We seem to be in a period of evolution rather than revolution on the display side of the commercial audio-visual industry. Incremental improvements abound and are treated as major innovations. While this is well and good from a marketing perspective, it is interesting to note that there are some truly innovative "things" going on.

Alan Brawn
Insight Media Consultant

We are all familiar with the progress in LCD flat panel display backlighting going from CCFL to LED arrays. In addition we see a lot of progress on LCD response times to eliminate the "lag" in fast moving images. So what about our friends in the plasma world? Fear not, there is at least one development that is just rolling out that may cause a stir. How about plasma displays where burn-in is eliminated? Now I am not talking about burn reduction or raster shift devices, I mean patent-pending zero burn plasma technology. Got your interest? Right.

A little know company in Orange County, California called Visual Appliances Inc. (VAI), has developed and is delivering a series of plasma monitors for the digital signage industry. The form factor of the displays is worthy of note. They feature a fully functional high-end computer built in to each display and yet maintain the size of traditional plasma displays. According to VAI, the computer modules are removable and upgradeable as technology marches on. The video images are presented via a direct digital connection giving the display an uncanny resemblance to LCD in the crispness of the images for text and the video. The demo I saw looked excellent, as you would expect from a high-end plasma device.

Now for the revolutionary or at the very least extremely fascinating part called Zeroburn. As we know, plasma displays, when confronted with high contrast images on screen for long periods of time, some as short as 30 minutes, have a propensity to burn in. What happens is the rare earth phosphors in each sub pixel are excited or addressed by the electrical charge for too long causing the burning of the phosphor itself. Plasma displays are more prone to this in the first 100 to 200 hours of use but even after the "break-in" period, burn-in can take place. Now there have been significant improvements in burn-in reduction technologies from companies like Pioneer, Panasonic, and Samsung but this does not eliminate the effect of burn-in all together. You cannot break the laws of physics but you can apply them in unique ways.

Brent McKay the CEO of Visual Appliances explains it this way: "Burn-in is caused by uneven usage of the pixels which results in uneven light output. What Zeroburn does is to monitor the usage of all the pixels in an array on a continuous basis and stores that information. Then the Zeroburn algorithm utilizes that image history profile to normalize the luminosity across the display. It does so by running a specialized screen-conditioning program during off-use or after-hour periods. The result is Zeroburn maintains even luminosity across the display and eliminates the fundamental problem of burn in."

The company currently has 42" models available and shortly will introduce their 50", 60" and a 71" version. With the cost differential still existing between LCD and plasmas in the large sizes, the form factor and the Zeroburn technology might be of interest to many people. I know I am.