Week 7

Chapter 17 in this week’s readings talked about the different display technologies in use today, and specifically on page 691 talks about OLED technology being a little bit of a niche product. I guess I can’t argue that the price-point of most of the OLED monitors and TVs kind of forces themselves into a niche corner, I am one of the lucky ones who have taken the plunge into OLED territory, and I don’t think I’ll be getting out of the pool any time soon.

As Meyers mentioned in the book, one of the issues that plagues OLED screens is burn-in. Back in the days with CRT burn in happened when a static image was left on a screen too long and started degrading the phosphorus coating on the screen which didn’t allow light to be absorbed as well. OLED burn-in is very similar in that the organic LEDs that are used more often will eventually not be able to produce as much light. In both cases, when burn-in occurs there will be a faint permanent ‘shadow’ on the screen wherever the phosphorus/pixels have degraded.

Since I got my first OLED monitor in 2022 this has been a topic I’ve been keeping an eye on closely and taking mitigating measures to extend the life of my display. I’ve turned off the background image and moved the taskbar and desktop icons to another (non OLED) display. Thankfully the room I use the monitor in has blackout curtains, so using the display at 10% brightness is also plenty bright for me (though I do crank the brightness when I’m playing games).

Though if this video by Hardware Unboxed is anything to go by, burn in, especially given my usage habits, may well never become an issue for me.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O2kPsKyF5bQ