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Buyer's Guide: The Best Monitors 
Exposure for an hour then grey display - part two
Vincent Alzieu
Updated: August 10, 2009
Updated: August 10, 2009
New Tests
Our original test method, which used the very challenging maximum settings for both brightness and contrast, produced results that were less promising than we'd hoped. Even today, two weeks after our first overnight burning test, the traces of our test card are still visible on the screen.
So, we decided to update our test procedure, making it a little less challenging. We'll still keep an eye on this particular burn, to see what happens to it over time, but it might well require a lot of patience. In the meantime, it's back to square one, with the Cinema mode on the Samsung PS42C96HD plasma TV that we're using for these tests. This time round, the settings are little friendlier, with lower contrast and brightness.
New Settings, New Test Card, New Procedures
Our test card is also changing. To avoid burning over the same image a second time, we switched from our logos to a screenshot of the DigitalVersus home page. It's not shown full screen and has thin bands down each side.
The order in which we complete the tests has also changed. We'll do each one three times, once with an even grey screen, once with the screen turned off and once with a snowstorm. However, we'll start with the one hour test, followed by the overnight tests, and then the week-long test, if that seems relevant, so that the panel has enough time to recover from previous tests before we carry on.
Test 1: DigitalVersus homepage for one hour in Cinema mode, then an hour of a plain grey screen
As soon as the first hour was over, we went straight into the test room to see if Cinema mode had prevented the image burning onto the screen. Unfortunately not, though: burning is definitely there.
The traces remain one minute after we switched to an even grey screen
The burnt image can be seen more or less well depending on the monitor you're using. On a well-calibrated screen, it leaps out at you. On a less accurate screen (which we've also tested), you need to look harder, especially if isn't bright enough. If you click on the image, you can see a bigger version. Later on, we'll bring you the whole video showing how the trace disappears. Unfortunately, compressing the video leads to a loss of quality, which means that the burning seems to last less time. We're working on a better quality video that we'll publish as soon as it's ready.
What remained to be seen was how long these traces would remain visible, firstly against this grey background, and then over the following days with the TV turned off or showing a snowstorm. This should allow us to see whether some conditions are better than others at wiping these marks.
Let's be honest: we didn't really hold out that much hope that there would be no burning after just an hour, even using Cinema mode instead of turning all of the settings up to maximum. Some people have suggested that this less aggressive setting would lead to less severe burning that would disappear more quickly. We weren't convinced by this argument--even though we would have loved it to be true--which is why this new test is useful.
Earlier, when we just displayed our logos on the maximum settings, the image took thirty minutes to disappear.
Shock Result: Using our home page in Cinema mode, the image takes 45 minutes to disappear!
If you want to check yourself, you can download the complete video here.
We've had to re-encode to make it easier to download, and that makes it look like the burnt image only lasts 30 minutes. We're working on getting an original of the video available so you can see how long it really lasted.
We were very surprised by this result. How did it happen? Isn't it illogical?
For the time being, we have two possible hypotheses to explain why the image took so long to disappear.
1: The test card showing our home page is more of a challenge for a plasma screen than the one with our logos. The first version only had four logos, of which just two were on a white background. It's these white areas with lots of contrast that took the longest amount of time to wipe out. The areas with the least contrast disappear more quickly, but these white blocks took half an hour the first time. With this new image, which we're all familiar with as our homepage, includes dozens of contrasted areas. The links to every story are a white frame with dark text in the centre, and the same is true for the search box. Without realising what we were doing, we may have managed to produce a test card that was much, much harder for plasmas to deal with because of their problems with strong contrast.
2: Perhaps the panel itself suffered during our overnight test? This hypothesis seems less likely.
Either way, we can announce our first finding:
Our original test method, which used the very challenging maximum settings for both brightness and contrast, produced results that were less promising than we'd hoped. Even today, two weeks after our first overnight burning test, the traces of our test card are still visible on the screen.
So, we decided to update our test procedure, making it a little less challenging. We'll still keep an eye on this particular burn, to see what happens to it over time, but it might well require a lot of patience. In the meantime, it's back to square one, with the Cinema mode on the Samsung PS42C96HD plasma TV that we're using for these tests. This time round, the settings are little friendlier, with lower contrast and brightness.
New Settings, New Test Card, New Procedures
Our test card is also changing. To avoid burning over the same image a second time, we switched from our logos to a screenshot of the DigitalVersus home page. It's not shown full screen and has thin bands down each side.
The order in which we complete the tests has also changed. We'll do each one three times, once with an even grey screen, once with the screen turned off and once with a snowstorm. However, we'll start with the one hour test, followed by the overnight tests, and then the week-long test, if that seems relevant, so that the panel has enough time to recover from previous tests before we carry on.
Test 1: DigitalVersus homepage for one hour in Cinema mode, then an hour of a plain grey screen
As soon as the first hour was over, we went straight into the test room to see if Cinema mode had prevented the image burning onto the screen. Unfortunately not, though: burning is definitely there.
The image we showed for an hour in Cinema mode
The traces remain one minute after we switched to an even grey screen
The burnt image can be seen more or less well depending on the monitor you're using. On a well-calibrated screen, it leaps out at you. On a less accurate screen (which we've also tested), you need to look harder, especially if isn't bright enough. If you click on the image, you can see a bigger version. Later on, we'll bring you the whole video showing how the trace disappears. Unfortunately, compressing the video leads to a loss of quality, which means that the burning seems to last less time. We're working on a better quality video that we'll publish as soon as it's ready.
An enhanced version of the burnt panel, with the problems indicated
- The black white and grey borders down the edge of the page
- The Digita Versus logo
- Search box
- Banner ad showing our logo
- Headlines
- The laptop we're testing
- Our circle and star logo
- A photo from another test
- The RSS logo
- Thumbnail of a phone from the Product Face-Off
What remained to be seen was how long these traces would remain visible, firstly against this grey background, and then over the following days with the TV turned off or showing a snowstorm. This should allow us to see whether some conditions are better than others at wiping these marks.
Let's be honest: we didn't really hold out that much hope that there would be no burning after just an hour, even using Cinema mode instead of turning all of the settings up to maximum. Some people have suggested that this less aggressive setting would lead to less severe burning that would disappear more quickly. We weren't convinced by this argument--even though we would have loved it to be true--which is why this new test is useful.
Earlier, when we just displayed our logos on the maximum settings, the image took thirty minutes to disappear.
Shock Result: Using our home page in Cinema mode, the image takes 45 minutes to disappear!
If you want to check yourself, you can download the complete video here.
We've had to re-encode to make it easier to download, and that makes it look like the burnt image only lasts 30 minutes. We're working on getting an original of the video available so you can see how long it really lasted.
For the time being, we have two possible hypotheses to explain why the image took so long to disappear.
1: The test card showing our home page is more of a challenge for a plasma screen than the one with our logos. The first version only had four logos, of which just two were on a white background. It's these white areas with lots of contrast that took the longest amount of time to wipe out. The areas with the least contrast disappear more quickly, but these white blocks took half an hour the first time. With this new image, which we're all familiar with as our homepage, includes dozens of contrasted areas. The links to every story are a white frame with dark text in the centre, and the same is true for the search box. Without realising what we were doing, we may have managed to produce a test card that was much, much harder for plasmas to deal with because of their problems with strong contrast.
2: Perhaps the panel itself suffered during our overnight test? This hypothesis seems less likely.
Either way, we can announce our first finding:
- after showing our home page for an hour, the burning took 45 minutes to disappear when we returned to a plain grey background.
- will that be any faster with the screen turned off? Or showing a snowstorm? That's what we'll look at it in our next tests.
