"Commercial" plasma screens the real deal for HT?

How does black burn pixels? That doesn't make an ounce of common sense. However, if you watched strictly letterboxed movies on a 4:3 screen, so that the top and bottom of the screen were always black, then I suppose you could have a situation in which the center area of the screen would, in time, be dimmer than the rest of the display. I would imagine that this would take thousands of hours of use, and would be noticeable only when watching full-screen 4:3 programs (which also doesn't make sense since plasma displays are widescreen and not 4:3). This could, possibly, show as brighter bands at the top and bottom of the screen relative to the dimmer center of the screen. However, this is really a guess on my part. I believe the salesman was employing a "technique" to upsell you to a more expensive set.

My Panasonic has an anti-burn-in feature. It slowly moves the picture around... so slowly and by such a small amount that it can't be seen. This feature can be turned on or off.

There is a thread about burn in at the top of the plasma forum at avsforum.com. A few things;

1. I have had my plasma for over 2 years and I dont see any burn in on my plasma.

2. A set is most vulnerable to burn in during the first hundred hours of use or so ( NOT an exact figure)

3. Leaving up black bars for extended periods of time CAN cause asymetric phosphor wear. I am using that term not because I am taking the SAT soon ( that was 20 years ago), but to stress that uneven phospor wear is the true danger. With black bars, that uneveness is defined as the stuff inside the black bars wears differently than the non-firing pixel black bar areas of the screen. The pixel phosphors have a time to half brightness, or a half life for all of you chemistry guys. With normal viewing, this occurs evenly over time. Constant black bars disrupts this so uneven phosphorescence occurs. Watching movies with bars, which I do frequently, will not cause this. Leaving this up for days on end might. Also, adjustments on the DVD player may change the area of these bars. Or by using the just or zoom mode they can be eliminated entirely. I leave them for movies because thats the way the movie was cut.

If you get this type of problem, use the reverso screen which turns black to white and white to black--kinda like turning jeans inside out before washing them. That can even things up.

After image burn in- a different thing entirely is what you see at the airports where old schedules can be seen on the screen even though the video data is not being actively transmitted as such. If you see this-- DONT FREAK! It is often temporary in the home setting and goes away.

The above poster is talking about the Panasonic wobbler, an anti-burn in feature like he says.

Again- check the master burn in thread at avsforum.com

I have a commercial Panasonic 42" EDTV, which is perfect for DVDs as the resolution of the monitor matches the source exactly. At a viewing distance of greater than 8 feet, there is no difference between an EDTV and an HDTV in my opinion. The only drawback to the commercial vs. consumer versions is that you'll have to buy a mount separately, as well as speakers (if you're not using a HT setup). Also they tend to use BNC connectors instead of RCA jacks. Cnet has some very good discussions on commercial vs. consumer plasmas, including Panasonic's new 50" HDTV. You can also look at http://www.plasmatvbuyingguide.com/ which has some good info on the differences.

When I got my commercial plasma, I asked for some BNC-to-RCA adapters. Vendor threw a bunch in at no cost. Problem solved.