It is not the first time that we have told you about the most common problems that your television may have, such as blooming or the dirty screen effect (DSE). But today we do not want to explain other failures, but a vital protection system for your OLED Smart TV.
We talk about compensation cyclean essential process to extend the useful life of your OLED panel so that you can enjoy the best visual experience while avoiding the great Achilles’ heel of this technology: retention and burn-in problems.
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What is the compensation cycle
When you turn on an OLED TV for the first time, the picture quality will disappoint you. And it is whate it takes about 100 hours of use for the panel to settle and offer great quality, although after a couple of days of use and a couple of small compensation cycles, you will see the uniformity improve noticeably.
Although each manufacturer gives it a different name, for example LG calls it Pixel Refresherthe compensation cycle is a process that is done in all OLED televisions and that consists of adjusting the pixels so that they offer uniform lighting.
The particularity of the organic light emitting diode panels makes them very prone to retention and burn-in, which is why the manufacturers devised a solution to this problem: that the screen of your television adjusts every so often through a compensation cycle that regulates the uniformity of the image. This technology reduces the potential for retention when the screen image is fixed for a long time, for example with the logo of a chain, or the different indicators in a video game.
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How the compensation cycle works
This technology is very simple: periodically scans pixels to detect deterioration and compensate for pixel degradation through different mechanisms. In this way, retention or burning problems are avoided.
How a compensation cycle is activated
Notably All OLED Smart TVs activate a compensation cycle automatically every four hours of use. The moment you turn off the TV, it will start the cycle that will repair the pixels that are degrading to offer the best image quality at all times.
As well It’s important to do a full equalization cycle when your TV has more than 2,000 hours of cumulative use. Most models perform this process (which is much longer than the normal compensation cycle) after this usage time has passed, but you can refer to your model’s instructions for manual activation. We do not recommend it if you have not had more than 2,000 hours of use (about five hours a day for a year) since you can damage the panel with excessive use of this tool.
This full offset cycle will help your panel settle down and the voltage each pixel receives will be more even. CWith this it is possible to recover part of the detail in shadow, in addition to eliminating some banding and DSE.
If I play a lot how do I use the compensation cycle?
Here we invite you to take a walk through our guide with the first steps if you have an OLED Smart TV, but in summary, every two hours of play, the ideal would be to rest 10 minutes, turning off the TV to make its compensation cycle short.
Does the compensation cycle work with the TV off?
This is a very common mistake and one that we should avoid.. Do not unplug your television from the mains, as this prevents the compensation cycle from being done. It is true that turning on the TV will be done automatically, but better safe than sorry.
As you may have verified, the compensation cycle of an OLED Smart TV is an essential process to extend the life of the panel and guarantee the best picture experience, so don’t unplug your TV and let this technology do its work to always enjoy the best picture quality.
