The picture quality of my new Samsung 50'' TV is amazing, and now I have a few questions for it. 

First and foremost, what do I need to do to make sure the TV stays as quality a possible for as long as possible? I've heard a lot of different things.

I'm noticing a lot of "ghost" images in this first week with it, but they go away quickly and seem normal to me. Simple example: I play a game with a life bar (like SMG) and for maybe an hour after playing I can see the outline of the health pie wheel if I get up close to the TV and squint. This is normal, right? If not, don't be afraid to tell me, as I'm still very much under warranty.

Safety measures: I've heard people tell me to pull the contrast and brightness down to start with, until the tv is "broken in." I've been told to leave it on for long periods if I can. I was told to let the TV warm up inside before actually turning it on for the first time (which I did). Are any of this true? There's a lot of infor and I assume only some of it is correct. Help me sort through it, please! 

If those are all true, then I have really screwed up my new TV. But then again, it's LCD and not plasma.

Same here, I didn't do any of those safety things but my LCD HDTV is fine, got it about 2 weeks ago.

Bodhesatva said: The picture quality of my new Samsung 50'' TV is amazing, and now I have a few questions for it. First and foremost, what do I need to do to make sure the TV stays as quality a possible for as long as possible? I've heard a lot of different things. I'm noticing a lot of "ghost" images in this first week with it, but they go away quickly and seem normal to me. Simple example: I play a game with a life bar (like SMG) and for maybe an hour after playing I can see the outline of the health pie wheel if I get up close to the TV and squint. This is normal, right? If not, don't be afraid to tell me, as I'm still very much under warranty. Safety measures: I've heard people tell me to pull the contrast and brightness down to start with, until the tv is "broken in." I've been told to leave it on for long periods if I can. I was told to let the TV warm up inside before actually turning it on for the first time (which I did). Are any of this true? There's a lot of infor and I assume only some of it is correct. Help me sort through it, please!

Plasma TV's tend to have a small break in period. The best item is to turn the backlight down a little(about 50% should be fine) for a week or two after that point it should be fine. Personally I keep my samsung LCD backlight on 6/10 with medium energy saving settings. It makes the picture dimmer but thats fine in my bright bedroom. I'd love to help you more but I'm not sure about what TV make you have. If you PM me the info perhaps I can run down some things you can do in greater detail to fine tune your image.

supermario128 said: Same here, I didn't do any of those safety things but my LCD HDTV is fine, got it about 2 weeks ago.

Newer LCD monitors/screens have no break in period. Plasmas have a small break in period last I checked.

I really want a plasma screen television!! My little sister bought her boyfriend a 50" RCA for Christmas. When I went to her house, they were playing Dance Dance Revolution Universe 2 for the 360. The picture was Beautiful. I thought playing on my 30" LCD was awesome. Now I envy her.......and I envy you, Bodhesatva.

d21lewis said: I really want a plasma screen television!! My little sister bought her boyfriend a 50" RCA for Christmas. When I went to her house, they were playing Dance Dance Revolution Universe 2 for the 360. The picture was Beautiful. I thought playing on my 30" LCD was awesome. Now I envy her.......and I envy you, Bodhesatva.

Just gotta be careful the reason I stayed away from plasma is the energy cost. Plasmas tend to use a large amount of electricity, they're damn nice but LCD is catching them in picture and color quality.. also LCD's tend to be cheaper in similar sizes.. However even a year ago Plasmas beat the crap out of LCD in overall quality in general but Plasmas also tend to cost more so there's a good reason for it ^^;

It is recommended that you run a new plasma at half-contrast for the first 100 hours, and that you try to use less than 20% 4:3 or 2.35:1 content (ie. content that does not fill the whole screen) for the first 1000 hours. After that, the risk of any burn-in is extremely low.

If you happen to notice image retention for static images that have been displayed for extended periods of time (ie. life bars and such, as mentioned), it can help to display a constant-motion full-screen image for a while to sort of even it out. Still, normal use will probably not create any such problems unless you have displays of the same static image repeatedly and for extended periods of time.

The “ghost” images are usually called “image retention” and it’s perfectly normal for a plasma TV. The more you use the TV, the less you’ll see these ghost images. This is what the break in period is. Generally, after the first 200 hours or so, you start to see far less image retention. The other safety measures you listed are all to protect against image retention becoming a problem. That is to prevent them from really getting stuck and burning into the screen for very long periods of time (burn in where the images absolutely never go away doesn’t really happen with current plasma sets, but the image can still hang around for a long time).

As a plasma owner, the biggest tip I can give you is to not obsess about image retention. Just enjoy whatever you’re watching/playing and whatever ghost images that might be on screen will generally be gone before you know it. If you set the TV on a black screen and look really hard, you’ll almost always find something, but whatever is there will usually get wiped away after watching a movie or playing a different game.

Do keep in mind though that the severity of the imagine retention (how long it stays and also how visible it is) is directly related to how long an image is on screen. So don’t be stupid and leave a game on pause for 2 days or something. If you see something that worries you, just put on a regular TV channel (preferably one w/out a network logo and stretched to full screen mode) and leave it on for a while. This should clean away most image retention.

As far as the brightness and contrast settings, turning them down is dual purpose. The higher the brightness/contrast, the less time it takes for image retention to occur. So keeping them low helps prevent image retention. The other reason to turn these down is that pretty much all TVs (or at least plasmas) are shipping with their brightness/contrast (and often sharpness) settings turned way up. As far as I know, they do this so they look more vibrant when on display in stores where there’s tons of lighting that drowns out the light from the TVs. So, unless you have extremely bright lights in your home, you’ll want to turn these down anyway to get a better picture. It’s worth spending a little time with the brightness, contrast, and sharpness settings to get nicer picture. All three should usually be lowered from the manufacturer settings.

I keep my lcd (sony bravia) brightness on full all the time no problem with image retention. However, on plasmas i have heard that there is some initially. Nothing yo worry about it will go away,

Plasmas in general are fairly susceptible to screen burn in. In small bouts it never seems to be permanent in my experience and fade away quickly. If it doesn’t, there should be a signal pattern you can turn on for a while to help remove the burn in, provided it’s not too serious. Generally a good idea to not leave static images on your screen for long periods of time. If you have to pause a movie/game or what not and go do something, it’d be good to turn off the actual set.

Plasma’s are pretty big power suckers as well. Noticed a spike in the power bill after we got ours. Doesn’t hurt to turn on the various energy saving features. I’ve been told it helps to not turn up your contrast and brightness too high, as it can shorten your TV’s lifespan.