Plasma TV help

Something Witty

Right so, my dad just got back from a long deployment in Iraq, and in a fit if madness to celebrate his newfound state of not being in Iraq anymore, he bought a plasma TV. It's a Hitachi, and while I question the spending of two thousand odd dollars I have to admit it's pretty fuckin' sweet. At least compared to our old TV.

Now I should make it clear that I know nothing about plasma TVs, or TVs in general. I managed to hook it up without making anything explode but that's really it.

Currently I'm really worried about burn in, it's looming over me like some type of terrible specter and I have some questions:

How long does it take something to burn in on average? I know it depends on brightness and whatnot, but I play alot of video games with HUDs that stay on the screen for the entire time. How long would it take for something to get permanently etched in to the screen?

Is there a way to make the games 'safer' for a plasma TV? I mean is there an option in most games that would turn off or fade out the HUD when it isn't being used? Games like Halo 3 or Oblivion at least, since those are the two I play the most ATM.

When the screen fades out after a while of inactivity does that eliminate the chance of residual images or does it just reduce it?

Also I don't know the deal with how I can hook up my 360 with the HDMI cable. I did it but nothing was showing up on the "HDMI1" channel so I know I'm missing something, I'm sure I could check the manual for this but I'm far too lazy.

Other than that how do I make the image look as sexy as humanly possible?

Model name is 50PD9800TA if that helps. Forgive my monumental newbishness.

Limp moose

I have a plasma and play halo 3 on it for 12 hour stretchs if not more. Between me and my 3 other roommates the halo is nonstop.

So far no burn in. The risk of burn in from huds is pretty small The bigger worry you have is if you pause a movie and then like forget about it for 4 or 5 hours.

I think that happened to me once and it took maybe an hour for the slight residual to fade away completely.

Granted I have an LG so it might be differnt with hitachi check your manual. And in the xbox settings you can set it for plasma tvs to make the chance of burn in less. Same with a wii.

TeeMan

Pretty sweet TV my man! I forked out for a 50" plas a few months and it was totally worth the investment.

Your specific model is fairly new as well, even if its recently discontinued. Burning in was only a problem with the first few generations of plasma TVs, and I think our TVs were made from the same generation; generation 8.

Unless you're going to leave it on the same still-frame for a few days, theres no chance of a burn in Improvements in technology made that quirk a thing of the past a few generations ago.


Crank some Gears man, it looks freakn AMAZING at 720p with a screen this big

Djeet

don't think your gaming is going to be much of an issue, unless you leaved it paused for long periods of time with the plasma screen on.

if you watch a lot of channels that have the news banner at the bottom (a la cnbc or foxnews or sports broadcasts) be sure to clock some time watching content that doesn't have that banner running on the bottom. extended periods of time with that banner running are almost as bad as a static image.

vonPoonBurGer

According to the user manual for your TV, it has a feature called Screen Saver. What it does is shift the entire picture by a pixel or two, both horizontally and vertically, at a set interval. This helps prevent static elements from burning in by moving them around slightly over time. Make sure this feature is enabled. If you do get a little bit of burn-in, it will usually go away on its own if given time. If it doesn't, you can also use the Screen Wipe feature of your TV, which displays a plain white image for 1-2 hours. That usually wipes out any faint burn-in. This page has some other good tips for avoiding burn-in.

Something Witty

Thanks for everything but I need to know how to hook up the 360 with the HDMI cable. So far we've hooked the HDMI cable directly to the HDMI1 port, but there was no sound or picture on that channel. We also hooked it up from the 360 to the Yamaha AV av sound reciever (HTR-6060) and yet again, nothing happened. How do I get it to work on the HDMI cable? I'm told I need to adjust something on my 360 but I don't see any options like that, I switched the HDTV settings to 1080i to see what that would accomplish, which was nothing. I'm not entirely sure what to do from here.

whuppins

I strongly recommend you read every post in this thread, wherein I learned about burn-in and other types of image retention in plasma screens. Seriously, there is some very important information in there if you're trying to get the most out of a new plasma TV.