LG embarrasses with OLED burn-in at SID tradeshow

LG's OLED TV on display in front of hundreds of industry associates at a prestigious industry tradeshow has shown signs of prominent burn-in, ZDNet has learned.

The permanent image retention, or burn-in, were clearly visible to visitors.

Officials of LG Display, which also had a separate booth at the tradeshow near the entrance, visited the Nanosys booth multiple times after the problem emerged and made inquiries to the company on the TV, they added.

The TV at most ran 50 to 60 hours prior to being displayed at the event.

This is not the first time LG's OLED TVs displayed publicly have shown signs of burn-in. The South Korean tech giant's new OLED TVs that were displayed at Incheon International Airport showed signs of burn-in after three months and were eventually replaced with LCD models.

For the past two years, sales of OLED TVs have gone up thanks to price-drops and increased offers from multiple vendors such as LG Electronics and Sony -- both companies get their OLED display panel supply from LG Display. Reports of burn-in have also concurrently risen.

Burn-in refers to permanent image retention, usually caused by leaving a static image on the screen for a long period of time.

TV reviews site RTings.com has been conducting a burn-in test on six 2017 OLED TVs since January this year. Uniformity issues were clearly visible after the four-week stage. LG engineers visited the site's lab and confirmed the issues were a result of a factory problem and that some panels were more prone than others.

The South Korean tech giant has denied the problem, saying its TVs can last 30,000 hours, or around 10 years with an average daily viewing of eight hours, without burn-ins.

LG was unavailable for comment.

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