SkyQ Pause Screen - OLED Burn Risk

[MorvenH]

I noticed when a programme is paused for a prolonged time on our SkyQ mini box this is now displayed (image not mine, taken from the twitter thread here https://twitter.com/rsmck/status/1463948162561937416) from someone experiencing the same issue.

The white background is at near full brightness. This is asking to cause screen burn on OLED TVs.

The replies to that thread are hysterial too;

"Hi Ross As our main Sky logo is white this is why you will be seeing this. Thanks, Chloe"

"I can assure you Ross, we wouldn't add something to our TVs that would be damaging at all so no need to worry about that. Thanks, Emma"

Do the people who work at Sky really not understand what an OLED TV is? 

Do the developers that build this software not understand the damage this can cause?

[AndrueCope]

Maybe if you're not going to be watching for a while, turn the equipment off?

That'll save energy as well avoiding damage from burn in.

Anyway, according to this.

"OLED Image Retention or Burn-In: Burn-in and image retention are possible on virtually any display. However, with an LG OLED TV, any risk of burn-in or image retention have been addressed through the use of technology that not only helps protect against damage to the screen, but features self-healing properties so that any short-term image retention that may occur is quickly rectified. It is rare for an average TV consumer to create an environment that could result in burn-in. Most cases of burn-in in televisions is a result of static images or on-screen elements displaying on the screen uninterrupted for many hours or days at a time"

Although my initial comment is meant to be light hearted if you are leaving your TV equipment idling for 'many hours or days at a time' you should probably be ashamed of the power wasted and pollution being generated.

And

"Permanent burn-in requires extreme usage. It takes many hours or even days of the TV being constantly on at peak brightness levels for burn-in to occur."

[PeteRG41]

Rtings.com have conducted rigorous long term tests on OLED burn in and concluded that modern OLED TVs news hundreds of hours worth of static images to prompt burn in artifacts. 

The chances are you'll change to a new TV naturally long before there's any chance of burn-in. 

Just don't worry about it. 

[LGUser]

@MorvenH  That image that was posted to Twitter is not what you get when you pause a mini. You get the image youpaused on plus the mini display that does go away after 15 minutes. If you have your OLED set correctly, with the same static image, it will dim after a few minutes. It's not a big deal unless you leave the TV on and the image paused for long enough. If you were going to leave the TV with a static image on screen for long enough to cause burn-in, you'd be best to turn off the TV.

This is really a non-issue. If it's live TV that's paused, it will continue after an hour. There is no need to worry about burn-in on paused content because any issue is 100% user error.

[MorvenH]

@LGUser it is what you get when you pause the mini box... although I didn't take that image I know the person who posted it, and reproduced the same on our mini. 

The amount of times I've paused the TV when the phone rings or some other distraction and forgot about it is not insignificant. When you do this in any of the TV's own apps it displays a screensaver with fireworks that keep the panel mostly blank and even then is very dim.

Tried the same thing just now on the mini box here and it displayed that image, full brightness. 

[MorvenH]

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@AndrueCope wrote:

Maybe if you're not going to be watching for a while, turn the equipment off?

That'll save energy as well avoiding damage from burn in.

It's my TV, and my power, I'll use it however I want.  "the customer is using the equipment wrongly" is not an acceptable answer here.

Anyway, according to this.

"OLED Image Retention or Burn-In: Burn-in and image retention are possible on virtually any display. However, with an LG OLED TV, any risk of burn-in or image retention have been addressed through the use of technology that not only helps protect against damage to the screen, but features self-healing properties so that any short-term image retention that may occur is quickly rectified. It is rare for an average TV consumer to create an environment that could result in burn-in. Most cases of burn-in in televisions is a result of static images or on-screen elements displaying on the screen uninterrupted for many hours or days at a time"

Although my initial comment is meant to be light hearted if you are leaving your TV equipment idling for 'many hours or days at a time' you should probably be ashamed of the power wasted and pollution being generated.

And

"Permanent burn-in requires extreme usage. It takes many hours or even days of the TV being constantly on at peak brightness levels for burn-in to occur."

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"many hours" by accident is not that unlikely.  I've paused the TV to respond to a phone call before that's required me to then go out urgently. Whether or not I remember to turn the TV off is largely irrelevant but now it could damage my TV, as a result of a change Sky have made. 

[LGUser]

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@MorvenH wrote:

@LGUser it is what you get when you pause the mini box... although I didn't take that image I know the person who posted it, and reproduced the same on our mini. 

The amount of times I've paused the TV when the phone rings or some other distraction and forgot about it is not insignificant. When you do this in any of the TV's own apps it displays a screensaver with fireworks that keep the panel mostly blank and even then is very dim.

Tried the same thing just now on the mini box here and it displayed that image, full brightness. 

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How long did it take to display that image and was it on live TV or something recorded? What firmware is your mini running? It did not do that with Q180 which is the recenly released firmware.

I have an LG OLED C1 and I have it set to dim static images. So when I pause Sky Q, it will dim the screen.

[stereohaven]

Have to admit I have never seen that on our mini (goes off to test it...)

As others have said, you do have to work pretty hard to get burn in on an OLED these days, even my 2016 version has things like "pixel shift" to prevent it.

That said, I have never understood why Sky didn't implement a promotional screen saver on Q like they have with Glass. The Netflix app on the box does it well, if you are on the main screen and haven't selected anything to watch it starts cycling through promotional shots for shows and movies. 

[PeteRG41]

LG TVs do have a screen saver feature that kicks in after nothing has happened on screen for a while.

I'm not sure why a paused Sky picture doesn't allow the screen saver to start.

[simon194]

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@PeteRG41 wrote:

LG TVs do have a screen saver feature that kicks in after nothing has happened on screen for a while.

I'm not sure why a paused Sky picture doesn't allow the screen saver to start.

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My new Philps OLED has a screensaver that kicks in after a couple of minutes. It's a bit of a pain because the interval can't be changed. I would prefer it start after a longer time because it can kick in if a programme shows one of those panoramic shots with very little motion in it.

[Chodley]

You shouldn't need the TV to have to compensate for disastrous design decisions from source devices. 15 minutes of the bright blue playback bar is bad enough. How about 1 minute? How about the entire image gets dimmed or a proper screensaver kicks in?

pixel shifting isn't going to help much with a 90% bright white image on the screen.

Whoever designed this is off their heads and those responses from the twitter team are frankly embarassing for a company that projects an image of technology leadership.

I have never seen this screen (I'm on Q170) but I believe the person who posted it.

[MorvenH]

The LG screensaver - I think - only works on LGs own apps? I've never seen it with an external input only using Netflix on the LG directly. 

[LGUser]

I tested my mini runnung Q180 and Ido not get the Sky logo on screen. What I get is the image that I pased on. So really, I have no idea whre that Sky image comes from.

[Chodley]

No one has explained how long it was paused for have they? Unless it's further down that twitter thread

[stereohaven]

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@PeteRG41 wrote:

LG TVs do have a screen saver feature that kicks in after nothing has happened on screen for a while.

I'm not sure why a paused Sky picture doesn't allow the screen saver to start.

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Mine doesn't (2016 B6), unless you are using the TVs inbuilt apps and even then it only works with some of them.