Vizio Smart TV showing signs of burn-in on screen. Time for new TV?
January 11, 2018 12:46 AM Subscribe
3 year old Vizio 50" smart TV has burn in, mostly on right side of screen. Not always but some times. One game of Freecell showed up, faintly, for a week, as have other windows that'd been left open. Currently the Freecell image is *almost* gone but that's happened before with other things, come and go.
Started maybe 3 months ago, right side of screen showing darker when when only the blue background is showing. Then maybe a month ago items started turning up burned in. I do not watch TV, it's used as computer monitor, for movies, news off WaPo and/or whatever I find linked from here or Reddit or what-have-you, link follows link and off I go .
I've never made a point of turning the screen off when I'm out the door. I can do that from now on but a bit late now, for this screen anyways. Youtube fixes seem to be a three hour video run of different colors, which I'll surely do if it makes any difference.
It's not (yet anyways) so bad that I cannot watch/enjoy movies, check news, check the site here, blah blah blah. (It's more noticeable with a static background, such as here on the site, as opposed to WALL-E carousing about.) But if there's a fix that's worth the time that any of you rocket scientists know of, I'd sure love to hear about it.
Last. Which of these two TVs would you buy if your TV died:
Big honkin' Samsung 55 inch
Not so big Visio 50 inch
Started maybe 3 months ago, right side of screen showing darker when when only the blue background is showing. Then maybe a month ago items started turning up burned in. I do not watch TV, it's used as computer monitor, for movies, news off WaPo and/or whatever I find linked from here or Reddit or what-have-you, link follows link and off I go .
I've never made a point of turning the screen off when I'm out the door. I can do that from now on but a bit late now, for this screen anyways. Youtube fixes seem to be a three hour video run of different colors, which I'll surely do if it makes any difference.
It's not (yet anyways) so bad that I cannot watch/enjoy movies, check news, check the site here, blah blah blah. (It's more noticeable with a static background, such as here on the site, as opposed to WALL-E carousing about.) But if there's a fix that's worth the time that any of you rocket scientists know of, I'd sure love to hear about it.
Last. Which of these two TVs would you buy if your TV died:
Big honkin' Samsung 55 inch
Not so big Visio 50 inch
My TV allows you to plug in a USB stick and run images as a screensaver. I have a folder full of full screen solid colors. Good to know about the black and white.
posted by bongo_x at 4:12 PM on January 11, 2018
posted by bongo_x at 4:12 PM on January 11, 2018
Solid colours don't make a huge amount of sense, once you understand that every pixel on an LCD screen is constructed of physically and electrically distinct subpixels, each of which is either red, green or blue. The actual visible colours come from a coloured optical filter grid laid over the underlying subpixel cell grid. Physically and electrically, there is no internal difference at all between the LCD transmission cells behind the red, green and blue optical filter cells.
Image persistence happens when certain LCD transmission cells suffer a temporary and partial inability to relax the configuration imposed on the liquid crystal material inside them by voltage impressed across it, after long periods of having a fixed voltage imposed for an image that doesn't change.
In order to encourage a subpixel to relax, the voltage applied to it needs to be removed and the liquid crystal kept warm. Random thermal motion will then eventually break up any structure that's been given time to "set" inside the subpixel cell.
In some panels, the zero-voltage condition causes a subpixel to go fully transparent; in others, fully dark. The difference is in the orientation of the panel-wide polarizer, and it's consistent for all subpixels on any given panel. So an image that's going to cause that zero-voltage condition for every subpixel in the panel will be either black (all subpixels dark) or white (all subpixels transparent).
If panel pixels were not made of subpixels - if each panel pixel were a single physically distinct structure capable of transmitting or emitting a range of colours - then exercising them over their full colour gamut would have some plausible justification. But the individual optical elements are subpixels, and they're all of identical electrical and physical internal construction, so any internal effect that could possibly be achieved by running the panel through a full range of colours can also be achieved by running it through a full range of greyscale shades.
An exception to this rule might exist for panels that have "smart" backlighting and subpixels that go dark with no applied voltage; such a panel would know that it doesn't need much backlighting for a dark image, so displaying a fully black image won't end up warming the LCD cells much. But the colour-flashy methods for allegedly fixing image persistence first started appearing well before the existence of smart backlights, so I'm pretty sure a lot of the rationale for them has always been somewhat superstitious.
posted by flabdablet at 12:05 AM on January 12, 2018 [1 favorite]
Image persistence happens when certain LCD transmission cells suffer a temporary and partial inability to relax the configuration imposed on the liquid crystal material inside them by voltage impressed across it, after long periods of having a fixed voltage imposed for an image that doesn't change.
In order to encourage a subpixel to relax, the voltage applied to it needs to be removed and the liquid crystal kept warm. Random thermal motion will then eventually break up any structure that's been given time to "set" inside the subpixel cell.
In some panels, the zero-voltage condition causes a subpixel to go fully transparent; in others, fully dark. The difference is in the orientation of the panel-wide polarizer, and it's consistent for all subpixels on any given panel. So an image that's going to cause that zero-voltage condition for every subpixel in the panel will be either black (all subpixels dark) or white (all subpixels transparent).
If panel pixels were not made of subpixels - if each panel pixel were a single physically distinct structure capable of transmitting or emitting a range of colours - then exercising them over their full colour gamut would have some plausible justification. But the individual optical elements are subpixels, and they're all of identical electrical and physical internal construction, so any internal effect that could possibly be achieved by running the panel through a full range of colours can also be achieved by running it through a full range of greyscale shades.
An exception to this rule might exist for panels that have "smart" backlighting and subpixels that go dark with no applied voltage; such a panel would know that it doesn't need much backlighting for a dark image, so displaying a fully black image won't end up warming the LCD cells much. But the colour-flashy methods for allegedly fixing image persistence first started appearing well before the existence of smart backlights, so I'm pretty sure a lot of the rationale for them has always been somewhat superstitious.
posted by flabdablet at 12:05 AM on January 12, 2018 [1 favorite]
Response by poster: the most reliable fix I ever found for image persistence on LCD screens is using a static screensaver image that sets every pixel on the panel fully white or fully black, depending on the particular panel. The idea is to remove all voltage from every single subpixel's LCD cell, but leave the backlight running to keep the panel warm. Choose whichever of fully white or fully black shows the ghost image more clearly.
If you arrange for that to happen on your smart TV, and disable power saving so that it doesn't switch itself off when inactive, I would expect your persistent ghost images to fade within a few tens of hours of screen power-up time.
posted by flabdablet at 8:33 AM on January 11
I set up power saver so that the screen will never turn off. After a bit of experimenting, using both the blackest black and the whitest white, it's perfectly clear that the burn-in shows *way* more on pure white screen. I don't have anything on the computer "desktop" ie no recycle bin or My Computer or whatever else, I like to keep it just really clean.
So I created an image of the brightest white I could make, it's now my wallpaper, and I'm gonna just let it be white until I see results.
I'll post again in a couple of days, give an update.
Thank you for your help, flabdablet -- it'd sure be great if I don't have to put out four or five hundred bucks for a new one.
posted by dancestoblue at 2:42 AM on January 12, 2018
If you arrange for that to happen on your smart TV, and disable power saving so that it doesn't switch itself off when inactive, I would expect your persistent ghost images to fade within a few tens of hours of screen power-up time.
posted by flabdablet at 8:33 AM on January 11
I set up power saver so that the screen will never turn off. After a bit of experimenting, using both the blackest black and the whitest white, it's perfectly clear that the burn-in shows *way* more on pure white screen. I don't have anything on the computer "desktop" ie no recycle bin or My Computer or whatever else, I like to keep it just really clean.
So I created an image of the brightest white I could make, it's now my wallpaper, and I'm gonna just let it be white until I see results.
I'll post again in a couple of days, give an update.
Thank you for your help, flabdablet -- it'd sure be great if I don't have to put out four or five hundred bucks for a new one.
posted by dancestoblue at 2:42 AM on January 12, 2018
If you pick the slideshow screensaver and point it at a folder containing only that same white image, you can amuse yourself by looking at the ghost of your taskbar whenever it activates :-)
Do post back here in a few days and report your results, good or bad.
posted by flabdablet at 4:30 AM on January 12, 2018
Do post back here in a few days and report your results, good or bad.
posted by flabdablet at 4:30 AM on January 12, 2018
Response by poster: Update -- burn-in on Vizio LCD screen
Reporting in. I've kept with white-white-white as a screensaver and I honestly don't know that it's made even the tiniest of difference. So, as of a couple of minutes ago, I've changed over to black-black-black screensaver and we'll see what -- if anything -- happens there.
Fortunately, it really is *not* a bother when watching a movie. And it's not like it's the end of the world when I see it when using the screen as monitor, which is at least 90 percent of its usage. Still, I'm going to try the black-black-black as it's not going to hurt anything and hey, could help.
Of course that part of me that wants A New TV as part of my consumerism is waving flags in my face, and there is a killer deal right now at Dell, and blah blah blah blah. My consumerism part tends to forget that there is always a good deal at Dell .....
Anyways. On with the black-black-black, and I shall report back -- stay tuned.
posted by dancestoblue at 12:52 AM on February 16, 2018
Reporting in. I've kept with white-white-white as a screensaver and I honestly don't know that it's made even the tiniest of difference. So, as of a couple of minutes ago, I've changed over to black-black-black screensaver and we'll see what -- if anything -- happens there.
Fortunately, it really is *not* a bother when watching a movie. And it's not like it's the end of the world when I see it when using the screen as monitor, which is at least 90 percent of its usage. Still, I'm going to try the black-black-black as it's not going to hurt anything and hey, could help.
Of course that part of me that wants A New TV as part of my consumerism is waving flags in my face, and there is a killer deal right now at Dell, and blah blah blah blah. My consumerism part tends to forget that there is always a good deal at Dell .....
Anyways. On with the black-black-black, and I shall report back -- stay tuned.
posted by dancestoblue at 12:52 AM on February 16, 2018
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As a school IT technician, the most reliable fix I ever found for image persistence on LCD screens is using a static screensaver image that sets every pixel on the panel fully white or fully black, depending on the particular panel. The idea is to remove all voltage from every single subpixel's LCD cell, but leave the backlight running to keep the panel warm. Choose whichever of fully white or fully black shows the ghost image more clearly.
If you arrange for that to happen on your smart TV, and disable power saving so that it doesn't switch itself off when inactive, I would expect your persistent ghost images to fade within a few tens of hours of screen power-up time.
posted by flabdablet at 6:33 AM on January 11, 2018 [2 favorites]