Need advice about my new plasma TV

Well... my parents got had into buying a new 50inch Plasma Amazon.com: LG 50PQ30 50-Inch 720p Plasma HDTV: Electronics

So my mom always leaves the tv on for days at a time and falls asleep with it left on at night, I'm trying to tell her she can't do this anymore with a plasma because of image burn in.

For those of you with a plasma, is this still a high concern? What can I do to prevent this?

One more thing, do they make cheap HDMI splitters that can send the signal to both the projector and plasma so we dont always have to switch the cables by hand? My receiver is kind of old ( non HDMI )

I was under the impression that if the image on the screen was consistent (like an aiming reticule on a video game) then you are at risk of a burn in...not so much if your watching tv where the image is always changing.

That's how I understand it as well.

Yup. As long as the image is constantly changing (such as simply watching TV) it's fine. However if you were to, say, pause a movie and leave that still image on screen for a prolonged period of time, THAT IS BAD. Though most DVD players and even consoles nowadays have a screensaver.

Burn in was a problem that Plasmas used to have... it would occur and could be undone. But all three of the remaining Plasma manufacturers have fixed the whole burn in issue. Leaving the TV on for longer periods of time will be easier of the TV, rather than switching it on and off often.

Plasmas however, still draw about 35-40% more power than an LCD of equivalent size. They still weigh about twice as much, and now they cost almost half as much.

So burn in nothing to be concerned about anymore, as the manufacturers say.

HDMI splitters will generally run you a lot of money, since they work differently than an analog signal splitter.

Hope this helps!

-Tyler

So far I have been running it under medium electric savings mode and brightness \contrast at 50/50. so far no burn in.

Personally I'd advise getting an LCD, they're getting to be as cheap as Plasma's and I think the picture quality is better. It's a matter of preference, I suppose.

LCDs have gotten a lot better but, you just can't compare the colors,contrast ratio and brightness of a nice calibrated plasma. Heck, for my PC I still use Dual 21inch Sony flatscreen CRTs because they look great and I can run any resolution on them. But I guess I'm just weird. Just they weigh 70 lbs each so moving one for a LAN party sucks..