Here’s the simple, straight skinny about breaking in your new plasma HDTV….
There are two strategies for plasma break-in and people get mighty defensive about which one they think ought to be used, but it need not be so complicated – or controversial!
Strategy 1: Use high contrast, high color settings in combination with a cycling set of color images that fill the entire screen. With this procedure, you would:
a. Choose a TV mode that is high-contrast/high-color, e.g., Vivid, Dynamic, which is okay since the point is to age the pixels and the images will be uniform across the entire screen).
b. You can obtain the DVD version of the break-in files here.
Alternatively, use full-screen color images saved to a USB drive or SD card (depending on what is available for the TV). You can obtain the USB/SD card files here on AVS Forum, but if you have a problem downloading them, I can provide the files in a .zip format if you send me an email. Since most newer HDTVs have USB/SD ports, I recommend the USB files since they are more convenient.
c. Play the DVD/USB files/SD files and let it run continuously for about 150 hours (yup, 150 hours straight – while you’re at work, sleeping, etc…). When you run this for the first time, just be sure to grab a book or something and watch at least one entire cycle of slides to be sure it runs continuously and then repeats (may have to set your DVD/Blu-ray to do this, or set your slide show settings to repeat). You don’t want it to stop on a single color, a menu, an image that doesn’t fill the screen, etc., when you’re not there!
Strategy 2: Watch regular TV with the stipulation that you watch ONLY programming that fills the entire screen for any length of time (a less-than-full-screen commercial or something temporary like that is fine), and keep your picture settings on medium contrast/color, e.g., Movie/Cinema mode. As much as possible, don’t do any significant stretches of gaming during the break-in period. Also, turn your pixel orbiter/anti-image retention features on. The HD Discovery channel is great for running programming that will fill your entire screen.
You’re not going to damage anything if you use one of the other higher contrast, higher color AV Selections just to see what they look like.) If you want to try a DVD/Blu-ray that’s less than full screen to see what it looks like, that’s no problem either.
For the break-in period, though, just be sure not to watch long stretches of movies with black bars on top and bottom. (Movies that will have black bars have aspect ratio greater than 1.78:1, like 1.85:1, 2.35:1 or 2.4:1). Got Avatar? That’s a great 1.78:1 (full screen) DVD/Blu-ray to watch and show off your TVs capabilities!
**My suggestion is to use both methods so you can immediately have the benefits of being able to watch your new TV and age your pixels evenly when you’re not watching it.
Watch your TV as in (2) above when you’re going to be watching broadcast TV or movies, and use steps a-c in method in (1) when you’re not going to be watching it (at night, when you’re at work) as long as you’re comfortable with leaving your TV on when you may not be there.
As far as an hour meter, there’s usually not a user-accessible hour meter so you’ll have to roughly track the number of hours you’ve had the TV on. Just best guesses are fine and as long as you’re in the ball park when it’s calibrated, that’s great. You should have about 100 hours on the TV before getting a professional calibration, but 150 is even better.
Best wishes for enjoying that new plasma TV for many years to come!!