Comment by userbinator
20 hours ago
The Internet seems rather reluctant to explain what exactly "pixel cleaning" does, but based on the vague useless "explanations" I could find, I suspect it's a sort of "flat-field correction" where it calibrates the pixel drive current to darken the less worn and/or brighten the more worn ones so it eliminates the burn-in effect. This obviously leads to a vicious cycle where more worn pixels are driven harder and hence wear faster...
IMHO OLED is a planned-obsolescence dead-end anyway; LCDs can last literally decades, maybe with a backlight replacement, but OLEDs are designed to fail in a few years. I have a few (rather expensive) pieces of test equipment with OLEDs that became unreadable after only a few years and had to be replaced (fortunately with a regular LCD, and some firmware patching), while others with old-school CSTN/TN LCDs are still fine.
If OLEDs are 'designed to fail' they've certainly gone about it in a very roundabout way - there would be much easier ways to do planned obsolescence if that was actually the goal of display manufacturers.
I have a LG wallpaper TV 65" from 2021. I see no burn-in whatsoever. Once in a while it says "we will do the pixel refresher thing when you turn off the TV".
I'm pretty sure there's something to it but I'm no expert. Five years later and my TV is just fine.
A TV displays constantly changing images.
A monitor displays items that can stay fixed in place a long time, hours or even days.
Not the same at all.
OLEDS have two HUGE advantages over LCDs
Extremely accurate and vivid colors due to their low black level.
And VERY fast pixel response times, 0.01ms to 0.03ms compared to 1ms to 5ms for the fastest LCD gaming monitors.
Is is possible that some technologies could have longevity trade offs and not be "planned obsolescence"?
Pixel cleaning sounds little like blinker fluid to me...