Burn In

[CPickler]

Is there anything I can do to get rid of the burn in on my arcade monitor?  Or to at least lessen it?

[DaemonCollector]

Smoked glass in front of the monitor can reduce the burn in, but beyond that, I think all you can do is replace the tube.

[CPickler]

is it the tube that get's the image burned in on it, or is it the screen of the monitor?

[Ken Layton]

The inside face of the picture tube (the phosphors) are permanently burnt.

You can:

buy a new monitor

get a different used monitor

swap in a new or good used picture tube (time consuming)

use this monitor in a Sky Shark as it hides burn in during play

[CPickler]

what is a sky shark?

[tommy]

 Dont run your game when not playing to conserve the monitor picture, but its too late when its already burnt in.

[Ken Layton]

Sky Shark was a vertical conversion kit game board. It had some neat graphics that hide the monitor burn-in.

[Trimoor]

You could send the exact same signal that caused the burn, but inverted colors.  Leave it on for a few months and it should even out.

[CPickler]

few months..... lol

[paigeoliver]

You could send the exact same signal that caused the burn, but inverted colors.  Leave it on for a few months and it should even out.

More like a few years!

[DarkKobold]

This brings up a good question. Take for example Asteroids with its 1 COIN = 1 PLAY. Now, if I leave my asteroids on for around, 5 hours for every couple of weeks, when will the burn in get really bad? I really hate burn-in, especially on a good vector monitor!

[Stingray]

My Space Invaders cocktail has fairly significant burn-in. I have a sheet of tinted plexi in front of it, and you cannot see the burn in at all.

-S

[paigeoliver]

This brings up a good question. Take for example Asteroids with its 1 COIN = 1 PLAY. Now, if I leave my asteroids on for around, 5 hours for every couple of weeks, when will the burn in get really bad? I really hate burn-in, especially on a good vector monitor!

Home use games that aren't on all the time rarely get much (or any) burn in. Your home use asteroids is going to be on like 260 hours a year. An Asteroids on location is going to be on 5840 hours a year. See the massive difference. It will take you 20 years at home to match what that sucker was doing in one year on location, and your game was probably already on location for 4 years.

You can further reduce/eliminate future burn on dedicated games by mildly changing something like the screen height, width, or position every few months. Just move it a tad, now the same stuff will be displayed in a slightly different spot, so it will be burning away at that spot instead of the old one.