August 22, 2004
Note:
All the images in this article can be enlarged to 800 x 600 in a new window
by clicking on the thumbnails.
I first tried to fix my LCD
by taking the advise of the manufacturers and left my LCD panel off for
an extended period of time. However, I couldn't take the advice to
turn the panel "off for as long as the image was displayed" since I had
the offending wallpaper up for over 6 months. That just wouldn't
be practical. So I decided to try something else. In my searching,
I found that some users were able to remove dark smudges by "exercising"
all the pixels with a screen saver or displaying a light image on the screen
for several days.
I created a 1600 x 1200 GIF
image in Photoshop of just pure white. I then used Window XP's "My
Pictures Slideshow" to display the image on the screen. I set the
screen saver to kick in after 1 minute of inactivity and turned the monitor's
auto-off power saving feature off. Over the course of 3 days, I used
the monitor normally, but whenever I wasn't using it, it would display
a white screen. Each day, the black smudge would slowly fade until
it was completely gone on the 3rd day, to my great relief.
Here are two images of my
monitor which are taken at the same location as the previous 2 photos.
As you can see, the afterimage smudge is completely gone.
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Click image to enlarge
Luckily for me, the LCD burn-in
was not really a burn-in, but rather just image persistence. But
others may not be so lucky. From this experience, I learned a few
things. LCD's do suffer from image burn-in which may or may not be
permanent. In this respect, LCD's are more fragile than CRT monitors
since almost all modern CRT monitors are pretty much immune from image
burn-in. I now treat my LCD monitors more carefully than my CRT's.
Another interesting thing
is that not all LCD's are equally susceptible to image persistence, even
ones made by the same manufacturer. As I mentioned earlier, I have
2 Dell 2001FP in dual view mode and both were showing the same exact wall
paper for the same period of time. One had the image persistence,
the other one didn't. Both monitors were manufactured on the same
date and have the same screens panels. Why this occurs I don't know.
Here
are some guidelines on how to take care of your LCD to prevent image persistence
or burn-in
-
Use a
screen saver
-
Change
your background image periodically
-
Use the
power save feature of your monitor or Windows to turn off the monitor after
a period of inactivity. This extends the life of the backlight too.
Here
are some methods on how to reverse or remove afterimage or image burn-in
-
Turn your
monitor off for several hours/days/weeks.
-
Use a
screen saver that uniformly "exercises" each part of your screen
-
Display
a white image on your screen for several hours/days/weeks
Hopefully if you ever encounter
LCD burn-in, it will be reversible, but sometimes it is not. In these
cases, you should contact the manufacturer and see if they are willing
to replace the screen. I have heard conflicting accounts about the
replacement policy for different companies regarding image persistence.
LCD's are still great monitors,
they're just not as bulletproof as I initially thought them to be.
Unfortunately, screen burn-in is back. It's just now called image
persistence.
A euphemism really, let's
call it what it is: LCD Screen Burn
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