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Posted by: Loco_Russo 30.11.2007 - 17:28

There are many articles that tell you about Image Persistence on LCD monitors and about various methods of fixing it. Like using screensavers. But none of them tells you what savers are good for it. They just talking about blinking light patterns in general. Or leaving display unplugged from the electrical outlet for 24 hours, etc. It's all bullshit. All you really need is to switch the crystals from one extreme state to another. From completely oblique to completely transparent couple hundred times and your problem will be gone.

Here's simplest and 100% effective method to get rid of the memory images using "My Pictures Slideshow" screensaver that came with Windows XP. All you have to do is to create 2 images with paint or any other graphics program. Size is not important. You can make them 640 by 512 pix, for example. One image completely white, another completely black. Put them in a separate folder. Then select My Pictures Slideshow from screensaver tab on display properties and make it use images from this folder. Select minimal interval of 6 seconds. Move second slider to use 100% of the screen and select "Stretch Small Images".

Fire it up and come back in an hour. Your ghost images should be gone. May be sooner. That's all you have to do.

http://www.syeager.org/misc/image_presistence.php

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General background.

Image Persistence on LCD monitors is not a permanent damage in most cases, unlike Burn In on CRT displays, where phosphorous is physically damaged. Liquid Crystals simply have a tendency to "remember" their states if left in one state for too long. And after that they won't respond to electrical signals the same way, so you will see some ghost images. However cycling them from one state to another multiple times usually clears up this memory effect. Also if you will leave monitor turned off for a long period of time, it will clear the memory too. But it can take several days.

To prevent Image Persistence, set up "turn off" monitor after some period of time in Display Control Panel under power settings and use the screen saver I described before few minutes prior to it. I have screensaver kick in after 20 minutes of inactivity and turn it off after 30. It does the job for me.

- How to fix Image Persistence on LCD displays.

And, BTW, you can download images you need here: [attachmentid=417]

Note: Sometimes browsers want to download files from here as index.html or index.php. Just change the name to images.zip when saving, or right click on the link and select "save as".

Posted by: LoneWolfiNTj 14.05.2010 - 18:22

I've noticed on my screen that while turning the monitor off overnight causes persistent images to go away, after an hour or so they come back, even if I'm no longer displaying the original images that caused the persistent images in the first place! It's as if, after forgetting, the pixels then dredge up old memories from their past. I'm guessing it's some sort of physical or chemical effect.

I notice that the persistent images show up only on medium-brightness areas, never on black or white backgrounds. And they always show up as lighter marks on a darker background, never the reverse. And they are always caused by a bright area adjacent to a dark area. Neither the bright nor the dark areas themselves cause a persistent image; but the line of sharp contrast between them does, so I end up with, for example, a bright horizontal line on my screen where the bottom of the "Links" bar in Mozilla Firefox is.

I haven't tried your "rotating bright and dark images" method yet. I'm thinking that since the pixels tend to stick in their "bright" state rather than their "dark" state, what is needed is several dark images and one bright image. Display them at random a few seconds apart. From time to time, slam the pixels briefly to full bright for a few seconds, then quickly back to full dark for several minutes, and keep repeating. I'll try that and see if it works.

Posted by: Loco_Russo 14.05.2010 - 20:19

Actually the rotation of bright and dark helps. It's just a physical effect of LCD displays and I don't want to go into specifics here. You can find it on the Internet, if really interested. Physics are rather complex, but the crystals do actually move and in simple terms they can get stuck in some fixed positions if held there for too long. Moving them from one extreme to another can eliminate this problem. However new LCD displays don't have this problem anymore. Fortunately my old display broke for other reason and I had to buy a new, much better one for less money for my main workstation. My old ViewSonic (one that had this problem) was replaced real fast under 3 yr warranty, and I use it now on my server, where image persistence doesn't matter. New Acer that I bought (2 year old) never developed image persistence problem, though it's on at least 8 hours a day.