Is there a burn in period required for the picture to get better on a Rear Proj TV? (1 Viewer)

[Derek B]

I just read a thread that a Pioneer SD-643HD5 had a long burn in period of approximately 35hrs. Does this mean that after 35hrs the picture started to look better becasue the tubes had some hours on them? Any insight would help.
Thanks,

 

[Steve Schaffer]

Most sets need a few weeks of use for everything to stabilize before it's advisable to have a professional calibration done. You can go ahead and adjust things using one of the popular calibration dvds like AVIA right away, just let the set warm up for an hour or so before starting. Expect things to change a bit from time to time over the first few weeks, so you may want to repeat your adjustments once in a while.

So the answer is that the picture doesn't necessarily look better after break in, just that the adjustments necessary to get the best picture tend to stabilize with accumulated hours.

If one is switching from an analog direct view to an rptv, it also takes a while to get used to the magnification of picture faults from less than perfect sources, like some mediocre cable systems and such.

Even with well mastered dvds, you'll find yourself suddenly seeing things like film grain and such that you never saw before--lots of people don't know that the grain on The Godfather is on the original film, and that their old 27" set just didn't have the resolution to show it.

Many directors and cinematographers play around with color saturation and tone for dramatic effect, and this is also somehow a lot more noticeable on that huge television than it was on the old analog set. You may not have noticed a bad dvd transfer before, but you will once you get that Pioneer up and running.

Don't mean to scare you, Derek, just want you to be ready for some of what you're going to be seeing.

What you'll also be seeing once you get that new set adjusted right and watch a really well done dvd is one of the closest things there is to a projected film image. You will be watching movies quite close to how they were intended to be seen in a theater, not just watching television.