• Do your DVDs work on all TVs?
  • Do your DVDs show as letterbox?
  • What is your refund policy?
  • Will your DVDs work in any country?
  • You said this is the full screen version, but I still have black bars on my TV.
  • What is the deal?
  • Will your DVDs cause burn in on my Plasma or LCD TV?
  • Is Plasma Candy art?
  • What’s our motivation?

 

Do your DVDs work on all TVs?

Yes. We created all of our ambient DVDs to take full advantage of both standard and widescreen TVs. If you have the black bars on your screen, please refer to question #5.

Do your DVDs show as letterbox?

Letterbox is when it shows annoying black bars on the top and bottom of the screen. The answer is no. Our DVDs display “Full Screen.” This ensures that no matter what size or format TV you have the picture will fill your entire screen and look beautiful. If you have the black bars on your screen, please refer to question #5.

What is your refund policy?

If you are not 100% satisfied for any reason we will issue you a complete refund (less shipping). Simply ship your DVD to:

Plasma Candy Returns
1603 N. 19th Street
Tampa, FL 33605

We will issue you a refund after receiving your DVD. If it has a manufacturing issue, please contact us.

Will your DVDs work in any country?

Yes. Our DVDs have been code Region 0, so they will play in multiple machines around the world.

You said this is the full screen version, but I still have black bars on my TV. What is the deal?

There are two basic aspect ratios 16:9 (widescreen) and 4:3 (standard) so look for these while you are searching your DVD player’s menu. We shot the DVD in Anamorphic, which will allow it to switch between 16:9 and 4:3 formats without any issues.

If you are getting the black bars at the top and bottom of your TV screen, you will need to access your dvd player’s menu (found on the remote). On your DVD player menu there should be an option to change the format (aspect ratio) so that the DVD displays properly on your screen without the black bars. This is how our DVDs are able to play on both widescreen and regularly formatted TVs.

This DVD has been tested in a wide variety of widescreen and standard screen TVs and displays full screen on both TV formats.

Will your DVDs cause burn in on my Plasma or LCD TV?

We’ve been selling these DVDs for years now and haven’t had a problem yet. However, we do recommend people not play it for longer than 2-3 hours in a row.

Here is some more information on burn in:

How Do I Prevent Burn-In?

It is rather simple to prevent the burn-in effect from occurring to your plasma.

  1. Calibrate your display. It is difficult to overestimate the importance of this step. Most TVs come from the store with their brightness and contrast set way too high in order to show good in the display room. Get yourself AVIA or DVE (Digital Video Essentials) DVD, and you’ll have a nicely calibrated set in less than 15 minutes.
  2. Do not watch any 4:3 or 2.35:1 content during the first 100 hours of use. Most damage is done to the brand-new plasmas by inexperienced users. Plasmas are most susceptible to burn-in during the first 100 hours, and much more burn-in resistant after 1000 hours of use.
  3. Restrict non-full-screen programming to 20% until 1000 hours. Plasma manufacturers also recommend limiting viewing of 4:3 or 2.35:1 programming to about 20% of overall viewing time after the first 100 hours and until 1000 hours. After that, your plasma is much less likely to take burn-in. Try watching 4:3 content in “stretched” or “fair” (“just”) mode that fills the entire screen.
  4. While your plasma is new, turn down the contrast (sometimes called “picture”, which refers to white level, or the brightness of light areas of the picture). A new plasma TV is much more likely to take damage from displaying static elements such as logos or teletext. Reducing overall contrast (this controls white levels, and is called “picture” on some displays) helps reducing the possibility of those static elements to burn in.
  5. Switch channels to avoid logo burn-in. Avoid extended viewing of broadcasts with non-transparent logos or where the screen is divided into fixed parts (such as teletext or weather reports) all the time. These logos or teletext lines may imprint into your plasma, causing burn-in.
  6. Use grey bars instead of black. Some plasma displays allow using color bars instead of black for 4:3 programming. This may greatly reduce the burn-in effect.
  7. Enable pixel shifting. Many plasmas offer pixel shifting, otherwise referred as “wobulation” technique, in order to reduce the effect of burn-in. Enabling this feature may decrease the effect of burn-in by “smoothing” the borders between bright and dark parts of the image. This feature alone will not prevent your display from burning in, however, because larger dark and bright parts of the screen will mostly remain where they are, thus causing an after-image with slightly blurred borders.
  8. If your DVD player has a screen saver and auto-shutdown feature, turn it on. This helps a great deal saving you from burn-in resulting from paused movies (screen saver) or disk menus (auto-off).
  9. If seeing early signs of image retention, run a screen saver on your plasma. New plasmas are likely to display non-permanent image retention after displaying a still image or a still element, such as a logo. Chances are great that this effect will disappear by itself after you watch a different channel (remember using full-screen “stretch” mode) for some time, or if you engage a special burn-in reduction screen saver, if your plasma has it. Please refer to your plasma documentation to find if your TV has a screen saver. Many plasmas don’t have it.

Seems complicated? It is not! Here’s the list once again:

While your plasma is new:

  1. Reduce contrast
  2. Avoid content that does not fill entire screen (leaves black bars) for the first 1000 hours
  3. Switch channels from time to time
  4. If seeing any signs of image retention, run a screen saver on your plasma

Always:

  1. Use grey bars instead of black
  2. On your plasma, keep pixel shifting enabled
  3. On your DVD player, keep screen saver and auto-shutdown enabled
  4. Calibrate your display to avoid unnecessary high brightness and contrast levels

 

Is Plasma Candy Art?

While we feel Plasma Candy will continue to develop as an art form when video interpretations are displayed on large television canvases, we are not comfortable referring to our own work in that way. We just know when we finish a project or capture a beautiful scene, we see and feel something we want to share.

 

What’s Our Motivation?

It changed. In the beginning it was to prove that simple scenes could be shot in a better, more professional way. However, as we’ve become more involved it has become clear that you can’t study or film a subject truthfully without capturing a piece of you. A beautiful reef tank increases in beauty when you know the owner’s passion and how they’ve spent thousands in fish, plants, coral and knowledge to build it.

We want to respect that and help highlight it while making a great final product for you to enjoy.