A few days ago we talked about the interesting massive test that was being carried out by Rtings to determine the durability of current televisions with different panel technologies.
And precisely one of these technologies that most often captures the attention of users is OLED and its variantssuch as QD-OLED, which, as we have commented on other occasions, is not exempt from the famous problem of retention and, in extreme cases, image burn-in in certain areas of the screen.
It is a matter that manufacturers have very much in mind and for this reason they implement different measures to alleviate it automatically, especially when we leave still images on the screen, something that can sometimes be annoying but that in certain models can be modified.
However, many times we are the users who due to ignorance or carelessness we put obstacles so that these measures work or we do not pay the minimum necessary care to our televisions to prevent these markings from appearing on the screen in the long run.
“Retentions” is not the same as “burned” image
Before we begin, a distinction must be made between the Image “retentions” and pixel “burns”. They are not the same although sometimes we accidentally confuse them when writing or talking about the subject.
The difference is that the first ones are temporarythey can appear for a few minutes or even hours and then are corrected alone or thanks to the internal mechanisms of the TV to compensate for the differences in voltage of the pixels. They are the most common with normal use of the television.
The burnt, on the other hand, are definite defects that will not be able to be corrected and should not appear as long as we are a little careful. In stores you will surely see them since they spend hours and hours with the same video posted without taking any precautions and with vivid image modes.
what are the three most important measures or care What can I do to avoid burn-in on my new OLED TV?
In problematic sources, it is convenient to control the level of OLED light
The greater the lighting intensity of its pixels more likely to show sticking and burn-in on an OLED panel. Hence it is recommended reduce panel lighting in the problematic video sources.
What are these sources? Well, the main example is DTT. If we are going to use the OLED TV to watch conventional DTT channels with huge shiny logos and signs on all corners about the program on duty, the best thing to do is lower the panel lighting intensity.
How much? That already depends on each specific model of TV, since each one will generally mount a specific generation of panel with different light delivery capabilities. However, in general we can take the rule of selecting an OLED light value that is less than half of the total offered by TV in bright rooms or even less (between 30-40% if we want to be conservative) if the room does not have much lighting.
A low value will be enough to see news and entertainment type programs and then when we want to see a series or movie in all its splendor we can increase said value manually or the TV will do it by switching to another display mode if the content is HDR.
Leave protective measures on
Manufacturers are aware of burning problems, although they do not expressly tell us in their advertising. For this reason they implement several protection measures which should maintain the integrity of our pixels.
The most common are the pixel offset (they move the image a few pixels from time to time) and the logo detection and static images that in some brands is more advanced than others.
They also offer the option of making manual “cleaning” of the pixelsa function that we can perform approximately once a year in the event that retentions have appeared that do not disappear easily.
It should be checked that in the configuration of the TV we have these measures activatedsomething that usually comes like this from the factory, so that it is the TV that is in charge of correcting possible defects that may arise, but it does not hurt to make sure.
Do not disconnect the TV from the electrical current
We have already dealt with this point in depth in this article and is directly linked to the previous point, since in general it will be the television that will be in charge of automatically cleaning the panel when we turn it off after a few hours of use.
That is, when we press the button stand by in the remote control of the TV it will not turn off completely, but after having been in operation for a few hours (typically about four), will enter to carry out a cleaning or compensation cycle of the pixels of the panel.
For this reason It is not convenient to turn off the TV directly disconnect it from the electrical networkas we would do, for example, if we have it connected to a power strip with a switch to save light, since we would prevent these compensation cycles from being carried out and in the long run we will facilitate the appearance of retentions and possible burnouts.
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