unique said:

so how long do i keep the contrast and brightness at 50% ?

muirdo said:

I have a 50" Panasonic Viera TH-50PX600U. It's about three years old, so it's 720p instead of 1080p, but true hi-def broadcasts and Blu-ray are crystal clear. The sound is unbelievable considering it's a flat panel with the speakers in the rear. It actually produces a fairly decent surround sound effect with just the built in speakers.

There are a couple schools of thought on the burn-in issue. One is don't do anything preemptive, but make sure to not leave it on with static images for long periods. Or do what I did and season the screen by leaving it running for the first 100 hours of operation with an anamorphic DVD set on FastPlay(most Disney DVDs have this feature). Don't adjust any settings yet. This treatment was recommended by a couple of videophile magazines and is supposed to keep any future burn-in down to a very temporary nuisance. To be honest, it's not even noticeable after a few seconds and you can only see very short periods of image retention on a completely black screen. It's a non-issue.

The factory settings will be crap, so do a search for your particular model and find a consensus on tweaks to the settings menu in audio/video forums. Then adjust to your liking from there.

squirrelgrease said:

No self calibration mode?

hmmm... I'm glad I'm reading this. I just purcahsed a Sony LCD 40". I don't know anything about burn-in or whatever. I'm hoping they tell me all that when they come install it.

CarrieMpls said:

I don't think lCD's have this problem. It is a Plasma issue.

Graycap23 said:

Not on mine. You can hire someone to come out and calibrate it with a colorimeter and poke around in the non-user interface, but having the correct settings from folks that went through the trial and error and pushing some buttons on your remote is pretty easy.

Graycap23 said:

Right LCDs can't retain images. All those screensavers on LCD screens are basically just for shits and giggles.

LCDs are notorious for dead pixels right out of the box, though. So folks should watch for that, and make sure warranty coverage applies to any amount of dead pixels.

squirrelgrease said:

Thanks for the tip!

All I have is a regular 32 inch Sharp TV. If I ever drop the cable (which I plan on doing soon), I'll have to get a converter box and rabbit ears thanks to this rediculous conversion they had last June.....as if everyone can afford to go out and buy a new TV.

Graycap23 said:

nothing like macs vs pcs in the slightest

unique said:

Sure it is. Just like the Beta vs VCR, and other products where the best option cost more and the public goes with the cheaper inferior product.

squirrelgrease said:

if you are serious about getting the best from your panel you should spend the £300 or so to get it ISF'ed. it works out about 10% of the cost of a decent large panel

i know a few calibraters in the uk if anyone needs one

Graycap23 said:

no, not at all. pc is far better than mac, it outperforms it and costs a lot less. mac is all about branding rather than performance. you can even run OSX on cheap hardware if u wanted to cripple your computers capability. it's completely different here

unique said:

Since I have been using both platforms from their invention, I have no idea what u are basing these comments on. But that is another story 4 another thread.

Graycap23 said:

well you were suggesting that more expensive means better, but that's not the case with mac vs pc, it's the other way around. and if you really wanted to run OSX you can do it on a £99 pc like i do, but you can't make an LCD into a plasma, thus it's a poor analogy. and i've been using mac's since the iie days, and i've always found the pc alternative to be miles better. mac is like a fisher price my first computer for retards that can't be arsed learning to use a computer. people have to learn to drive cars first, but they let any arsehole buy a computer and post across the fucking world on the internet without a single lesson