Lengthy pause of DVD and TV burn in: what's best? (1 Viewer)

[Dan Lindley]

Dear all,

If you pause a DVD, is there a risk of TV screen burn in? If so, how best to prevent burn in: stop/pause to the blue screen; pause during a dim scene; or turn off TV altogether; or something else?

I have a WEGA, if that matters.

Many thanks, Dan

 

[Roger_C]

Does your DVD player have a screen saver? I've got some old Toshiba and after a few minutes a screen saver kicks on. A few minutes after that it shuts itself down.

 

[Scott-C]

How long do you typically pause your movie? If for a short time, I would think you're less likely to be a burn-in candidate. Have you thought about hitting the "Stop" button on the remote to put the DVD into a "Resume" type of mode?

When I want to interrupt a movie, I have my Pronto set up with a macro to actually stop the movie (using the "Stop" command). When I want to resume, the macro engages the "Play" button to resume the movie. This works fine since one press of the "Stop" button engages the "Resume" mode of my DV-37. This way I don't have to worry at all about burn-in, since I get a black screen (and eventually a screensaver) when I put the DVD player in "Resume" mode.

Just my $0.02.

 

[Dan Lindley]

Hi Roger and Scott,

Roger: I do not have a screen saver on my Pioneer -- unless the blue screen on pause is a screen saver. In which case, I'd still be interested in knowing if the blue screen is designed to prevent burn in (as opposed to red, etc).

Scott: my situation is that I have two small kids, and hence have no idea how long I have to pause for. It could be for a minute, or an hour or more. STOP gives me the blue screen mentioned above; PAUSE gives me whatever is up, and maybe a dark screen is better than turning it off (to prevent possible turn off/on within minutes).

In no case does stop or pause give me blank and dark screen.

I'm calibrated w/Avia, so I don't have the thing on ultra-harsh...

I'm not even sure burn in is even a question w/modern TVs; some things I read about computer monitors say that it is largely a thing of the past....Not sure I believe it tho...

Dan

 

[Andrew Pratt]

most DVD players I've played with will remember where they were if you power off your DVD player while its still playing (or press stop once) to get back to where you were simply press play (not power) and it should return you to your last point. On my system I simply added a function to select a blank input on the TV when I press pause...I also have one that doesnt' switch inputs in case I really do want to pause it but that has another label

 

[Ted Lee]

i'm guessing here, but if the entire screen goes blue during pause, then there should be no burn-in, correct?

i mean, doesn't burn-in occur when there are two "opposing" colors?

 

[Larry B]

Dan:

I should preface my remarks by stating for the record that I know less about TVs than probably everyone on this forum.

I have a Toshiba and I worry about the same thing as you do. So, when I pause for more than a few moments, I switch the TV input to cable, and let that play until I'm ready to resume watching the movie.

This may not be the highest tech solution, but it works.

Larry

 

[DaveF]

Is your WEGA a projection or direct-view TV?
If it's a standard direct-view TV, then burn-in shouldn't be an issue. Has anyone seen a regular tube TV suffer burn-in in the past decade? I've got an ancient 27" TV, gone through three owners over ten years, and has suffered TV, DVDs, VCRs, and video games, paused, etc. It shows no burn-in. If that can survive, I'd expect an calibrated WEGA to be just fine.
Of course, if you're really concerned and/or have a projection TV, you could buy a new DVD player that has a screen-saver type pause mode My $150 Toshiba has got it, so they're pretty common.

 

[Stephen Tu]

On a direct-view, it's not going to matter. On a projection set, pausing for 10-15 minutes won't do anything either. It's only a problem if you are pausing for hours at a time, and in that case you are wasting electricity and should just be turning off the TV anyway.

On a projection set, leaving a blue screen up for hours at a time isn't that good an idea since the blue gun would be wearing more than the red/green guns, meaning over a long period of time the colors would get imbalanced. The Pioneer DVD I used to have gave options on what color to use for the blank screen (I set it to black), and I think had a screen saver option; hunt around in the player setup menu (had to stop the DVD to access this on older Pioneers, perhaps current ones as well).

 

[Guy Kuo]

I agree with Stephen. An all blue screen is NOT a great idea for CRT RPTV's and FPTV's. The blue gun is already the one which will wear down the fastest on those sets. Prolonged all blue screen display will simply wear it down even faster, albeit in a uniform fashion so you don't notice the harm until it is too late.