Sunday Times to investigate OLED Screen Burn Issues

[kona786]

This amazes me.
I was looking for a new TV 2-3 years ago - the LG C7 being one option and of course well recommended. The screen burn issue and potential for problems was extremely well documented. You couldn't go to a forum without finding a massive thread on "will this happen" and "people are over-reacting" etc.
The manufacturer knew it was a potential issue - specifically saying that their warranty would not cover from this kind of damage.
Then there was the industry as a whole, the experts, the people in the know, who were telling people the same thing - there was the potential for this kind of thing to happen.

Knowing many games have a static HUD and for other reasons, I actually took the LED route with a Sony XE9305 - a decision I have not regretted in the least.

I don't see how we're in a situation along the lines of:

Customer: Hi, I'm interested in a new TV - help me world
The Public: Cannot beat an OLED, but remember there is a potential screen burn issue
The manufacturer: Buy our fantastic OLED, but remember you might see a screen burn issue.
The experts: OLED, the blacks are just sooo black. But remember, potential screen burn issue.
Customer: I'll buy an OLED
Customer: I'm suing - I got screen burn

Spot on. If you can't look after something at this level then buy a second rate QLED (a glorified LCD)

 

[Arcane]

I do get worried when I read these threads, I play a ton of COD Cold War on my 48" C1. With hindsight I would have gone with something else as the thing's too dark anyway, I prefer to see more detail in the shadow areas.

 

[kona786]

I do get worried when I read these threads, I play a ton of COD Cold War on my 48" C1. With hindsight I would have gone with something else as the thing's too dark anyway, I prefer to see more detail in the shadow areas.

Ramp up the brightness to the point the blacks go grey?

Enable dynamic tone mapping?

 

[Grim5]

I do get worried when I read these threads, I play a ton of COD Cold War on my 48" C1. With hindsight I would have gone with something else as the thing's too dark anyway, I prefer to see more detail in the shadow areas.

If only LG included a myriad of optional changes in the menu that can increase shadow detail. Oh wait, they did just that!

 

[jpaul]

near black detail is a known issue ?

looks like they sold about 500K oleds in 2016 in the UK ... so how many reports of burn-in have there really been. ?
I think most folks learn that early adoption is a risky endeavor, must have payed £1K for a philips 26 IPS led in the 90's, and you look back and think that rapidly halved in price,
so, like for electric vehicles, I'm a bit more circumspect now, adopter remorse.

Equally reliability on LG sets wasn't assured/known in 2016, versus, panasonic/kuro say, and, LG had the power supply over-heat, low bitrate noise and pixel flashing ... and the burn-in,
it would be interesting to know if marketting budget was relatively large for oleds to compensate, it certainly seemed oleds developed a momentum, and, initially people were (and still are) prepared to consecrate larger budgets on tv's, driven by the 4K mojo.

 

[photoshop]

I read all these type of threads when looking for a new TV. I still went ahead and bought the 55" C7 4yrs ago and last year bought the 65" CX.
Not had any issue so far and love both TV's. Would buy an OLED again.

 

[Arcane]

Ramp up the brightness to the point the blacks go grey?
Enable dynamic tone mapping?

I have and it's better for it, using the FPS mode, black stabiliser etc but it's still not great.

If only LG included a myriad of optional changes in the menu that can increase shadow detail. Oh wait, they did just that!

Well done.

 

[jpaul]

If only LG included a myriad of optional changes in the menu that can increase shadow detail. Oh wait, they did just that!

Have they ? I though ability to change the tone mapping curve in hdr was only unlocked if you had the calman software, and could change pq. (potentially panasonic is the same)
eg.
https://liftgammagain.com/forum/ind...late-for-devicecontrol-interface.13237/page-3
https://displaycalibrations.com/lg_...e_and_Create_a_Connection_with_the_LG_OLED_TV
or, can you find online curves, others have generated that might meet your needs

 

[Barleyman]

Haha in reality - I’m a big fan of OLED for display quality but it’s far worse then plasma ever was for burn

Nah. I had one of the last plasmas Samsung made (6500 series) and the screen burn was always an issue. I have HTPC hooked up to the telly and since my wife uses Firefox always maximised the icons burn hard. Luckily it's also used for TV and games so it's not completely static.

With plasma you had those Firefox icons and windows toolbar ghosting , although it'd eventually go away in the pixel refresh mode and/or watching telly. With LG CX OLED I have not seen that at all. At least so far no. Could also be because the kids are older and not shy about switching from Facebook to Netflix with Roku.

 

[hornetstinger]

Nah. I had one of the last plasmas Samsung made (6500 series) and the screen burn was always an issue. I have HTPC hooked up to the telly and since my wife uses Firefox always maximised the icons burn hard. Luckily it's also used for TV and games so it's not completely static.

With plasma you had those Firefox icons and windows toolbar ghosting , although it'd eventually go away in the pixel refresh mode and/or watching telly. With LG CX OLED I have not seen that at all. At least so far no. Could also be because the kids are older and not shy about switching from Facebook to Netflix with Roku.

I had Samsung plasma for a couple of weeks I sent it back.

Bringing menu up for 20 seconds and you get IR that stayed there for about 5 minutes

 

[Barleyman]

I had Samsung plasma for a couple of weeks I sent it back.

Bringing menu up for 20 seconds and you get IR that stayed there for about 5 minutes

Well not normally quite *that* bad but yes, if you had a browser maximised on-screen for a long time that outline is going to stick for a bit. At least it does go away ecentually, with older plasmas that was not a given. LG CX does some tricks to mitigate screen burn, e.g. it'll dim the screen if the image is static and there's a screensaver. Weirdly enough it does not respect HDMI screen off, so display off power saving setting in Windows gives you a black screen with the TV active, if that makes sense. It won't power down like a monitor does.

 

[jpaul]

If only LG included a myriad of optional changes in the menu that can increase shadow detail. Oh wait, they did just that!

Interesting thread on gaming with cx, and avoiding burn-in, also, doesn't acknowledge if you can fix black crush
https://old.reddit.com/r/OLED/comments/nnb1t8/my_experience_so_far_after_6_months_with_the_lg/

Spoiler: excerpt

• LG has supplied some great longevity features with the CX. Use them. I have "Logo Luminance Adjustment" set to "High", and "Screen Shift" enabled. You will find some information online that suggests the screen shift feature will cause blurry text for desktop use, but this is not the case. Perhaps this was true in a previous version of the firmware, but not anymore. Screen shift will be barely noticeable for you, especially while gaming. Even if you are a professional MLG Counter-Strike player, I don't believe screen shift would affect your gaming experience at all.
• Use a slideshow desktop with at least 10 different images in rotation. Some people will suggest using Wallpaper Engine or some other form of "live" desktop, but I don't recommend this. Yes, the wallpaper is technically not static when using a live desktop, but it is still static enough to cause non-uniform degradation of the pixels. Certain areas of the screen will still be consistently darker/brighter. Just grab a collection of space pictures or whatever suits your fancy, toss them in a folder, and use that folder as your desktop wallpaper slideshow with a speed of like 5 mins (or less) per slide. If you don't like pictures for whatever reason, then just use a solid black desktop and enjoy that sweet, sweet darkness.
• Set the screen timeout to a very short amount of time. I would recommend 5 minutes at the most. It might take some getting used to at first, but it is not as annoying as it sounds. The CX does a great job of waking up quickly after its gone to sleep.
• Screen shift will help with this, but try to get in the habit of repositioning your desktop windows periodically while working. This is especially important for windows with bright white content. If there are windows that you like to have full-screen or relatively static, make sure to use a dark theme without too much contrast. If you're a programmer like me, I highly recommend the Gruvbox color scheme for your IDE and terminal. Once you get in the habit of this, it just becomes second nature and shouldn't be too annoying. If you are a strange person who likes bright white cornea-burning interfaces fully maximized, then your mileage may vary.
• When gaming, see if the game has a setting to auto-hide the HUD. Anything that can reduce the amount of time your HUD appears on the screen will only help. Some games have great immersive HUD features, and others have none whatsoever. Sometimes you will have to settle for a minor inconvenience for the sake of your monitor. One example for me would be Final Fantasy XIV, which has an option to hide the entire HUD manually by pressing a hotkey. It takes some getting used to, but now I am in the habit of hitting that hotkey whenever I don't absolutely need the HUD and it has really not impacted my enjoyment of the game. For games that don't have any OLED-friendly HUD options, you will still probably be fine as long as that's not the only game you play.

Second: For me as a graphic enthusiast who grown up with the PC the CX is the first and the last OLED. I had a ton of monitors in 30 years of gaming. The OLED was the worst of all. I literally downgraded my graphics.

1. The contrasts are too high, you can't see **** and all the details get destroyed by the black crush. You can try everything, you can't get rid of it. The only way around it is to change Black Level, but OLED does it worse than LED and it destroys the whole picture with overly high grey - not like on a LED where only the contrasts are getting slightly higher. That's the difference between LED and OLED: LED uses brightness in the background to show more details - the higher the better. Only a small portion comes through the software. OLED uses brightness to show hightlights and doesn't higher the details as much... it's the software that raises the details and contrasts. When you play and it's getting night you have to cheat to see something again in dark games. When you are playing an online game with night shift like Conan Exiles you can directly shut it down, switch the game and wait till it's day, cos you only see like 10-15m and don't know what's around you. It's like the movie "Pitch Black". On LED you can still see what the game developers wanted you to see: details, shapes, contrasts, highlights of the moon... On top of that you get blacks on LED like it should be.

 

[hornetstinger]

I agree with black crush on my LG OLED C9, compared to the Pioneer plasma there is loss in shadow detail. Increase black level and then blacks become grey, dial it down and you lose black level detail.

 

[Steampunk]

I agree with black crush on my LG OLED C9, compared to the Pioneer plasma there is loss in shadow detail. Increase black level and then blacks become grey, dial it down and you lose black level detail.

IIRC, that's down to poor post processing on the LG TVs. I read an article a while back that compared black details on Sony and LG OLEDs (both using the same LG panels), and the Sonys were noticeably better with regards to black details/crush.

 

[Psycho Sonny]

My parents B7 is now a mess with screen burn, can see it on pretty much all content excluding blacks obviously.

It was bought from Curry's so I don't know whether to try and push it with them. The more people that try, the more pressure on them.

I'm so glad I got a XF90 for the bedroom as it was originally for console use solely then I moved it to the bedroom after I had to use one of the spare bedrooms as a nursery and no longer have a dedicated games room.

Plenty on here were saying screen burn was a non issue and now I'm seeing threads like this one and plenty of others having issues.

Yet rtings said it wasn't an issue apparently with their real world test and folk on here were adamant that only an idiot could get screen burn on the new sets.

Looks like I was right again. After having to baby a plasma for several years. I'd rather just buy a decent TV and enjoy it and forget about having the absolute best blacks because guess what I don't need to have my whole world revolve around the TV any more I can use it however I like.

Going to see how this pans out as I was going to get a 77 inch OLED next year. However if they haven't fixed the screen burn I'll likely go for a fald and just forget oled exist.

 

[Nexus18]

Still not a single sign of burn in on my e7 which was bought in 2017..... Used for thousands of hours in hdr gaming and films plus TV shows.

 

[ZG002]

As someone on the look out for their next TV all of this is super confusing.

I do tend to have extended gaming sessions which can last many many hours once I'm hooked in and when I'm at work the children's TV channels tend to go on for extended periods and they have a logo.

I just don't know who to believe, having looked closely it's clear to me OLED leads in picture quality but at this price I'd expect to get 5yrs plus from the set.

I currently have QLED which is 4 yrs old and to be moved to the bedroom (bedroom TV is over 10 yrs old and on it's way out) and I've had no issues with it but I've always thought "this could be better"

Choices choices.

 

[Nexus18]

The only ones who complain about burn in seem to be people who use a silly brightness/oled light setting i.e. 70+% and watch sky news etc. 8+ hours a day, if you're one of these people, avoid oled, why you would even consider a premium tv for this kind of usage in the first place is silly anyway....

 

[Grim5]

Just finished spending over 300 hours playing assasins creed games, all of which has a red bar at the top of the screen. Played in HDR with 100% brightness in game mode.

My C9 is now 2 and a half years old and getting close to 3000 hours of usage in total.

Zero issues, burn in is a myth
Don't know why I even bought the extended warranty, you guys cried wolf - good for sales people's commissions selling warranties

 

[200sols]

Your TV survived 300 hours of gaming? Well done.