OLED TV with 4:3 content (burn-in question)

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TheSwartz
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OLED TV with 4:3 content (burn-in question)

Post by TheSwartz »

Does anyone here have any information, or experience, with displaying non-16:9 content and it's risk for burn in, or image retention, on OLED TVs?

i.e. retro-gaming with 4:3 (or similar) aspect ratios, thus having the requisite black bars on either side for often hours at a time.

Since the black borders are not emitting, then I would think I shouldn't need to worry. However, of course I did find one post in an AV forum where a user claims they had problems on a TV that primarily was used to watch old, 4:3 TV shows...

Any thoughts? Thanks!
I probably spend more time collecting games and tinkering with my consoles than actually playing them...
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Konsolkongen
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Re: OLED TV with 4:3 content (burn-in question)

Post by Konsolkongen »

I often play 4:3 games on my LG C8. Don’t worry about it. There is absolutely no sign of burn in on mine.
If you ONLY play 4:3 games every day for 8 hours straight then it may be another story, but as long as you vary your viewing content and allow the TV to perform compensation cycles every night (happens automatically in standby) then you’re fine.
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Re: OLED TV with 4:3 content (burn-in question)

Post by Fudoh »

The active pixels will always be aging faster than those in the black areas. Same thing with Cinemascope movies. But overall and with modern OLEDs nothing you should really worry about. The difference, even after years will be very minimal.
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Re: OLED TV with 4:3 content (burn-in question)

Post by Taiyaki »

Konsolkongen How many years has it been?

I've seen what they do and it's a real cinemaphile's dream come true, so I really want to jump into OLED but I'm very weary because I remember everyone saying that because of how advanced the technology had gotten there was no need to worry about burn in or image retention with the very last plasma models that were made. Panasonic models such as the VT-50, VT-60 and the last model (forget what it was called as I never had one). While it was significantly better than my previous ones, that just wasn't true. After a few years my last two Panasonic plasmas both had severe image retention and burn in, you could see huds and other things very much burned in. I wasn't even using that high brightness, and I was pretty careful overall.

Maybe we're getting there as the technology is getting better fast, but for now I'm still not convinced that for heavy gamers who play 5+ hours a day there wouldn't be uneven aging or burn in with OLED.
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Konsolkongen
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Re: OLED TV with 4:3 content (burn-in question)

Post by Konsolkongen »

Two years now. I’ve owned plasmas years ago. The Panny ST50 and Samsung E6500 were the last ones I owned. They were MUCH more receptacle to image retention and burn-in than OLED. There is a night and day difference. I worried a lot when I got my fist OLED, the C7 in 2017, but now I don’t ever think about it. I run SDR content at OLED Light 65 which I think is plenty bright for my use.
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Re: OLED TV with 4:3 content (burn-in question)

Post by Taiyaki »

That's great to know. Thanks for sharing.
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bonzo.bits
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Re: OLED TV with 4:3 content (burn-in question)

Post by bonzo.bits »

I had a VT60 and got IR within the first few weeks. Even running scrolling bar it took at least 50 hours to reduce (I ran scrolling bar A LOT lol).

2018 Panasonic OLED has had no problems so far. But as of six months ago I stopped using it for 4:3 retro stuff due to the uneven aging. It’s not noticeable now but I decided I wanted to remove the chance of it down the track. Dead pixels are another issue though, I have two single dead pixels and two clusters of two dead pixels. They aren’t visible from regular viewing distance but who knows how the problem may progress over time. A friend with the same model also has some dead pixels.

EDIT: aren’t visible
Last edited by bonzo.bits on Sun Sep 13, 2020 10:41 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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TheSwartz
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Re: OLED TV with 4:3 content (burn-in question)

Post by TheSwartz »

Thanks, I do think the anxiety of burn-in is more than the reality. So, it's nice to hear positive experiences for this scenario :) One good thing for my scenario is that I do mix things up a lot.
I probably spend more time collecting games and tinkering with my consoles than actually playing them...
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Re: OLED TV with 4:3 content (burn-in question)

Post by bobrocks95 »

I'm at about year 1 on my B9, playing plenty of 4:3 content through the OSSC, and even having a computer hooked up for a good while with static content. With the ABL, pixel shifting, and automatic refreshing the panel does when off, I don't really see that I have a lot to worry about. Again though, I'm varying my content quite a lot and don't play any particular games super regularly other than maybe a hundred or two hours of Halo on it (with varying huds).
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Re: OLED TV with 4:3 content (burn-in question)

Post by Galgomite »

I have never had anything resembling a permanent ir problem on a plasma or OLED. However, I rarely get to play anything longer than 30mins, and any time I see a used OLED for sale, it seems to have minor burn-in. What I’d say is this: if you’re going to wind up with burn-in from the way you play games, you will have plenty of warning in the form of (completely harmless) image retention. If it starts to appear on full screens of white or dark grey and lasts longer than 10 minutes, you’ll know what will eventually happen if you keep playing as you’re playing.
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Re: OLED TV with 4:3 content (burn-in question)

Post by headlesshobbs »

Bahn Yuki mentioned his oled was showing signs of the 4:3 boarder affecting his panel's viewing area and he made the decision to move all his stuff back on crt's and led panels.

Oled clearly isn't perfect tech where we want it in this regard.
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Re: OLED TV with 4:3 content (burn-in question)

Post by SuperSpongo »

I have an LG C8 and I thought I'd share my findings as well: I definitely have more banding and two round burn in spots that weren't noticable when I bought the TV. There are videos on Youtube slowly raising RGB levels from black to white. Test this if you dare, but you may see some things that you cannot unsee afterwards :lol:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eIJxh9UGyak
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Konsolkongen
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Re: OLED TV with 4:3 content (burn-in question)

Post by Konsolkongen »

What games did you play that caused these burn in spots?
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Re: OLED TV with 4:3 content (burn-in question)

Post by SuperSpongo »

I can't say for sure unfortunately. I don't even know if they are from any games at all, maybe they are caused by something in the menu screens. One of the spots is outside of the 4:3 area too. But in principle it applies to the threads question of course.
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Konsolkongen
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Re: OLED TV with 4:3 content (burn-in question)

Post by Konsolkongen »

No not really. If this was burn-in you should be able to tell pretty accurately what it was from. This is a dark spot you only see on near black grays, right? This sounds a lot like a panel uniformity issue on your TV. This happens on OLEDs unfortunately and vary a lot between panel to panel, but I'm willing to bet that they have been there from day one and you just didn't notice them until recently.
Never heard of one appearing after hours of use, and in my own experience these uniformity issues actually lessen a bit after some use, as do the vertical bars. This was true of my C7 and my C8, it's less noticeable after a few thousand hours of use.
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Re: OLED TV with 4:3 content (burn-in question)

Post by Galgomite »

Konsolkongen is most likely correct-- uniformity issues similar to "dirty screen effect", especially in dark greys, is part of the tech and present to some extent on both of my oled panels.
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Re: OLED TV with 4:3 content (burn-in question)

Post by ASDR »

I've heard that the big 'pixel refresh' cycle the LG OLEDs do every 2000h can significantly affect uniformity like the near-black vertical bars and apparently there have been firmware bugs where you can see a burned-in rectangle after it has run. Since it would likely take a year or two for this to happen the first time it might be caused by that.
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Konsolkongen
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Re: OLED TV with 4:3 content (burn-in question)

Post by Konsolkongen »

That rectangle was a 2017 only issue I'm pretty sure, and it wasn't burn-in, it was correctable by a service technician.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nX0AXzWm2cI

My C8 just completed its second forced long compensation cycle with no increase in dirty screen effect. I did find on my C7 that manually triggering these compensations too often can indeed make the uniformity worse like you say. I did this as I was super worried about burn in and wanted to prevent it at all costs, but that was a stupid idea as doing it too much can actually do some harm.
I have only used this once on my C8 where only the top black bar (strangely enough) from a movie was visible the next day and it cleared it up immediately. It would probably have cleared up over night during the next automatic compensation cycle. Otherwise I have never felt the need to use this feature.
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Re: OLED TV with 4:3 content (burn-in question)

Post by ASDR »

Ok thanks, I didn't mean to make things sound worse than they are. Still, all this mess with dead pixels, burn-in, uncertain panel lifetime, uniformity, software updates you can't downgrade from that add ads or might even change things like OSSC compatibility (not necessarily even on this particular TV), changes in uniformity due to compensation cycles, etc. make we really wary on spending real money on these displays. I think I'd always just buy like a cheap B-series OLED from 2 years ago when they're on sale for ~1000EUR. I would be perfectly willing to spend more on a flagship 65" or so, but I'd have zero confidence that 3-12 months after purchase something isn't going to happen to the panel that makes me really regret spending so much.
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Re: OLED TV with 4:3 content (burn-in question)

Post by Guspaz »

QD-OLED displays will be on the market in 2021, and are supposed to have significantly extended subpixel lifespans (simpler design, a lot less layers, no colour filters and stacked so less light is blocked by the TFT so they don't need to drive nearly as much voltage through them, etc). Hopefully it'll be an improvement. I know Samsung and TCL have both announced upcoming QD-OLED displays. However, LG has done well for gaming of late, pushing latencies lower and adding G-Sync support, so it'll be unfortunate if none of the QD-OLED displays are as well optimized for gaming.
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Re: OLED TV with 4:3 content (burn-in question)

Post by Konsolkongen »

ASDR wrote:Ok thanks, I didn't mean to make things sound worse than they are. Still, all this mess with dead pixels, burn-in, uncertain panel lifetime, uniformity, software updates you can't downgrade from that add ads or might even change things like OSSC compatibility (not necessarily even on this particular TV), changes in uniformity due to compensation cycles, etc. make we really wary on spending real money on these displays. I think I'd always just buy like a cheap B-series OLED from 2 years ago when they're on sale for ~1000EUR. I would be perfectly willing to spend more on a flagship 65" or so, but I'd have zero confidence that 3-12 months after purchase something isn't going to happen to the panel that makes me really regret spending so much.
No worries I understand your concern. Have there been firmware updates that affected OSSC compatibility? I don't think I've noticed any.
As for the ads I find them incredibly annoying too. Consider adding a Pi-hole to your network (for multiple reasons really) it can remove the ads from the TV menus.
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Re: OLED TV with 4:3 content (burn-in question)

Post by bigbadboaz »

I would be wary of expecting QD-OLED to be on schedule, or ready for prime time in even the first few years of its being on the market. Having been through several technology transitions now, as well as having seen multiple "next big things" come and go while never actually making it to market, it's clear that display technologies are one thing you should NEVER count on being even close to on time.

Piggybacking on Konsolkongen's information, I also used a plasma primarily when they were widely available (and the technology of that time that everybody was so paranoid about burn-in on), and with intelligent use had ZERO burn-in issues. I passed the panel on to a friend looking as good as Day One when it was six years old, and he's running it to this day with no complaints. So if Konsolkongen suggest that OLED is better in this regard..

I'd personally buy a current LG OLED with no worries, planning not to do anything egregiously stupid with it. And that's actually exactly what I'm going to do in another year or two.
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ASDR
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Re: OLED TV with 4:3 content (burn-in question)

Post by ASDR »

Konsolkongen wrote: Have there been firmware updates that affected OSSC compatibility? I don't think I've noticed any.
Like I said, maybe not even for the LG OLEDs in particular, but over the years I've read multiple instances of firmware updates with no easy possibility of rollback reducing compatibility, including with certain OSSC modes.
Konsolkongen wrote: As for the ads I find them incredibly annoying too. Consider adding a Pi-hole to your network (for multiple reasons really) it can remove the ads from the TV menus.
I don't think I'd connect the TV to the network at all. I hate the idea of 'Smart' TVs with Netflix buttons on the remote. I just want a display.
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Re: OLED TV with 4:3 content (burn-in question)

Post by thebigcheese »

While I haven't done a lot of retro gaming, I have put at least 1000 hours on my LG C9, many of which were using a PC (in fact over 600 hours were playing Monster Hunter World on this TV) and it just sitting there on the desktop (for which I have a black background and I use dark mode) and I still haven't seen any signs of burn in. If you check out the HDTV Test channel on YouTube, you can see their burn in findings. There really are plenty of mitigations in place to the point where it's basically a non-issue on the LG TVs, at least.
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Re: OLED TV with 4:3 content (burn-in question)

Post by Josh128 »

4 Plasmas in my house. Oldest is a 2013 model PN51F4500AFXZA bedroom TV, used for games and TV, for the first 5 years or so, mostly TV the last couple years. Second is a 2014 PN51F5300, mostly TV use.

Third is a 2014 PN51F4500BFXZA, this is my sons set-- primarily for PC and gaming-- this one is the true test as my son stays on that son of a bitch HOURS everyday. Started with Xbox 360 and GC and those are still connected, but mostly (like 99.999%) PC now. He does lots of video editing, internet, YT, and has played THOUSANDS of hours of Terraria, Minecraft, Fortnite, Skyrim, Dark Souls Series, Sekiro, Borderlands 2 and 3, Fallout 4, Arc Survival Evolved and many others. He is aware of leaving things like taskbar on screen and hides it. I need to check the hours on it but its A LOT. This thing still has a beautiful picture with only slight hints of burn in visible only on full on white screens. Its so minimal the average person would never notice it, and even AV assholes like myself and many on this forum would be very impressed by the lack of it.

Lastly, my daughter has a 2013 PN43F4500AFXZA, she does mostly Roblox and Youtube. No burn in to speak of despite the fact shes fairly careless with it, but it doesnt have near the hours my sons does.

Its very true that all plasmas (and Im sure by the same token, OLEDs) are not created equal. I had a Panny TC-P50-X60 for my son and it was MUCH more susceptible to IR and burn in than the late model Sammys. We got rid of it for a Sammy after being so impressed with the intial two that Ive bought and never looked back.
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Re: OLED TV with 4:3 content (burn-in question)

Post by Taiyaki »

With very promising new oled tv's coming out later shortly from Sony, I felt might be a good time to revive this thread.

Has anyone experienced burn in with Sony OLED tv's made over the last few years? I know this kind of question comes up a lot on av forums, but I'm mostly interested in hearing from games on this subject.
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Re: OLED TV with 4:3 content (burn-in question)

Post by tacoguy64 »

As a recent owner of a LG CX49, i can say that so far in all my carelessness, i have not noticed any burn in. By carelessness i mean using this as a PC monitor, and also when i hook up 4:3 hdmi modded systems. Granted, I payed the extra $300 for a 5 year warranty, which does cover burn in.
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