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Do you ever wonder what the pixel cleaning or pixel refresh option is on your fancy

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new OLED TV or monitor? Sadly, it doesn't index your screen for you, despite the name, but it could be the

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most important feature your display has, as it's crucial for mitigating a serious problem

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that's intrinsic to OLEDs. Even if you're not an expert on displays, there's a good chance you've heard of

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Burn-In, where ghostly visual artifacts stay on your screen if you've displayed a static

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image for too long. But here's the thing, Burn-In is actually kind of a misnomer.

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It's not like something is literally burning after images into your screen, a better name

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for this phenomenon is Image Retention, and there are two types of image retention that

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pixel cleaning is supposed to help prevent. The first is a more temporary issue.

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After leaving your display on for hours or even minutes, the little transistors that

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drive the pixels end up reacting differently to the same input voltage.

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As a result, some pixels don't light up as evenly as they should, resulting in image

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retention. The good news is that this typically isn't too hard for modern OLED displays to correct.

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After a few hours of use, many displays will run a shorter pixel cleaning or compensation

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cycle that lasts a matter of minutes once you turn them off.

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What it's actually doing is adjusting how much current goes through the transistors

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so that they'll emit the proper amount of light the next time the TV's turned on.

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We should also point out that this temporary retention can also be a side effect of your

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display heating up from normal use.

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And if this is the case with your TV, you can usually resolve it just by turning it

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off for a little bit and letting it cool down, unless it's in a house with some evidence

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you need to get rid of. The second kind of retention is a result of the chemicals in the organic LEDs themselves

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degrading over time. This natural wear and tear is irreversible and doesn't happen evenly.

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Instead, which pixels degrade faster depends on exactly what is being shown on the screen,

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which is why static images can visibly damage your display if they're left up too long

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and too often. This means that the pixel cleaning cycles focused on permanent retention try to make

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up for uneven wear rather than truly restoring the pixels to their original state.

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This kind of compensation cycle takes a longer amount of time, sometimes an hour or more,

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and works by measuring how much each pixel has degraded so that the TV can drive it harder

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accordingly the next time you turn it on. The more a pixel has worn down, the more current it needs to reach its proper brightness.

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Typically TVs won't do this until they've been used for quite a while, such as a couple

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thousand hours. But confusingly, displays differ as to what they'll call their short and long pixel cleaning

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features, so be sure to check your products on-screen instructions or user manual to

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figure out which is which if you have a display that allows you to run a refresh cycle manually.

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And don't run the longer refresh too often, as you don't want to start driving your pixels

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harder unless you have to. Plenty of modern displays are smart enough to do this automatically at the correct intervals

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once the display is turned off, so our advice is to only manually run the long compensation

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cycle if you can visibly see there's a problem.

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And of course, it helps if you don't watch cable news, for more reasons than one.

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And I have to thank you for watching this whole video instead. Hey, like the video if you liked it, dislike it if you disliked it.

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The buttons, not just the emotions, although you can do those too.

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