Screen Burn in other words is residual image retention. Screen burn in Plasma Televisions is a phenomenon that occurs when a part of the TV screen displays images that should not be there in the first place. This problem might sometimes be temporary and may vanish with the passage of time. But if the problem becomes a permanent one, then your television might lose its sheen in terms of producing optimum picture displays. The most commonly used and convenient way of checking for screen burn is to check your TV menu for the white screen option which reveals any screen burn.

Initial factory settings by default have the settings of colour, contrast and brightness at 100% which might be ideal for extremely bright rooms, a rarity of sorts. Therefore, generally, you can lower the settings to 70% or 60% or even upto 50% without any loss of clarity as such under normal room conditions. Doing so will immensely increase the time taken for still images to cause screen burn. The other advantage is that this will go on to prolong the life of phosphors in a Plasma TV.

Many manufacturers these days have been including features for prevention of screen burn in Plasma TVs. One such feature is the pixel shift that moves the entire picture to the left, right and centre of the screen. Static images are shifted all over the screen and made less static, thus, having a significant impact on screen burn. Signal patterns are more like screen savers and that can actually rub out the screen burn. All White feature is also quite useful since it shows the retained images quite clearly and it is also a quick way to remove minor screen burn. Some televisions come with an in-built “snow distortion trick” that creates the effect of high intensity blizzards. This can be pretty useful in terms of preventing severe screen burn.