012 at 12:55

True black in video doesn't exist.

Long story short; the dynamic range of a video image is a result of limitations in technology spanning back over the course of more than half a century. Video can reproduce 220 shades of grey. There is a safety margin at the top and bottom of that range to allow for mistakes in transcoding film to video. Film has a vastly superior dynamic range, but it is compressed on transcoding to suit the limitations of commercial and consumer video.

In the world of PCs an 8 bit grey scale will render 256 shades of grey. 0,0,0 on the RGB PC scale represents absolute black. White is 255, 255, 255. If you are feeding a TV an image from a DVD or Blu-ray player and everything is set correctly then video black is at 16, 16, 16 on the PC scale. White is at 235, 235, 235. Get the settings wrong though and the image from the source maps incorrectly. Depending which way the mistake is made blacks will either get crushed out (too dark) or lifted in level (too light) and changing the display's brightness won't fix it.

Check the set up on the graphics card and TV. Invest in a copy of DVE Basics, or download a video test pattern designed for video chain playback and set up your graphics card so it's working with a video dynamic range.

jaybee · 1 Oct 2012 at 13:28

...Or accept that your Plasma probably has blacker blacks than most LCD/LED owners.