This made me think that either Sony was reacting to actual cases of screen burn in their own test environments or actual consumer reports, or else
they were acting on advice from LG Display, the manufacturer responsible for pretty much all the world’s TV-sized OLED panels.
Next, LG also upset buyers of its 2018 OLED TVs recently by releasing a new firmware update to its most recent generation of OLED TVs that increased the extent and speed with which bright images were dimmed down (as covered here). LG has confirmed to me that this ‘intended to reduce consumer discomfort in situations where temporary image retention can occur in certain viewing conditions’.
Also worth noting here is that LG introduced a new feature for its 2018 OLED TVs that can dim the brightness of static picture elements without impacting the rest of the picture.
All of these measures suggest that screen burn is indeed still considered to be an issue by OLED TV makers. In fact, with such new anti-retention/anti-screen burn measures seeming to appear increasingly often in recent times when OLED TVs have been around for years, it’s hard not to think that the flurry of activity has something to do with the growing influence of high dynamic range video (which delivers a much wider brightness range) and the resulting need to make OLED TVs run more brightly.
Another relatively recent development that’s made raised screen burn’s profile of late is the most recent test for the problem by online tech testing site, Rtings.
This is actually Rtings’ second stab at measuring how much of a problem screen burn on OLED TVs is, but I kind of dismissed the first one, as its methodology didn’t feel ‘real world’ enough. The latest test, though, seems more sensible in its approach - and suggests that the latest OLED TVs can suffer with screen burn after as little as 4,000-5,000 hours of use.
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