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Plasma screens can suffer from "screen burn" if parts of the screen always show the same image. An impression of that image can become burnt into the screen.
Screen burn is less likely on LCD panels.
Many plasma screens have their own built-in burn mitigation features and these should be activated. If, however, you wish to take further steps to mitigate the problem then you need to either change the background image or the layout at regular intervals and/or use the plasma burn mitigation mechanism built into the NTB.
Any Layout on the NTB can have plasma burn mitigation enabled. This will cause the zones within the Layout to change location at regular intervals. The zones can flip position horizontally (A), vertically (B) or be set to "orbit" around the screen (C).
All zones will move in the above manner, it is not possible to keep some zones stationary.
Switching the plasma burn mitigation on in a Net-Top-Box is simply a matter of ticking the box at the bottom of each Layout Editor page. You may also want to change the default mode and interval. The mode is to either swap zone positions vertically, horizontally or in combination.
Note that all playlists will start from the top when the positions are moved so don't make the interval shorter than your longest playlist.
The overall objective in Plasma burn mitigation is to avoid leaving any one pixel on the screen at the same colour and intensity for long periods of time. Even 30 minutes is too long. Static elements in the screen image, such as a logo, heading or background are the main culprits. Those parts of the screen image that vary continuously and randomly, such as video or slide shows are not cause for concern. Having said that, many TV stations place a logo (or bug) over their video and this can cause a problem.
Digital signage, by nature of the fact that much of the screen is providing static information, presents more of a plasma burn issue than does using the plasma as a TV.
The plasma burn mitigation strategy, therefore, must be to move, at regular intervals, the static zones of the image to other locations.
The tricky part is to design a Layout such that the overall image continues to appear normal after the zones have moved into new positions.
If you have a fullscreen zone then the plasma burn mitigation feature is not going to have any effect, this discussion is only relevant to a multi-zone layout. The assumption is that there is a background zone with several foreground zones floating over it.
If the background is plain then there is not much of a problem - just make sure that the foreground zones will, at some point, obscure every part of the background.
If, however, the background image has features that relate to the zones above it: a box, for example that makes a frame around scrolling text, or words that must always be seen (such as zones 5 and 6 in the diagram); then this type of feature is going to have to move in conjunction with the foreground zone above it.
The way to make the background image move in conjunction with the various zones above it is to break the background up into a number of background zones that together cover the whole screen area and to then break the background image up into matching rectangles. The various parts of the background image are then playlisted individually in their relevant zones.
This does not complete the story, however, because the foreground zones may not necessarily retain the relative positions to the background zones. The only way to ensure that a foreground zone retains it's position relative to its background it is to position it such that it's centre is exactly above the centre of the background zone. In other words, there must be the same number of pixels between the left edge of the background zone and the left edge of the foreground zone as there are pixels between the right edge of the foreground zone and the right edge of the background zone. Similarly, the gap above the foreground zone must be the same size as the gap below it.
Remember that you can also program the NTB to turn the display off at certain times of day. Go to the "Settings | Display Settings" web page on the NTB. Set "Display Off" as the default and then add "Display On" periods for the times and days of week that the plasma must be active.