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MacBook Pro Retina display burn-in?

I first noticed this after my MBP [Retina] had gone to sleep, but: when returning to the login screen (since I have it set to require a password whenever the computer is idle long enough) I noticed what appeared to a very faint ghosting primarily noticeable on darker backgrounds.


After messing around with it a bit, there seems to be a fairly consistent in-display ghosting that occurs without much time at all; I was able to leave my screen on (a little above half-brightness) for about 10-15 minutes and the ghosted "burn" would be of the screen I left it on (which I deliberately reconfigured so that everything would be a new position).


Has anyone else experienced this? Is this a normal thing that I just have to get used to? It's not really noticeable at all in standard use.

MacBook Pro (Retina, Mid 2012), Mac OS X (10.7.4)

Posted on Jun 16, 2012 10:26 PM

Reply
9,629 replies

Aug 19, 2012 6:41 PM in response to High-Death

High-Death wrote:


DrAndyWright,


The Retina Display as any other LCD display from APPLE and most other brands nowadays is LED-Backlit display, all of them. therefore they all use phosphors and phosphors are responsible for ghosting, Image Retention, Flicks and some other issues related to PWM (Pulse-Width Modulation). I can link a post from the the AVS Forum where i discuss that if you want. But good that you now acknowledge, even if still in confusion, that IR is standard for LCDs.

Please post the link, I'd like the lesson.


Thanks

Aug 19, 2012 6:41 PM in response to High-Death

High-Death wrote:



So I will tell you what is the trolling and MEANINGLESS USELESS type of posts here, it is the kind of POSER posts who only come here to JUDGE and trying some sort of CENSORSHIP over what is being posted and discussed here without ADDING A SINGLE INTERESTING or PRATICAL info to the thread whatsoever. This sort of post is indeed Off Topic...


Calm down. Is it really that hard to take that someone else has a different opinion than yours?

Aug 19, 2012 6:44 PM in response to High-Death

High-Death wrote:



So again, if you are not a moderator or admin restrain yourself from trying to censor any sort of useful comment to the truly interested readers who want information about the whole problem instead of a simple defect propaganda to get what they want out of the people at the Apple Store.


I think you really need to look up the definition of censorship. Hint: other people posting opinions contrary to your own is NOT censorship.

Aug 19, 2012 6:56 PM in response to High-Death

High-Death

DrAndyWright,

The Retina Display as any other LCD display from APPLE and most other brands nowadays is LED-Backlit display, all of them. therefore they all use phosphors and phosphors are responsible for ghosting, Image Retention, Flicks and some other issues related to PWM (Pulse-Width Modulation). I can link a post from the the AVS Forum where i discuss that if you want. But good that you now acknowledge, even if still in confusion, that IR is standard for LCDs.

The actual LCD doesn't utilize phosphors, while the LED backight light source does. I am not sure how you arrive at the conclusion that phosphors is responsible for ghosting and imaging retention with LCD panels.


reference LED Backlighting for LCDs: Options, Design Considerations, and Benefits


Now if one looks at the LCD image persistence (ghosting)tech note from Leveno, you can see they are discussing what actually causes IR.


"Generally (Twisted Nematic- TN type) LCDs have a parallel electrical field, so all of the display area can be symmetrically controlled. By comparison, IPS LCDs have asymmetrical electrical fields in some small areas, the image persistence phenomenon will occur at the asymmetrical electric fields. The image will dissipate during power off or by an image change in a short amount of time. This phenomenon is a natural characteristic of an IPS LCD."


IMHO both the LG AH-IPS and the Samsung ISP varient (PLS) would be subseptable to image persistance in varying degree's.


BTW I am a very old and active poster in AVSforums and go by a another handle. You have to take with a grain of salt whats posted there also. 😉

Aug 19, 2012 6:56 PM in response to itsamacthing

itsamacthing wrote:


Come on guys, no need for in fighting - clearly we are all here to just try to help.


Unfortunately, it's pretty much impossible to have any lengthy discussion on the internet about a problem that people feel upset about without a devolvement into this kind of in-fighting. I am quite certain that everyone involved in this discussion is a reasonable person but in this context I think emotions are running high and people are posting just for an emotional release rather than trying to rationally discuss the issue.


At this point there isn't a whole lot to discuss anyway. The evidence clearly shows that a certain percentage of LG displays have an unusually high level of image retention. There is also some hint that the LG displays are substandard compared to the Samsung displays for other reasons, although I personally am reserving judgement on this.


People are upset that Apple support doesn't have a consistent answer for this issue and isn't event officially acknowledging it. I personally feel that it is premature to blame Apple for that because this is a new product and these problems really have only come to the forefront in the past few weeks. I think in a month or two we should expect Apple to have a good response for this issue and if not, then it's time to elevate to a higher level of angst.


I personally would like to see someone like Anandtech address this issue; their test of the rMBP claimed that the display was the best they'd seen on any device. I wonder if they were testing a Samsung display, and if so, I wonder if what they would find if they ran the same battery of tests as they had in their initial review.


I also would like to see an official response from Apple on the issue, but I don't necessarily expect them to admit fault in public; very few companies would do so as it would open them up to having to start every claim from the position of being at fault, as opposed to providing as much resistance as is likely to be profitable for them on a case-by-case basis. But it's not just Apple that would do this; any company would.

Aug 19, 2012 7:05 PM in response to johns1

johns1 wrote:


High-Death

DrAndyWright,

The Retina Display as any other LCD display from APPLE and most other brands nowadays is LED-Backlit display, all of them. therefore they all use phosphors and phosphors are responsible for ghosting, Image Retention, Flicks and some other issues related to PWM (Pulse-Width Modulation). I can link a post from the the AVS Forum where i discuss that if you want. But good that you now acknowledge, even if still in confusion, that IR is standard for LCDs.

The actual LCD doesn't utilize phosphors, while the LED backight light source does. I am not sure how you arrive at the conclusion that phosphors is responsible for ghosting and imaging retention with LCD panels.


reference LED Backlighting for LCDs: Options, Design Considerations, and Benefits


Now if one looks at the LCD image persistence (ghosting)tech note from Leveno, you can see they are discussing what actually causes IR.


"Generally (Twisted Nematic- TN type) LCDs have a parallel electrical field, so all of the display area can be symmetrically controlled. By comparison, IPS LCDs have asymmetrical electrical fields in some small areas, the image persistence phenomenon will occur at the asymmetrical electric fields. The image will dissipate during power off or by an image change in a short amount of time. This phenomenon is a natural characteristic of an IPS LCD."


IMHO both the LG AH-IPS and the Samsung ISP varient (PLS) would be subseptable to image persistance in varying degree's.


BTW I am a very old and active poster in AVSforums and go by a another handle. You have to take with a grain of salt whats posted there also. 😉

Thanks those are useful links.


For those not interested in clicking, Lenovo says "the image persistence phenomenon will occur at the asymmetrical electric fields. The image will dissipate during power off or by an image change in a short amount of time. This phenomenon is a natural characteristic of an IPS LCD"


I have a 24" apple display that has always had terrible ghosting, across the entire screen. I typically have several windows open on it, and the edged of the windows will remain visible after dismissing them. I complained several times while it was under warranty but Apple never offered to replace it.

Aug 19, 2012 7:05 PM in response to Apples_8212

Apples_8212 wrote:


shayster98,


I just received an LG a couple of days ago. As of yet I see no IR problems, if anything only very faint after a 30-45 min test. But regardless I am not very happy by the yellowness of my screen (and I have not achieved much success from trying to calibrate it manually). The LG-return dilemma has kept my brain whiring over since I stumbled across this forum a few days after it arrived, but I have now decided to return it before the 14 days is up.



I found when I ran through the calibration system that I was able to make the screen as arbitrarily blue as I wanted to by setting the white point higher. It's hard to believe that you can't reduce the 'yellowness' this way if you want to.


I did my best to follow the calibration program and I did end up with slightly bluer whites, but I actually prefer the stock calibration, I think it just looks better. I think that someone who has the proper tools for doing a really good calibration should speak up and let us know how good the LG display is actually when it is properly calibrated by an objective process instead of by personal preference.

Aug 19, 2012 7:11 PM in response to bjiibj

bjiibj

At this point there isn't a whole lot to discuss anyway. The evidence clearly shows that a certain percentage of LG displays have an unusually high level of image retention. There is also some hint that the LG displays are substandard compared to the Samsung displays for other reasons, although I personally am reserving judgement on this.

Its all a bit confusing if one reads through some of whats been posted. I am one of the people with a LG display who has seen some IR in the rarest sense, but I have to go way out of my way on trying to reproduce it. I totally understand how people feel with legit complaints for issues that should be immediately serviced. I have 5 Apple stores in my neck of the woods, can't say with hands on of the MBPr units I have observed any real issues. Perhaps any units with a visable problem were yanked.

People are upset that Apple support doesn't have a consistent answer for this issue and isn't event officially acknowledging it. I personally feel that it is premature to blame Apple for that because this is a new product and these problems really have only come to the forefront in the past few weeks. I think in a month or two we should expect Apple to have a good response for this issue and if not, then it's time to elevate to a higher level of angst.

One thing thing that should be noted here is that a lot of Apple staff however experienced or certified don't have the background some of us have. Sometimes when you visit a store its like we are training them. 🙂

Aug 19, 2012 7:10 PM in response to bjiibj

Bjiibj,


Nobody posted "an opinion contrary to my own", they posted a "i wanna be sherif and tell you you can't post what you have posted here" Did you even read what has been written?? I actually have not posted a single opinion here, I posted a fact about my iPads and some people posted saying my post does not belong here, so do you want to check Oxford and compare and see where Censorship belongs? Also, distorting what is being discussed here, and what is going on (a clear attempt to censor certain types of posts) is nothinkg more than trolling as well.


Somebody else asked a link for my posts on the AVS:


Here it is:


http://www.avsforum.com/u/8038486/highdeath

Aug 19, 2012 7:13 PM in response to shayster98

shayster98 wrote:


Thanks Apples_8212! I guess even if it has no ghosting there's still a potential for it to develop, and the fact that the native white-point of the LG screen is also wrong deters me. (Although the LG floor sample in the Apple Store's color seemed fine to me, but there was no Samsung to compare it with. Furthermore, it even had IR.) Do you guys know how to get an advanced replacement and what really is it?



No offense intended, but I think this comment very succinctly represents the kind of illogical thinking that has been pervading some of the discussion here. To say that the LG looked fine to you but you can't conclude it really was good unless you had a Samsung to compare with means that you are assuming that the Samsung has a more correct color representation and that whatever difference you would have perceived between the LG and Samsung would have been chalked up to the LG being wrong when the Samsung was right. But what if it's the Samsung that is wrong? Without objective measurement by equipment made for the purpose of testing color accuracy, we can't really say which is better or worse. Maybe the Samsung has better color accuracy, or maybe not; I don't think anyone has presented any really compelling evidence either way. But people really do seem to be quickly jumping to conclusions about other ways in which the Samsung is better than the LG, even without any objective evidence. It seems that people are just looking for ways to dislike the LG just for further justification of the panel being inferior so that they have better reason to get Apple to replace them. Which I think is not really necessary because the image retention problem is all that we really need to feel confident that the displays have a problem and need to be replaced. And if you are an LG owner that doesn't have image retention or another real problem like dead pixels or white spots, I don't think you should feel like the display needs to be replaced just because it isn't a Samsung.

Aug 19, 2012 7:25 PM in response to High-Death

High-Death wrote:


Bjiibj,


Nobody posted "an opinion contrary to my own", they posted a "i wanna be sherif and tell you you can't post what you have posted here" Did you even read what has been written?? I actually have not posted a single opinion here, I posted a fact about my iPads and some people posted saying my post does not belong here, so do you want to check Oxford and compare and see where Censorship belongs? Also, distorting what is being discussed here, and what is going on (a clear attempt to censor certain types of posts) is nothinkg more than trolling as well.


Nobody can or did try to tell you that you can't post what you want. Some people expressed an opinion that certain posts were off-topic, but that's not censorship. Once again, look up the definition of censorship and stop throwing the word around incorrectly. Hint: nobody but Apple can censor this forum.

Aug 19, 2012 7:41 PM in response to bjiibj

Oh my... what you want, that I LIMIT myself to expressions like "make my posts look irrelevant", "judging and qualifying what I can and have written..." instead of censorhip? You just wish to make a trolling battle of technically adequate expressionsaccording to your ULTRA RELEVANT ENGLISH lesson in this discussion?? And again if I replied and said whatever I said to someone what do you have to do with that? Are you trying again to say what is adequate here and what is not, who are you to say that? Why don't you go take care of your own posts and your own replies instead of trying to become the new "english terminology pacifier" on the forum right now?


The discussion was even over, some dogs can't let the rest of the bone go...

Aug 19, 2012 8:42 PM in response to johns1

johns1,



johns1 wrote:


High-Death

DrAndyWright,

The Retina Display as any other LCD display from APPLE and most other brands nowadays is LED-Backlit display, all of them. therefore they all use phosphors and phosphors are responsible for ghosting, Image Retention, Flicks and some other issues related to PWM (Pulse-Width Modulation). I can link a post from the the AVS Forum where i discuss that if you want. But good that you now acknowledge, even if still in confusion, that IR is standard for LCDs.

The actual LCD doesn't utilize phosphors, while the LED backight light source does. I am not sure how you arrive at the conclusion that phosphors is responsible for ghosting and imaging retention with LCD panels.


reference LED Backlighting for LCDs: Options, Design Considerations, and Benefits


Now if one looks at the LCD image persistence (ghosting)tech note from Leveno, you can see they are discussing what actually causes IR.


"Generally (Twisted Nematic- TN type) LCDs have a parallel electrical field, so all of the display area can be symmetrically controlled. By comparison, IPS LCDs have asymmetrical electrical fields in some small areas, the image persistence phenomenon will occur at the asymmetrical electric fields. The image will dissipate during power off or by an image change in a short amount of time. This phenomenon is a natural characteristic of an IPS LCD."


IMHO both the LG AH-IPS and the Samsung ISP varient (PLS) would be subseptable to image persistance in varying degree's.


BTW I am a very old and active poster in AVSforums and go by a another handle. You have to take with a grain of salt whats posted there also. 😉

Your quote form my text clearly shows that I said that LED-Backlit displays use phophors, so you are just repeating what I said (and you even quoted) when you says that Led-Backlit LCD are the only ones that use phosphors. All APPLE LCDS are LED-Backlit, so therefore you are completely wrong when you say that the ACTUAL (that doesn't mean anything actually) LCD do not use phosphors. We are talking about Apple displays and the Retina Displays, and they all are Led-Backlit displays that use phosphors on the blue LED.


Oh and BTW, about your "this is what causes ghosting on LCD", LED-Backlit displays and LED displays came to reduce this "Image Persistance", the image persistance you are describing (or actually quoting from the article you linked) is not the persistance you are seeing here. That persistance is related to the active eletrical field that does not go off uniformly and then requires a CHANGE IN THE IMAGE or a complete TURN OFF of the display. This is not the case here, what everybody is describing is a Persistance where a retention of the image lasts for a while eventhough you TURN IT OFF, Change the picture OR NOT. It will dissipate by itself. Now read again your paper and see if this is the "Image Persistance" described there?? It is clearly not, but it is good that you acknowledge as well (like the Apple Geniuses said) that LCDs suffer from many kinds of "Image Retention"


Just to confirm every Apple display is Led-Backlit (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backlight):


In October 2008, Apple announced it will be using LED backlights for all its notebook and its new 24-inch Apple Cinema Display, and one year later it introduced a new LED iMac, meaning all of Apple's computer screens are now LED. Almost every laptop with 16:9 display introduced since September 2009 uses LED-backlit panels.


Where did I get to the conclusion that phosphors are resopnsible for ghosting??? Have you heard about plasma displays? If No, lets first quote Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Screen_burn-in):


With phosphor-based electronic displays (for example CRT-type computer monitors or plasma displays), non-uniform use of pixels, such as prolonged display of non-moving images (text or graphics), gaming, or certain broadcasts with tickers and flags, can create a permanent ghost-like image of these objects or otherwise degrade image quality. This is because the phosphor compounds which emit light to produce images lose their luminance with use. Uneven usage results in uneven light output over time, and in severe cases can create a ghost image of previous content. Even if ghost images are not recognizable, the effects of screen burn are an immediate and continual degradation of image quality.

The length of time required for noticeable screen burn to develop varies due to many factors, ranging from the quality of the phosphors employed, to the degree of non-uniformity of sub-pixel usage. It can take as little as only a few weeks for noticeable ghosting to set in, especially if the screen displays a certain image (example: a menu bar at the top or bottom of the screen) constantly, and displays it continually over time. In the rare case when horizontal or vertical deflection circuits fail, all output energy is concentrated to a vertical or horizontal line on the display which causes almost instant screen burn."


Then lets quote more form SAMSUNG:


Displaying stationary images that exceed the above guidelines can cause uneven
aging of LED Displays that leave subtle, but permanent burned-in ghost images in the LED picture.


We have already read about screen burn-in in the first quote, right? But one more interesting comment form the same article:



...This is partly because those screens displayed mostly non-moving images, and at one intensity: fully on. Yellow screens are more susceptible than either green or white screens because the yellow phosphor is less efficient and thus requires a higher beam current.



The Yellow phosphor is exactly the phosphor being used for the blue LED in theLED-backlit displays (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backlight):


A white LED is typically a blue LED with broad spectrum yellow phosphor to give the impression of white light. Since the spectral curve peaks at yellow, it is a poor match to the transmission peaks of the red and green color filters of the LCD. This causes the red and green primaries to shift toward yellow, reducing the color gamut of the display.



And about Flickering and PWM that I have said before (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LED-backlit_LCD_television):


"LED backlights are often dimmed by applying pulse-width modulation to the supply current, intended to switch the backlight off and on faster than the eye can perceive. If the dimming pulse frequency is too low or the user is very sensitive to flicker, this may cause discomfort and eye-strain, similar to the flicker of CRT displays at lower refresh rates.[citation needed] This can be tested by a user simply by waving a hand in front of the screen; if it appears to have sharply-defined edges as it moves, the backlight is pulsing at a fairly low frequency. If the object appears blurry, the display either has a continuously-illuminated backlight or is operating at a frequency too high to perceive. Flicker can be reduced or eliminated by setting the display to full brightness, though this gives worse image quality and increased power consumption."


And now about phosphors (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phosphor):


For white LEDs, a blue LED is used with a yellow phosphor, or with a green and yellow SiAlON phosphor and a red CaAlSiN3-based (CASN) phosphor.

The Yellow Phosphor:


(Y,Gd)3Al5O12:Ce3+


The Yellow Phosphor Persistence: MEDIUM



More about phosphors (http://www.wiley-vch.de/books/sample/3527314024_c01.pdf):


Here the excitation mechanism strongly resembles the one in

cathode ray phosphors. Phosphors for Light-Emitting Diodes (LEDs) and phosphors

for Plasma Display Panels (PDPs) are treated separately as well, the processes leading

to excitation and emission being comparable to those in fluorescent lamps.


Self-absorption is also an important loss factor in luminescent structures which do not effectively scatter the luminescence light. This is the case, e.g., in organic or inorganic LEDs, where trapping of light in the luminescent structure, followed by absorption of the light emitted in the luminescent material, strongly reduces the light output.


And a complete guide that explains the Decay time, ghosting, burn-in and Image persistance due to phosphors (you can read parts on the web):


http://books.google.com.br/books/about/Phosphor_Handbook.html?id=I9O1K20-uo4C&re dir_esc=y


Anything else?

MacBook Pro Retina display burn-in?

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