How I Almost Destroyed my HDTV - or; Thank God I Bought an LCD

[Ernest Rister]

How I Almost Destroyed my HDTV
or;
Thank God I Bought an LCD

It's a few minutes before midnight. I've been on vacation in the mountains of New Mexico. I'm driving home across the Texas Hill Country to San Antonio when it dawns on me...

In a time honored tradition since I was in my 20's, I chose to leave the TV on while on vacation, just to shoo away any potential thieves. Trouble is, for some reason, every morning, when turning on my set, the first sight to greet my sleepy eyes is a giant blue 4:3 square with a text message reading: "Press Select to Continue". Why Time Warner does this for their HDTV signal in my neighborhood is beyond me (I suspect some kind of anti-piracy measures), but there it is. When turning on the TV in the morning, no matter the channel, I am greeted with a 4:3 blue square obscuring the image, and the message "Press Select to Continue".

In the rush of packing and my wife asking me if I was going to leave lights on and the TV on, it never dawned on me that this Blue Square of Image Retention could autotrigger for a channel already playing...meaning, if the TV is already on, if you have already pressed "select to continue" earlier that day, if the channel is coming in, and its a 16:9 image, and its not a news channel, then we shouldn't have to worry about image retention or the Blue Square popping up, right?

Wrong.

I'm driving back into town. I've been gone for five days. And then it occurs to me...what if that stupid blue square generates every morning -- meaning, its not a question of turning on the set and getting the blue square and the "Press Select to Continue" -- what if that happens every morning, even if the channel is already "selected"?

So 15 miles out of San Antonio, I turn to my wife and tell her that I've just realized something...and that I was concerned about the TV. We haul our luggage up the stairs at 1:00 a.m., and I hold my breath as I open the door.

And then I see it.

A big, giant, soul-sucking blue square.

I set the luggage down, calmly find the remote, and change the channel. My heart sinks.

Superimposed over every HD channel displaying in 16:9 is a new, burned-in, 4:3, high-contrast square. Over ev-ry-thing. I pop in a BRD in some vain hope the burn in won't be that awful, but the exercise turns into a morbid experiment in how bad the burn in actually is. Because there it is, the giant 4:3 contrast square. Like Borg cube of burn in futility.

I'm mortified. Ashamed. I feel like the biggest idiot on the planet. I give my wife the bad news.

I've destroyed the HDTV.

Or have I?

I get online while she gets ready for bed. I find a lot of people selling "burn in repair" CDs. Is that a solution? Seems shady. Someone says the only answer is to have the "projector" replaced. But then I find some conflicting advice...Someone says that an LCD can "self-repair" while Plasmas in this situation would be destroyed. Can that be true? I find more conflicting information...screen shots of burn-in on LCDs, followed by adamant posts that the situation on LCDs is reversible. One recommendation is to display a white image or a snow image for several hours. Another is to just turn the set off and let it sit for a while.

Turn it off and let it sit?

No way I could be that lucky...but I do it. I turn the set off, and go to bed.

I get up about five hours later, go the set after cooking breakfast, and hit the power.

The "burn in" is gone. Well, not gone completely, but its a 90% improvement. By the time evening rolls around, the image retention has vanished. Not even a hint of it. The LCD has "cured" itself of the "stuck" pixels.

I tell my wife the TV is fixed. She says she was't worried, she says she knew I'd take care of it. I tell her I didn't really do anything except read a bit. Meanwhile, I say a secret prayer of thanks to God that I didn't buy a plasma set -- and that's not a dig at Plasma owners, it's just that (allegedly) plasma sets are far less forgiving when it comes to image retention.

So, I'm very lucky, and learned some lessons:

a) Take more time when rushing out the door to think things through
b) The White Sands of New Mexico desert can be extremely cold
c) Amazingly enough, LCDs can "self repair" from image retention/burn in
and
d) In the future, just leave the radio playing.

[swingle007]

good ideas if it happens to another person on here....glad it worked out!

[FIDDYPOP]

Image retention is one of the main reasons my wife and I went with an LCD display. Im glad to hear that your television survived. I would be heartbroken if my tv went down.

[SlmShdy1]

Another reason why Time Warner Cable sucks.

[Ernest Rister]

Originally Posted by FIDDYPOP

Image retention is one of the main reasons my wife and I went with an LCD display. Im glad to hear that your television survived. I would be heartbroken if my tv went down.

Wasn't one of my better moments.

Though I must admit, an LCD's ability to be resistant to Image Retention/Image Burn was certainly welcome news to me. Could't believe my good fortune. From misery to relief in short order.

[BluCheez]

Thanks for the anecdote! Made my day.

Cheers!

[Blu_Ray_Fan]

Cool story, but haven't you ever heard of a light on a timer??

I know LCD's could suffer from temporary burn-in, but they are used in all of our computer monitor's and I have never had a problem with any sort of burn in.

On the other hand, my buddy has a Insignia Plasma and that thing has horrible burn-in issues. He LOVES the tv though, and that's al that counts I guess.

[randy8118]

Hummmm…. I always unplug the power for my system from the wall before I go away for extended periods of time. Why leave the systems vulnerable to spikes, surges and lightning strikes (including the power conditioner) when no one is around? Someone else also had a story of a sub that was on standby and started smoking. Fortunately, they were home and able to disconnect the power.

I think a small, cheap AM/FM radio is a better bet.

[dTm]

haha nice story, personally I think it's a little silly to leave the tv on for a few days at a time so people don't break in etc but that's just me, have a friend or relative come over every day to change which lights are on or something like that. I have an LCD and I'm glad to hear it would just sort its self out if anything like that happened to me.

I know that time warner thing push ok to continue is annoying, used to have no problems with my cable then it switched to comcast and they introduced something similar anyway im just waffling now so I'll stop typing - cheers for story.

[My_Two_Cents]

Glad it worked-out for you. I know with my Pany plasma, this would never happen. It has a feature where if the set is not "adjusted" (volume, channel, input, etc. changed) for X number of hours, it automatically shuts off. It's a bit annoying at times if it's been on all day playing games or watching movies when no adjustments have been made and all of a sudden a "3 min to power-off" (or something) message pops-up, but I'm glad it has the feature.

Next time, just put a light and radio on a timer.

[Blu Titan]

Very good story, you should be a writer. Glad that it was all god at the end...but next time leave the radio on .

[Ofcrlunchbox14]

try this next time you go out of town http://www.homesecuritystore.com/ezS...FID=homebanner
it's called fake tv and the reviews are really good. I plan on buying one soon.

[Betamax]

Actually, on most of todays plasmas they have burn in protection. On the Pioneers its called an Orbiter. What it does is actually shift the pixels v-e-r-y slowly so in a sense, the image is never static.

[drago3451]

I have the orbiter on my Panny plasma and still get IR with 4:3 content. It goes away after watching HD wide screen but I do not think it would survive 5 days.

[ghebert]

Worrying about image retention is for people who leave their tv's on with a still image for 5 days straight....Plasma tv's are for people who want better image quality, better black levels and more realism and know not to leave their tv's on unattended. Just my 2 cents.

[My_Two_Cents]

Okay, there is no need to turn this thread into an "us versus them" argument I think we can all agree that if you leave a static image on a plasma for 5 days straight, you will have problems, but for 99.99999% of folks this will not be an issue.

[Jim L]

My Panny plasma has several timers (that I've never set).

These can be used to turn the TV on and off automatically at specific times. If I wanted to set these up for "vacation mode" I could.

[Ernest Rister]

Originally Posted by dTm

haha nice story, personally I think it's a little silly to leave the tv on for a few days at a time so people don't break in etc but that's just me.

Yeah - I've been doing it since I had my own solo apartment in the 90's. Of course, when I lived in L.A., it made more sense...one night in L.A., around 3:00 a.m., someone came and tried to open my bedroom window, and that kind of experience sort of leaves an impression.

[Ernest Rister]

Originally Posted by ghebert

Worrying about image retention is for people who leave their tv's on with a still image for 5 days straight....Plasma tv's are for people who want better image quality, better black levels and more realism and know not to leave their tv's on unattended. Just my 2 cents.

Very true -- I'm just lucky the TV in this instance was an LCD.

[PA_Kid]

Would never have even occured to me - but then I have DLPs.