Pixel Scrubber (Plasma Burn-in)

Penguin_Otaku

My job requires me to create digital signage for different clients that displays various information. The problem with this is that largely the layout is static with some elements rotating based on need, but others like the clock and weather sit there for quite some time without moving. Oh yea, there's a ticker too.

Some clients have different display and I've never really heard of burn in on LCDs so I'm not all too concerned, but this most recent client uses a plasma. They do have the option of shutting the signage off over night, so that would help. But with all of that stuff there'd be some burn in over time I'm sure.

So I came up with a DVD that is in essence a "pixel scrubber" (boss coined the term, not me.) How well do these things work? The plasma is an older model so I don' think it has an auto-correct thing that I've heard newer models heard. (Since we sold them the signage, I thought why not sell them a new LCD too.)

But whatever the situation, will this work? Can I burn an image of this (.mov or something?) and have it as a scheduled task to run every week or something?

Esh

Penguin_Otaku wrote: »

My job requires me to create digital signage for different clients that displays various information. The problem with this is that largely the layout is static with some elements rotating based on need, but others like the clock and weather sit there for quite some time without moving. Oh yea, there's a ticker too.

Some clients have different display and I've never really heard of burn in on LCDs so I'm not all too concerned, but this most recent client uses a plasma. They do have the option of shutting the signage off over night, so that would help. But with all of that stuff there'd be some burn in over time I'm sure.

So I came up with a DVD that is in essence a "pixel scrubber" (boss coined the term, not me.) How well do these things work? The plasma is an older model so I don' think it has an auto-correct thing that I've heard newer models heard. (Since we sold them the signage, I thought why not sell them a new LCD too.)

But whatever the situation, will this work? Can I burn an image of this (.mov or something?) and have it as a scheduled task to run every week or something?

EDIT: Disregard my bad advice!

Improvolone

How often does the sign change? If its displaying the same stuff for years, which many touring museum exhibits have, it really doesn't matter. The burn in overlaps with the video so well its just a cost you eat.

I'll happily be wrong, but I'm thinking off is just as good as having the pixel show something else.

Scrublet

Esh wrote: »

Penguin_Otaku wrote: »

My job requires me to create digital signage for different clients that displays various information. The problem with this is that largely the layout is static with some elements rotating based on need, but others like the clock and weather sit there for quite some time without moving. Oh yea, there's a ticker too.

Some clients have different display and I've never really heard of burn in on LCDs so I'm not all too concerned, but this most recent client uses a plasma. They do have the option of shutting the signage off over night, so that would help. But with all of that stuff there'd be some burn in over time I'm sure.

So I came up with a DVD that is in essence a "pixel scrubber" (boss coined the term, not me.) How well do these things work? The plasma is an older model so I don' think it has an auto-correct thing that I've heard newer models heard. (Since we sold them the signage, I thought why not sell them a new LCD too.)

But whatever the situation, will this work? Can I burn an image of this (.mov or something?) and have it as a scheduled task to run every week or something?

Check the AVS forums. These already exist. They're "burn in" DVDs, but they should do the same trick.

God I'm glad I saw this, NO, do not do that. Burn-in DVDs are DVDs made to run at abnormal settings on a plasma to age the pixels quickly and evenly during their most vulnerable phase. You do this only during the first 100-150 hours of the TV's life, after which point it is more difficult to damage the phosphors.

The pixel scrubber thing is something that removes IMAGE RETENTION, which is the temporary ghost of a previous image that appears as the phosphors heat up. Burn-in is when image retention is bad enough that it becomes permanent, at which point no pixel scrubber thing on the planet is going to help you.

What you're suggesting Penguin will work, but if these are older plasmas it may not matter and I would just go ahead and schedule that to run daily. Also, thinking more on it, if you can lower the brightness of the static elements that would be a good thing. For an example of this, fire up PixelJunk Monsters on the PS3. The game maintains a banner at the bottom of the screen with their logo in the center (which is a bright white box with some shit in it). The game has an image retention setting that as far as I can tell does nothing except reduce that box's brightness by about 33-50%. That's because if the hot white box isn't displayed the dimmer box is much less likely to burn-in.

illig

what you basically need is "snow"... like turning a TV onto an analog channel that's not transmitting. the alternating black/white/gray pixels should clean up the image overnight.

Esh

Scrublet wrote: »

Esh wrote: »

Penguin_Otaku wrote: »

My job requires me to create digital signage for different clients that displays various information. The problem with this is that largely the layout is static with some elements rotating based on need, but others like the clock and weather sit there for quite some time without moving. Oh yea, there's a ticker too.

Some clients have different display and I've never really heard of burn in on LCDs so I'm not all too concerned, but this most recent client uses a plasma. They do have the option of shutting the signage off over night, so that would help. But with all of that stuff there'd be some burn in over time I'm sure.

So I came up with a DVD that is in essence a "pixel scrubber" (boss coined the term, not me.) How well do these things work? The plasma is an older model so I don' think it has an auto-correct thing that I've heard newer models heard. (Since we sold them the signage, I thought why not sell them a new LCD too.)

But whatever the situation, will this work? Can I burn an image of this (.mov or something?) and have it as a scheduled task to run every week or something?

Check the AVS forums. These already exist. They're "burn in" DVDs, but they should do the same trick.

God I'm glad I saw this, NO, do not do that. Burn-in DVDs are DVDs made to run at abnormal settings on a plasma to age the pixels quickly and evenly during their most vulnerable phase. You do this only during the first 100-150 hours of the TV's life, after which point it is more difficult to damage the phosphors.

The pixel scrubber thing is something that removes IMAGE RETENTION, which is the temporary ghost of a previous image that appears as the phosphors heat up. Burn-in is when image retention is bad enough that it becomes permanent, at which point no pixel scrubber thing on the planet is going to help you.

What you're suggesting Penguin will work, but if these are older plasmas it may not matter and I would just go ahead and schedule that to run daily. Also, thinking more on it, if you can lower the brightness of the static elements that would be a good thing. For an example of this, fire up PixelJunk Monsters on the PS3. The game maintains a banner at the bottom of the screen with their logo in the center (which is a bright white box with some shit in it). The game has an image retention setting that as far as I can tell does nothing except reduce that box's brightness by about 33-50%. That's because if the hot white box isn't displayed the dimmer box is much less likely to burn-in.

Whoop. My bad.

EggyToast

So, the pixel scrubber won't really work if every day you're replaying exactly the same image. I had a big ol' TV that I played Halo 2 on pretty heavily for a while, even though I only played at max 2 hours a day (and not every day) and regularly watched Netflix movies. I even left the tv on (on mute) overnight occasionally.

Still got burn-in on the radar, health, etc.

In your case, you probably want the banner background to be relatively dark, and you want to make sure the client is aware of this problem so they don't come to you in a year and say "you wrecked our TV." In general you just want to keep a good rotation on the TV, and anything that's static you want to be relatively dark. And you might want to program it to move. Say the clock is always in the top left. Perhaps shift it 5 pixels each time the image changes, or every 5 minutes.