I heard someone at Dish say that because the buffer is only an hour long, the program will begin playing at the paused point before burning occurs. Sounds a bit lame, but it does make some sense as it should take several hours of continued image to burn in. Watching a channel with an always present bug for an hour should NOT be a problem for any HDTV, even plasmas, but watching that same channel for an hour over many days could present a problem However, worse is the my Hopper will NOT auto shut off at 4 hours as I have set it, but all my Joeys will auto shut off after the 4 hours I've set.
I don' t think leaving it paused on a program should give one a burned image problem because the image one is pausing always changes, as live TV is ever changing as is what we watch from the Recordings list. However, the EPG could, over time, be the real problem because one is always recalling that very same image (at least the portions that are static) again and again over a great period. I would suggest the Disney WOW blu-ray which as a section to get rid of burnt images, but it does require many hours of uninterrupted play.