New OLED Owner - Pixel Refresher

GsfDan

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Hello!

I am new to the AV Forums and to Oled ownership!

I have read in some sites that you should run a Pixel Refresher right after plugging the TV for the first time to improve uniformity and ´settle´ the screen. But to be honest, uniformity is great on my set. Should Pixel Refresher be done on every new TV?

Here is one of the main articles where I saw the advice to run Pixel Refresher to ´settle´ the screen (it´s in Spanish): Guía de primeros pasos para tu nueva Smart TV OLED, comprobar problemas, pixeles y uniformidad



Thank you!
Gil
 
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That's poor advice, IMO. Manufacturers recommended that you don't run the longer maintenance cycle too often because doing so can artificially 'age' the panel, so why would any site recommend doing that on day one ?

If you have no issues with your set and the uniformity is great, then there's no reason to run it - just leave the TV in standby when not in use and it should run the shorter refresh cycles regularly and the longer maintenance program every 1000 hours or so, which is the frequency at which the manufacturer recommends this is run.
 
That's poor advice, IMO. Manufacturers recommended that you don't run the longer maintenance cycle too often because doing so can artificially 'age' the panel, so why would any site recommend doing that on day one ?

If you have no issues with your set and the uniformity is great, then there's no reason to run it - just leave the TV in standby when not in use and it should run the shorter refresh cycles regularly and the longer maintenance program every 1000 hours or so, which is the frequency at which the manufacturer recommends this is run.

Thank you for your answer, this is what I thought.

Basically, on that article they mention it should help with ´shadow details, banding and DSE´ and that you should do it at night, in a dark room. This is a pretty serious webpage, that´s why I was confused. This is what it mentions:


Why? Because by default the OLED panel comes raw , that is to say, fresh from the factory and as you yourself may have seen, it eats up a lot of shadow detail and crushes the black levels. Cycling the compensation will compensate the pixels so that they receive a nearly identical voltage stimulus and with it return shadow detail.

Also, the compensation cycle helps a lot to eliminate DSE.

Anyway,seems clear to me this should not be done for new TVs. Thank you!
 
That's poor advice, IMO. Manufacturers recommended that you don't run the longer maintenance cycle too often because doing so can artificially 'age' the panel, so why would any site recommend doing that on day one ?

If you have no issues with your set and the uniformity is great, then there's no reason to run it - just leave the TV in standby when not in use and it should run the shorter refresh cycles regularly and the longer maintenance program every 1000 hours or so, which is the frequency at which the manufacturer recommends this is run.

Just resurfacing this. There is a lot of confusion on this because TV manufacturers give wildly differing advice. Sony is the only one with very strong advice to only run it once a year. Philips TV's built-in user manual has no warning but their "paper" manual says it "may" affect life. The forums are full of comments stating its very stressful to the panel and so on.

The reason it "may" affect panel life is actually quite obvious. If you have persistent images that won't go away that means some pixels are dimmer than others. They won't magically get their brightness back so the only thing you can do is make all the brighter pixels dimmer to match! This will affect overall brightness of the TV and is akin to ageing. On a new TV all the pixels should be at optimum output and therefore the refresh will do virtually nothing! If a new panel is very uneven out of the box in terms of pixel luminance it may end up being dimmer but more uniform afterwards. Repeat runs with no further hours of viewing should do nothing in my opinion but happy to hear other views.
 
Unless you have issues with the panel such as stuck pixels or image retention then there should be no need to run the Pixel Refresher manually.

I bought my LG B9 in August 2019 and have run the Pixel Refresher exactly zero times! Each time I use the TV for more than 4 hours, an automatic quick refresh runs when I put it into standby mode (I know when it runs because there is a click and the LED lights on the back of the TV come on.

A couple of weeks ago the TV told me that it was going to run a pixel refresh for the first time (so this was after 16 months of use) and that it would take an hour and not to unplug the TV etc while it was running. This is, I believe, the full pixel refresh that runs after so many thousands of hours of use (I think it might be 4,000). This was different because the TV turned on and I saw a white line scanning down the TV from top to bottom before the screen went off again.

I've had no problems with my TV at all and I'm happy to let it run the pixel refresher as needed. Just make sure you leave the TV in standby mode and don't unplug it at the mains!
 
I have a LG C8 for 2 years just over, never ran anything, should I? not noticed any issues with anything. Always leave on stand by to.
 
I don't know.. But I thought my philips tv gets better in blacks in time. But maybe I just get used to the black blacks !??
And maybe it's like I read here above somewhere,.. stating that the every 4 hour, aatomatic pixel-refresh in standbye.. make the picture more open in the blacks..shadow.
I would have liked that philips woud have a different led to show when it's going in automatic maintenance in standbye.. Now,.. I have no idea if the tv is doing this,.. or not !
Or if you could see in some follow up in the settings via a log, what and when the tv has done the last pixel-refresh after standbye..
i believe Panasonic has a orange led for showing the process.. ??
 
Came across this and thought I'd avoid creating a new thread, our new Phillips OLED806 today brought up a pop-up mid-film saying it wanted to do some sort of refresh/cleanse which would take 10 minutes, or we could do it later. I think it said it would do it in standby.

We've had the TV only a couple of weeks and as far as I know it's always in standby when not used, so it was a bit surprising. We were 5min from the end of the show so cancelled the pop-up.

Is this normal? The TV has had several hours use today but plenty of off time, it's never left on all day
 
Pretty normal for OLED's just let it do its thing, you probably wont see another message for quite a while.
This thread just reminded me I really must learn to turn my OLED telly off when not using it, it spends so many hours on without me actually looking at it.
 
Yeah the TV runs an automatic cycle after every 4 hours of viewing. For LG ones they just do it without telling you and whenever you next switch it off. But Phillips does seem to prompt you it’s doing it.

As for the manual cycles you can trigger in your TVs menu that last an hour. I spoke to an LG engineer on these once and he said that running it occasionally isn’t an issue. Obviously once a week would age the panel. Running it twice a year though is fine. But not to run one early in the TVs life as you risk messing up the automatic algorithm. To build up hours on the TV until you do a manual refresh unless your screen has significant issues.
 
Hello, sorry to bring back an old thread but I just wondered if anyone could advise on a related question - would it be an issue if the automatic cycle (every 4 hours of viewing) was interrupted by the TV being switched on again?

I looked it up and it appeared to take 7-10 mins so it is hopefully unlikely - plus I'm considering a Sony and I believe they also wait a further 4 hours in stand-by before doing the cycle? - but it would be good to know if possible. Someone on Reddit (who had a Sony A8H) said:
I believe I turned it on during the cycle once and had this very odd line come across my TV which cleared itself after a few hours of use and a cycle once turned off
Maybe not a massive deal but I'm thinking of other-half impact / approval factor and also we have a young daughter who can get a bit upset if we tell her she can watch TV and then can't for some reason. Don't really want to have to explain OLED pixel refresh cycles to a two year old 😂
 
Hello, sorry to bring back an old thread but I just wondered if anyone could advise on a related question - would it be an issue if the automatic cycle (every 4 hours of viewing) was interrupted by the TV being switched on again?

I looked it up and it appeared to take 7-10 mins so it is hopefully unlikely - plus I'm considering a Sony and I believe they also wait a further 4 hours in stand-by before doing the cycle? - but it would be good to know if possible. Someone on Reddit (who had a Sony A8H) said:

Maybe not a massive deal but I'm thinking of other-half impact / approval factor and also we have a young daughter who can get a bit upset if we tell her she can watch TV and then can't for some reason. Don't really want to have to explain OLED pixel refresh cycles to a two year old 😂
It's obviously best to let the cycle run as required but if it's interrupted by mistake every now and again, I can't see it making much difference. I would avoid doing it intentionally and regularly though. If there's a chance the TV might need turning on again so soon, you're probably best leaving it on.

The power LED stays orange on my Panasonic OLED when it's running these refresh cycles so I always avoid turning it back on during those times.
 
Hello, sorry to bring back an old thread but I just wondered if anyone could advise on a related question - would it be an issue if the automatic cycle (every 4 hours of viewing) was interrupted by the TV being switched on again?

I looked it up and it appeared to take 7-10 mins so it is hopefully unlikely - plus I'm considering a Sony and I believe they also wait a further 4 hours in stand-by before doing the cycle? - but it would be good to know if possible. Someone on Reddit (who had a Sony A8H) said:

Maybe not a massive deal but I'm thinking of other-half impact / approval factor and also we have a young daughter who can get a bit upset if we tell her she can watch TV and then can't for some reason. Don't really want to have to explain OLED pixel refresh cycles to a two year old 😂

I have the Sony A80J with this compensation cycle pattern. I wouldn't give it any more thought - any general 'housekeeping' that the TV needs to do will work around you - not the other way around :) It will simply pick up again when you're done......

This is not the same for the 'Panel Refresh' which you might run annually - here I would let the TV do it's thing first.

Incidentally, the Sony's also have a 'Pixel Shift' function that aims to help reduce image retention and burn in risks. You can enable that full-time though some purists claim it can affect picture quality but I've never once noticed that.
 

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