With OLED TVs, one of the biggest problems with them are burn-ins which essentially means a static ghost image is retained onscreen due to uneven degradation of pixels. Burn-in happens to OLED TVs because of how they work; essentially individual pixels on an OLED screen do their own thing, control their own brightness, and can turn off whenever necessary.
Burn-in is a common phenomenon with OLED TVs because static images such as subtitles, and logos don’t move, so the pixels activated by them are essentially on most of the time causing them to wear out faster than the surrounding pixels. A lot of TV channels and movies offer subtitles, and the unsuspecting user could unknowingly have their subtitles on with poor settings which causes burn-in.
In this post, we’re going to go over exactly what causes burn-ins and whether burn-ins can be fixed. Also, we will discuss ways you can reduce and possibly completely avoid any possibility of subtitles causing burn-ins with your OLED TV.
What Causes Burn-In?
The main cause of burn-ins is static images on your OLED display causing uneven wear to the pixels they’re activating. The non-uniform use of the pixels causes them to lose their luminescence causing a ghost image to retain on the screen. The length of time needed to cause burn-in varies and it’s not the same with all TVs. The more mitigation tactics you use to avoid burn-in, the better.
Unfortunately, burn-in is inherent with all OLED displays, and there’s nothing you can do about that, it’s part of its nature of being an OLED display. If you want to 100% avoid burn-in, then the best option would be to purchase a display that doesn’t have these issues.
For your home theater, seeing burn-in on your screen can be disheartening especially if you paid a lot of money for your OLED display. That’s why we recommend that you apply certain measures to avoid these issues. The easiest way to avoid burn-ins would be to turn the brightness down, but that isn’t always the best option especially since OLED screens don’t get that bright anyways.
How To Prevent Subtitles From Causing Burn-In
The best way to prevent subtitle burn-in is to minimize their intensity onscreen. This can be done in Netflix, you can configure the font size, color, and shadow color. Configuring these options to the optimal setting will significantly reduce the risk of burn-in if you love watching with subtitles.
To do this in Netflix, all you must do is log into your account, head over to the account option, select your account, and select subtitle appearance. From here you can select whatever you want, but for the optimal results, we recommend you set the font to block, font color to black, text size to small, shadow to drop shadow, and shadow color to white.
These settings will minimize the surface area that the subtitles take up which will reduce the probability of you incurring burn-in. Also, setting the font color to black will reduce the weight the pixels have on your screen to reduce the degradation of these pixels.
Can OLED Burn-In Be Fixed?
Unfortunately, burn-in is permanent with your OLED TV, however, there are a few tips and tricks you can apply to help reduce the effects. Reducing the brightness of the display by 40% should help reduce the effects of image retention which is usually temporary, and may even fade over time. Burn-in however is permanent.
The easiest way to avoid burn-in is to go with the next best option which is QLED TVs. QLED TVs work differently therefore burn-in isn’t a problem. QLED TVs are a great affordable option if you’re willing to risk burn-in with your expensive OLED TV. QLED TVs are known to last much longer than OLED TVs, so it makes them an attractive choice for durability.
You’re probably wondering how long does it take to notice the effects of burn-in, well it’s not the same with all TVs, but burn-in can start after 9000 hours of intense usage with static imagery being displayed at max brightness. This is an unrealistic scenario, so realistically, you’ll likely replace your TV before any burn-in issues start to happen.
Conclusion
In conclusion, burn-in is a real phenomenon that OLED TVs experience, luckily there are measures you can take to reduce the chances of you incurring burn-in, and you’ll likely replace your TV before you experience any problems with image retention and burn-in. you shouldn’t worry if correct precautions are taken such as keeping the brightness to a decent level, reducing the impact subtitles have, and removing any logos if possible.
