Does the Tivo Premiere have a screen saver?

Unless you pause a recording or live tv, it should always timeout to live tv after a short period (they seem to change this all the time so I'm not sure what the current timeout value is). Most modern plasmas no longer have the problem with permanent burning images to the screen. TiVo has been against screensavers so I doubt we will ever see one.

I have a Plasma (Panasonic) from 2010, and it has, built-in, a screen randomizer, that automatically moves a select group of pixels each time period, to make sure that the screen doesn't burn in. So, even if the Tivo display is static, the screen never is. And no, I can't tell that Pixels are being changed and moved even as I watch it.

So, the answer is that it depends on the age of the Plasma you have, and do you have that feature with your plasma, and if you do, did you make sure you enabled it? If you do, and you did enable it, you don't need a Tivo screen saver.

Margaret, I would NOT depend on any of the built in so called screen saver options on your Panny. I also have a 2010 Panny plasma and have some permanent burn in.
I happens.

I WANT MORE said:

Margaret, I would NOT depend on any of the built in so called screen saver options on your Panny. I also have a 2010 Panny plasma and have some permanent burn in.
I happens.

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Any plasma from the last several years shouldn't have burn in unless you got the burn in induring the first 100 hours of using it. After that break in period, there shouldn't be permanent burn in.

Agreed, I also have an S2 model 2010 Panny plasma and have never had burn-in, even with the screen left static for an hour or more.

But it's kind of silly that Tivo has never provided a screensaver as an option, live TV can be a pain in the butt. Replays did it, fer cryin out loud. There's one built into Pandora on the Tivo too.

slowbiscuit said:

Agreed, I also have an S2 model 2010 Panny plasma and have never had burn-in, even with the screen left static for an hour or more.

But it's kind of silly that Tivo has never provided a screensaver as an option, live TV can be a pain in the butt. Replays did it, fer cryin out loud. There's one built into Pandora on the Tivo too.

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Live TV is a perfectly valid screensaver function, I can't see a reason for Tivo to reinvent the wheel when they have a perfectly fine functioning wheel already

The TiVo will dim the screen if you pause or stay in the menus for a period of time. I don't know what that period of time is exactly, however. Maybe 5 minutes or so.

Edit: I just ran a test and it looks like that after about 7 minutes the Tivo slowly dims the screen. If you are watching you can actually see it dimming.

rainwater said:

Any plasma from the last several years shouldn't have burn in unless you got the burn in induring the first 100 hours of using it. After that break in period, there shouldn't be permanent burn in.

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Wrong. I broke my set in with nothing but colored slides for 200 hours before it saw an image.
2 hours of my Son playing PS3 left a permanent score guide along the bottom.
There are many many cases of this. Just read the AVS forum.
You do as you please, I'm just saying it happens.

dianebrat said:

Live TV is a perfectly valid screensaver function, I can't see a reason for Tivo to reinvent the wheel when they have a perfectly fine functioning wheel already

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Your opinion, certainly not shared by all. It's quite jarring to have it go into live TV if someone turned up the volume by accident or otherwise. Not to mention that you could've been recording on both tuners and now you've possibly gotten a spoiler on one of the shows/events.

A screensaver is such a simple thing to do, but this is another case of Tivo knowing what's best for the user.

slowbiscuit said:

Your opinion, certainly not shared by all. It's quite jarring to have it go into live TV if someone turned up the volume by accident or otherwise. Not to mention that you could've been recording on both tuners and now you've possibly gotten a spoiler on one of the shows/events.

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I know a quick solution to your above problems...turn the tv off!

rifleman69 said:

I know a quick solution to your above problems...turn the tv off!

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Yeah, but it's really annoying to keep turning my tv (and receiver) off and on when I want to leave the room for 10 mins or so. I agree with Slowbiscuit. The Premiere should have a built in screensaver and live tv doesn't cut it for the reason he pointed out.

dianebrat said:

Live TV is a perfectly valid screensaver function, I can't see a reason for Tivo to reinvent the wheel when they have a perfectly fine functioning wheel already

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If you have the TiVo on a channel with a particularly bright logo, it can and will cause some screen burn-in on a plasma, so "live TV" isn't really a solution to this.

A screensaver is trivial to add to software, can be an option so that those who don't want it don't have to use it, and would save Plasma owners some headaches. Some of the very finest displays available right now are Plasmas and, if a user is not careful can still get some semi-permanent burn in that can take dozens of hours of running "screen wipe" utilities to get rid of.

Is dimming the screen not considered a screensaver? As I mentioned earlier, the dimming works when a video is paused for an extended period of time. It appears that the TiVo automatically exits menus after about 10 minutes and goes back to live TV, which is the screensaver.

As for channel bugs, they aren't that bright anymore (mostly) and do not stay on the screen all the time. For at least 18 to 20 minutes of every hour the bug isn't displayed on most channels.

As others have mentioned, if you are going to be away from your TV for so long that it exits the menus to live TV and then stays on a channel long enough to cause burn-in then you should just turn the TV off.
It should take days, not hours, of displaying a static image to cause burn-in. If you have burn-in issues after just a few hours you need to adjust your set.