I've read somewhere that "negligent viewing of widescreen materials" will cause screen burn - like those station logos at the upper corner of the screen.

Does anybody know FOR SURE if this is true?

To me, it seems that when the CRT perceives a black signal, it just turns off that area of the screen.

So...?

It still projects "black".

That is, if your set is calibrated to produce deep blacks, you shouldn't have a problem.

If you have your set turned up very bright, the black bars might actually be grey, so they cause burn in.

On a properly callibrated set, the black bars from letterboxing shouldn't cause any burn in. The real danger comes from anything that is bright and stationary like DVD menus or video games.

------------------
...post game show is brought to you by,......Christ I can't find it. To hell with it!

Actually the deeper the blacks of the letterbox bars, you're probably even in more danger of burn-in - if I'm not mistaken any burn-in is caused by a difference in the aging of phosphors from one part being constently brighter than another. Sorry I can't describe it better than that...I'm not an expert. But this is why some sets have the capability of displaying a grey signal in the unused screen area to protect from burn-in. My set does this when I put it in 16x9 mode (it's a 4:3 HD-ready model).

Like Green Jello mentioned, the calibration can help a lot. Interestingly, I recently had a repair done on my set. I asked the technician if he'd ever seen an instance of burn-in. He said only once, and it was a station bug burned into a tube TV. I took this as good news, as most RPTVs are delivered and left on torch mode, with the brightness, sharpness, contrast all turned up to 100% If you turn them down to a more reasonable setting or use Avia or Video Essentials to calibrate you're probably not in much danger.