Some Questions about Plasma Screens

Plasmas do have burn in issues but it would not be a problem unless you have a still image in place for a long period of time. Realistically, that's not likely to occur. However, the black bar issue would be something that would concern me. I will defer to the experience of others on this.

With respect to the brown out question, I do not think it is the brown out itself that is a problem. Rather, it is the fluctuating voltage, i.e. the drop in voltage that causes the brown out, and then the spiked increase in voltage when the brown out ends. These fluctuations in voltage can damage any electronic equipment, not just plasma TVs.

As for warranty coverage, read what the warranty says. I would not believe anything the kid in a big box store says about it, unless he's a law student moonlighting for extra money.

Tonyptony & Markphd,

Yes, my plasma (Hitachi 42") has both the stretch and fill modes available. However, I don't use them for standard 4:3 broadcasts because they distort the picture. I wrongly thought that by using the TV burn-in protection setting (it shifts the image by a few pixels every few minutes when things are static) this would prevent the black bars burning in. Too late now.

After image retention ( transient) and burn in ( permanent) result from uneven phosphor wear. Plasmas are most sensitive to this in the first 100 or so hours of use historically ( I cannot tell you why this is true). Keep in mind you can use a reverso image of sorts ( white bars on the side black in center) to essentially even the wear and then recalibrate using AVIA or Digital Video Essentials as an example.

In the residential setting it is quite rare, but watching 4:3 continuously will do it over time. ( if you arent using a plasma for movies maybe an LCD would suffice).

I have had mine for 5 years as of March 2008 and its the same as day one as far as I can tell and I do watch letterboxed movies on occasion and my plasma is almost always in the full mode. ( I also recalibrate with DVE on occasion and almost never change anything including picture/brightness levels interestingly).

A surge protector and power conditioner may not prevent the brownout-then on spike damage, as noted above; it wont trip anything. A more global solution for the house might make some sense.

Output555 - didn't you think to change the aspect ratio??? I never watch shows leaving those bars on the side, knowing the potential for burn-in. To resolve this potential issue I always change the aspect ratio so I have a full screen image.

Tisk-tisk!!!