Do you ever wonder what the pixel cleaning or pixel refresh option is on your fancy new OLED TV or monitor? Sadly, it doesn't Windex your screen for you, despite the name, but it could be the most important feature your display has, as it's crucial for mitigating a serious problem that's intrinsic to OLEDs.
Even if you're not an expert on displays, there's a good chance you've heard of burn-in, where ghostly visual artifacts stay on your screen if you've displayed a static image for too long. But here's the thing: burning is actually kind of a misnomer. It's not like something is literally burning after images into your screen. A better name for this phenomenon is image retention, and there are two types of image retention that pixel cleaning is supposed to help prevent.
The first is a more temporary issue. After leaving your display on for hours or even minutes, the little transistors that drive the pixels end up reacting differently to the same input voltage. As a result, some pixels...