Is It Safe To Game On A Plasma TV?

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kage

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I have the Panasonic TC-P46G15 plasma tv that I bought a few months ago and I planning to buy an Xbox 360 to play the games that are not on the PC and I would like to know if it's safe to play Xbox 360 games on my plasma tv?
 
Some xbox 360 games, like Halo 2 and 3, have 'safe areas,' an option to make sure nothing stays in one place of the screen every time.

I don't know about newer plasmas and burn in, but unless if you are gaming for hours on end (per 2-3 days), it should be all right.
 
I'm using a TH-42PZ80B Panny plasma for PC gaming and it hasnt got any burn in with over 1.5 years abuse and some seriously long gaming sessions.
It also gets plenty of TV and movie use which is sensible to even the wear patterns.
Go for it !

You may notice what looks like very faint burn in after a long session but it is temporary and goes away.
All modern plasmas do this, it is called image retention.

I've seen many people claim that plasma burn in is a thing of the past.
Simply by the nature of its design this cannot be true, same for LCDs and CRTs...
However, modern plasmas are tough beasties with a display half life way exceeding that of other screen types.
 
I have the G10, you have the exact same panel as I do, but in a different frame/chassis. One of the recommended break in procedure's I took from AVSforums is to run the TV at a balanced but reduced contrast/brightness setting for the first month, or so many hours, which ever comes first. You can opt to do an accelerated break in using a series of images you can obtain from the thread on AVSforums if you like, but I didn't feel like doing that.

For the first month or so, I could still see some shadowing on the screen when I shut the box off, but after that month, I stopped seeing it, and I readjusted the settings for better viewing during daylight and more accurate picture representations.

No more shadowing. You about have to be intentionally negligent to ruin the new generation of plasmas, but the TV itself has a pixel shifting anti-image retention that kicks on automatically if the screen stays still for too long, and you can run the "image wipe" after you are done gaming which runs a white bar across the screen and always removed any shadowing I saw.

I took it easy on the TV during break-in, but I've rocked some marathon ODST (5-6 hours) sessions on it lately and it's fine. Awesome TV, best electronic purchase I ever made.
 
I've had my Samsung 50" plasma for 2 1/2 years. Been gaming on it for at least 2 with no issues.
 
65 inch Panasonic plasma here. I have no issues with gaming on it for 5 hours a day.
 
I haven't had issues with gaming, but I have a Samsung Plasma that gets a minor (but noticeable) amount of burn-in from watching 4:3 television. Most of my daughter's shows are broadcast in 4:3, so the side bars burn in a bit and you can notice a color change where the lines were. Nothing major, but a little annoying. I hear you can fix any burn in though if you leave a non-static image playing for a few hours (but it could be all lies!)
 
Main thing to avoid is to play with high brightness/contrast settings for about the first month. Use about a 100 hour break in period where you are watching widescreen (all pixels lit) exclusively at moderate to low brightness/contrast....and then you'll be good to go. No problems for me after four years of use.

Useful white paper on burn-in and break-in period:

http://www.dynamicdigital.ca/documents/Plasma Facts and Myths.pdf
 
50" samsung plasma here, bought almost exactly 1 year ago. I love it. Game on it, watch movies with the solid borders for long periods of time, it's fine. if you watch something with letterbox things on the side, it will stay burnt into the screen for like 10 minutes after you turn it off but it's not terribly noticible and goes away completely after the 10 mins or so. It did freak me out though after I had just gotten the TV and played megaman 9 which has the side bars and stuff in the same spot, played that for hours, and then it was burned it and i was scared. Went away shortly afterwards tho, no problem, beautiful screen.

Oh, and I know someone who has the LCD version of my tv, it's really similar in size and time it was released and stuff, and I like the way plasma looks a lot better.
 
I've been gaming on my Panasonic plasma for the last 3 years or so. I followed the 100 hour burn-in procedure on AVSforums before I did any gaming on it and haven't had an issue.

I game on it all of the time. The first bit of gaming I did with it was a 10 hour co-op session of Halo3 on release. I did about 7 hours of Uncharted 2 yesterday. I've not even seen a hint of image retention since the first week or two of usage (even then it was gone within 30 seconds of changing the channel). Plasmas seem to get better with age.
 
I have been gaming on my 42PZ85U Pany since I pulled it out of the box last year, no breakin stuff or anything like that and I also have my computer hooked up to it as a second monitor, no problems at all. It is just a TV with to many myths floating around.
 
I have a Panasonic 42 and I see burn in problems with old dvd's and things like Street Fighter 4 where the health bars and constantly there. I just run the gray screen that comes on when the tv sits too long and it clears it all up in no time. Don't worry about it at all.
 
I have been using my Sammy 42" for a couple of years and I dont have any issues. I have left stuff paused on the screen for a little bit with no issues at all. Most if not all of the new plasmas dont really have that problem anymore, most people selling TV's will still use it to sway you from them to an LCD. Also they usually have some kind of pixel shift tech built into them that you can set up. Games look kick ass on plasmas due to high CR they have. You should be fine just dont pause for 2 days with the TV on and be smart about it and you will enjoy lag free gaming for many years on the set.
 
Plasmas to not burn in because they are on a PC or because they are used for console gaming. The thing that causes burn in is static images. My friend games both PC and console for several hours and because he doesnt pause the game and leave the tv on, there is not static display of a specific image and thus encounters no burn in issues.
 
Don't worry about it. I use my plasma for TV, gaming, and web surfing. You will get image retention on images that are static. Meaning your HUD on whatever game your playing will stay for a bit but will disappear after a minute or so.
 
I think the newer technology is better....alot of people complained bitterly about burn-in on the AVS forums but that was some years ago. I think the best thing to do is just watch your brightness levels and don't tune it to retina burning levels, especially when the TV is new.
 
I been playing games on a plasma for the last 6 years and only now am I starting to see some image retention when turning it off, that fades tho and is perfect next time I fire it up.
 
I game on my plasma all the time, bright whites are what will stay on the screen when you are done but it hasn't caused any damage and they go away once you start watching something else.

If you need to walk away from t he game just turn the TV off.
 
I haven't had any issues with my 42" Panasonic Viera.
and I never did any "burn-in" or "break-in" crap with it.

hooked it up and away I went.

There is some image retention, but it's not at all noticeable unless I leave the TV on with no video source, I can just slightly see the images, but once I put it back on to the cable, or movie, or any other source, you don't see it.

granted, I see to have ADD when it comes to gaming though, so no long sessions.
 
I worked at a bar as a side job, the owners like buying plama TVs. Have not seen one last more than 6 months.
 
Kanaric said:
I worked at a bar as a side job, the owners like buying plama TVs. Have not seen one last more than 6 months.
Click to expand...

That's a totally different scenario, I highly doubt anyone would game for the amount of hours straight a bar tv is left on for.
 
If you break in the TV properly and don't put the brightness at near 100% you should be able to run any static image without problems. I don't think burn in is the biggest issue with plasmas.....I have both plasma and lcd HDTVs and the problem with plasmas is glare because the screen is glass. And anti glare coating helps some but if you have a bright room with stuff that reflects (like anything white) you'll see it on the screen. LCDs do a much better job with glare. With LCDs the biggest problem compared to plasmas is viewing angle.
 
michaLcoughliN said:
New Plasmas have built in pixel rendering so there is no longer a "burn in image" scare anymore.
Click to expand...

That means nothing, all displays render pixels given that it is the basic unit of graphical composition for all digital displays.
 
Some plasmas (all by now?) do pixel shifting which you cannot see but it moves the image around by one pixel to shift the image and keep it from having that problem.

The only thing that would really burn in from a game would be the HUD. Everything else is changing as you move around.

I have not seen a plasma used as a TV and a game that was not normally taken care of have any image burned into it in such a long time.
 
Bought a Panny P50S1 about two months ago. WIth two kids, a PS3 and a Wii, it gets a LOT of game time. We tried to take it easy for the first week or two, but not so much afterwards. No retention problems at all.
 
Leb_CRX said:
panni 50pz800U here

no burn in, and I play 3-4 hours at a time
Click to expand...

boy am I eating the above words

so I played about 8-10 hours of forza3 consecutive, turning off the TV in between (for breaks), start it the next day, and bam, the RPM gauge is nice and burned in the bottom right and the lap times on the top right of the screen for forza3

I ran the plasma burn in DVD for 12 hours, and it's gone...now it's my fault, I should of exercised proper care, I honestly just lost track of time and have quite a bit of time on my plasma

having said that, just a heads up, cycle the TV after 5 hours for a bit...it really cannot hurt
 
Just chiming in, burn-in was just as possible on CRTs as it is on Plasmas but you almost never see it happen even on PC monitors without some serious abuse.
 
Leb_CRX said:
I ran the plasma burn in DVD for 12 hours, and it's gone...now it's my fault, I should of exercised proper care, I honestly just lost track of time and have quite a bit of time on my plasma
Click to expand...

That's image retention, not burn-in.

Burn-in is permanent...

I got a 42S1 and have 400+ hours on it... I've seen some image retention but it goes away within a couple minutes. Usually from Windows 7 desktop, or different images left static... but the Plasma has a feature.. if nothing has changed on the screen it turns off after 15 minutes... Just in-case you forget to turn it off.
 
Nenu said:
Point not valid without proof.
Making up random reasons isnt acceptable.
Click to expand...

Do your research on new plasmas. Kthnx. its called. Google. It shouldn't be hard to find if you put effort into it rather then trying to be a smart ass ona forum.
So go search away. and you will find

here iI'll even quote

""The good news is that for the past couple of years quality manufacturers have been steadily working on improving plasma technology resistance to "burn in" with great success. One technique used is motion adaptive anti burn in technology, which focuses on moving the on-screen image ever so slightly. The goal is to avoid detection by the human eye, but still move the image enough to cause color changes in the pixels. A second improvement by some manufacturers is improvement in the phosphor gas itself in order to make it more resistant. The green phosphor is the most important in this process. This is also a key element in increasing phosphor and screen lifespan to CRT levels.""
 
That doesn't mean newer plasmas do not have burn-in, merely that they are far more resistant to burn-in the the older models. Technically all current screen technologies have burn-in (LCD, CRT, Plasma) but at this point they all take a very long time for it to actually burn-in.
 
Uberbob102000 said:
That doesn't mean newer plasmas do not have burn-in, merely that they are far more resistant to burn-in the the older models. Technically all current screen technologies have burn-in (LCD, CRT, Plasma) but at this point they all take a very long time for it to actually burn-in.
Click to expand...

Burn in is a thing of the past as we know it. Old plasmas would get burn in from games (and news tickers) within hours (sometimes less than an hour on some models), not image retention, but burn in.

Then they got to the point where you could "break in" a plasma and that would solve most areas of burn in.

Now its got to the point where even "breaking in" a plasma isn't needed anymore. Now if you left a static image on your plasma for days, sure I'll bet you get burn in, but luckily plasmas come with a screen saver mode that shuts the tv off or goes into a screen saver mode, after a certain period of time.
 
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