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Sony Launches 3mm Thin XEL-1 OLED TV

Posted by kdawson on Mon Oct 01, 2007 07:06 AM
from the techno-lust dept.
Sony Media Television Hardware
i4u writes "Sony introduces their first commercial OLED TV, the XEL-1. The stunning XEL-1 is what Sony teased on Friday on their site in Japan. The XEL-1 is an 11-inch display that is only 3 mm thin. It features a dramatic 1,000,000:1 contrast ratio and the power consumption is a low 45 W. Sony plans to start shipping the XEL-1 OLED TV on December 1 for 200,000 Yen (~$1,740). Here is Sony's OLED TV product page (in Japanese)."
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Submission: Sony launches 3mm thin XEL-1 OLED TV by i4u (234028)
[+] Sony Shows Off Flexible OLED Screens At CES 150 comments
An anonymous reader writes "Sony's stand at CES had a small area set aside for flexible OLED screens, along with three mock-ups of possible OLED devices (including one stunning ultra-portable with no hinge and a single display for both screen and keyboard). There was also a working OLED screen being bent back and forth while playing a video clip. Does this mean roll-up, low-power colour screens will soon hit the market? Not unless OLED prices come down — Sony's stunning XEL-1 OLED TV costs $2,500, but only has an 11in screen ..."
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Sony Launches 3mm Thin XEL-1 OLED TV 50 Comments More /

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    1. get defects per sq/in down
    2. drop prices, increase screen sizes
    3. Profit!

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by dal20402 (895630) *

        Seconded! At first I read the summary and thought 'SHIT THIS SOUNDS FUCKING AMAZING'

        Also at only 11" what use is it to anyone?

        Do you have a single brain cell? The summary quite clearly said the display was 11".

        They will have to film everything really zoomed in to compensate for this appalling oversight. Its typical Sony this, they design something thats good on paper, but when the final product comes out it is blighted by a terrible design flaw

        Since there's obviously no use for a gorgeous 11" display anywhere, you're obviously right. All those people installing displays in airplanes, cars, and, um, LAPTOPS must have overlooked something fundamental.

        I haven't seen a more moronic post on Slashdot in years. That includes the goatse trolls.

  • Lifespan? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by tgd (2822) on Monday October 01 2007, @07:11AM (#20808611)
    I didn't see any mention of the lifespan of the OLED screen?

    Has something changed recently, or is the TV likely to start looking funny in a year when the blue fades?

    • Re:Lifespan? (Score:5, Informative)

      by MLCT (1148749) on Monday October 01 2007, @07:35AM (#20808771)
      Lifespans are at acceptable consumer grade (25,000-50,000 hours+ - equivalent to a modern CRT). The big manufacturers don't put these into production lines without the consumer lifespans being hit - part of the reason that it has taken until 2007 for oleds to move beyond mp3 display screens Polymer OLED's (a different technology from what Sony are using) are a bit behind, CDT were reporting blue lifetimes of 6,000-10,000 hours (red and green are fine). That is a bit understandable though, as polymer oled technology is newer and less well developed than small molecule vacuum deposition oleds (what sony and almost everyone else are using).
      • I wish I could moderate a discussion I posted in -- thats the answer I was looking for.

        Thanks.

    • This actually makes sense for their target market:

      Males who are old enough to have that much money to spend on todays. Sony is relying on the blue drop-out to compensate for the effects of Viagra [newscientist.com].

      • Actually, its an important question, and in the best of cases OLED lifetime is far less than a CCFL. The problem I was talking about (which another poster addressed in a useful manner) is that blue dyes were an order of magnitude shorter lifespan than red and green -- to the point where in a year or two there would be noticeable changes in the color balance of the screen.

        Thats why I was asking what had changed, but thanks for your attempt to appear like you have knowledge on the subject.

        • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

          by Guspaz (556486)
          It is, of course, possible to compensate by simply adjusting the colour balance to compensate. The colour balance would become corrected at the expense of overall display brightness.

          I think, though, that this is an important first step; for years we've been waiting for large commercial OLEDs to become available. Now, they finally are, with this small first step. Now we'll start to see larger and cheaper screens slowly develop, until we can finally get "big screen TVs" that use OLEDs.

          In addition, at 11 inche

  • RJ45? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by thatskinnyguy (1129515) on Monday October 01 2007, @07:14AM (#20808643)
    Did anyone else notice the RJ45 jack on the back? What's that for? Built-in Tivo perhaps?

  • How do you get a rootkit (Score:5, Funny)

    by Timo_UK (762705) on Monday October 01 2007, @07:16AM (#20808659) Homepage
    into such a slim screen ;-)

  • Very nice, but... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Aphrika (756248) on Monday October 01 2007, @07:17AM (#20808669)
    ...what about that honking great ugly box at the bottom of it that's way bigger than 3mm deep and obviously has to sit under the TV?

    Granted, it's cool that Sony have developed an OLED TV, but sorry I don't see the point of having a wafer thin screen when the base unit looks like a brick. If you could remotely stick the box somewhere else and wallmount the TV that'd be nice, but from what I can tell, you can't.
    • This is obviously meant to showcase the technology, not to sell that TV. The publicity they'll get off this is more than worth the time they spent making it, AND they'll probably make the R&D back on the few who buy the 11" version.

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      I lived in Japan for a while and Sony actually does this with some frequency, they'll release very high end, extremely expensive kit that isn't designed optimally yet because it's cutting edge, first generation to market. I don't think I ever saw any of these items ever make it to US shores, because they had refined the design by the time it was low enough cost to be marketable in the US.

      The image on these things is simply amazing, and makes it hard to return to your LCD. People buying this are buying it fo
    • Well good grief... it's the first of its kind. The first of everything is usually not the way things will be in a few years. I remember the first CD players - they were all vertical load (I guess cause it was cool looking) but not long afterward they were all flat-tray load.
      • The screen is only 11 inches. It's tiny! It's tinier than the old, old 14-inch computer screens!

        The box below is like half the size of an ordinary keyboard, or something like that.

        How they plan to charge $1,740 for 11 inches is beyond me. I know Japanese people like things small and dainty, and need small stuff for small apartments, but aren't they exaggerating here?

      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        by Lisandro (799651)
        It's not that big - in fact, if you'd place it on the back of the device it wouldn't be much bigger that a regular LCD display. My guess the point of it is to emphasize the thinness of the device, even when it's due of moving the bulk of it somewhere else :) OLED displays can be very thin though, since you don't need then glass substrates and polarizers required for LCDs and such.
  • The thin part is great, but they need to find a way to produce OLEDs TVs that are bigger. Even for hard core geeks like me, I don't want an 11 inch TV. And it's hard to produce a 42" OLED.
    • But 11" is already a HUGE step from the cell-phone display-size stuff that was available up to now.
    • can't they just make a ~42" TV by putting 16 of these 11" one's together. :)

      • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

        by MLCT (1148749)
        It actually does make a lot of sense. Current OLED's have the same limitations of size as LCD (namely everything is restricted by the largest shadow mask you can use) as they are vacuum deposited small molecules. Even with this limitation you have much superior contrast ratios (the screen itself luminescences, it is not filtering a backlight) and perfect 180x180 degree visibility (lcd have made some progress in that department but they still aren't all that good). Plasmas consume a lot of electricity and
      • Somewhere along the way someone probably said the same thing about the cathode ray tube and LCD panels. Doesn't matter, if it looks better, uses less power, and runs cooler, I'll buy at least one. I don't think the average person cares much at all about 'intended use', it's more simple than that - if it can be done, people will do it.

  • my 2$ (Score:3, Interesting)

    by apodyopsis (1048476) on Monday October 01 2007, @07:30AM (#20808739)
    stuff it in a laptop, the thinness, lightness and power consumption is a sure winner there.
    ditto mobile multimedia.

    for domestic consumer electronics the thinness is irrelevant except for high end concept ware where people are willing to pay through the nose.

    the thinness is also irrelevant if it has to be stuck on an ungly base unit (see TFA) for real jawdropping effect it should be displayed by itself with a well hidden cable in the support going to a much better hidden base unit in the wall, furniture or somewhere else.

    still on the plus side the contrast and brightness sure looks good. hope it still stays that could and does not get destroyed by direct sunlight a few months after purchase.

    • stuff it in a laptop, the thinness, lightness and power consumption is a sure winner there.

      I'm not sure about that; 45 W seems rather much. My current laptop normally draws a total of ~20 W, and that includes any power used by the rest of the system as well (not just the display).

      In my mind, it's great that Sony has finally managed to get an OLED TV to the market at all. Because of that, efficiency in production and display specifications will hopefully increase faster than before, when it was mostly a product under research. Well, you can't blame me for hoping, at least. :)

  • Power consumption? (Score:5, Informative)

    by hatchet (528688) on Monday October 01 2007, @07:33AM (#20808757) Homepage
    "and the power consumption is a low 45 W"
    Current laptop 17" LCDs have power consumption around 15W or so.
      • I think an entire 17" notebook might consume 45W and does a heck of a lot more than just display an image.

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by afidel (530433)
        My 42" LCD TV(which is 16x larger) uses 170W max, so about 4.25x more efficient per area. Now some of that power draw is constant since things like a tv tuner take a relatively fixed amount of power.

  • low power ? (Score:5, Informative)

    by Eivind (15695) <eivindorama@gmail.com> on Monday October 01 2007, @07:36AM (#20808783) Homepage
    45W from an 11inch display is not, by a long shot, low-power. If that scales linearily with screen real-estate, then that is equivalent to 600W for a 40 inch (the current top-seller size), which is aproximately 3 times the power used by an average flat-screen TV of that size sold currently.
    • I don't know much about electronics, but not everything scales linearly. Perhaps out of that 11W there is a baseline, like a processors + red LED light (showing it's on) + infrared sensor + etc. So maybe only portion would have to increase x-times as the size increases?
  • Quote from the linked article: "This is a very high price for an 11 inch TV, but it is the first OLED TV to buy. Early adoption always had its price."

    I guess that sentence is trying to sell people on the idea that early adoption is acceptable, even if the price is 20 times higher than earlier equipment with the same functionality.

    I will wait to buy it until it has DTT [washingtonpost.com]. (Digital Turnip Twaddling)
  • (note: subject is actually a question ... ?)

    I'd like to damn well think the blacks are good anyhow.
    I'm a die hard CRT lover, I've detested the quality of the picture on LCD's for a long long time, I guess you could say I'm a videophile.

    All that being said, I only just recently caved, yes I've caved, even CRT lover dan at dansdata has caved.
    I picked up a Dell 2407 WFP HC screen, which apparently does colours quite well.

    I purchased this because for 3 years people have been proclaiming how good LCD's are now and how widescreen is the future, how ghosting is a thing of the past, viewing angles aren't a worry, scaling with fixed pixel width is fine and blacks levels are fine on modern LCD's

    Well, I'm one person who has purchased a product who has the balls to speak the truth rather than defend my money spent.
    Firstly, I love widescreen, it's bloody awesome, period - great stuff.
    I LOVE the extra desk space!
    Fixed pixel width is certainly not bugging me in games anywhere near as much as I thought it would and I don't change resolution often in Windows anyhow (I guess I used to with my CRT)
    Refresh rates and ghosting is right on the limit, it's not ideal but it's certianly nothing to fret about either.

    However....

    Black levels and viewing angles are ok now? - I think not people, I think not.
    In bright games, the picture quality, coupled with the widescreen awesomeness of above, lovely stuff, just lovely.
    I tried Oblivion though and in the caves, oh those caves, I felt the 'silverfish' effect - the blacks shimmer and refract light or something die to viewing angle nastyness.
    The picture, quite literally reminded me of waking up in the morning with sleep in the corners of my eyes, I found myself rubbing my left eye constantly to try and remove said sleep.
    Clearly I couldn't, it wasn't actually there, infact within about 30 minutes of playing, I simply couldn't play anymore.
    I was shocked, I am not the headache type or the motion sickness type but this was quite literally making me irritated, not sick but I couldn't play due to the distraction in the corner of the display (both left and right)
    The viewing angles are simply too tight for this monitor, the solution of course is to sit futher away, however why would I want to? This is why I purchased a huge 24" monitor, so that the picture is immersive and great, not something I push to the far edge of my desk, otherwise it's just too small again.

    I've also tried Half Life 2 - the black scenes in that do the same thing, I honestly do not know how people play any dark games on an LCD at all, it's simply not a pleasant experience.
    In some regards I miss my 22" CRT, it was a high end tube, did over 100hz at 1600x1200, some ridiculous figures at 1024 (140+ etc)

    So ultimately, my question is or rather my demand is, does OLED solve these issues?
    I've heard it does, but does it REALLY? LCD is (according to THOUSANDS of people on the web) apparently "as good or better" than CRT now (I beg to differ)

    If I could just solve that issue with the shimmery blacks, I'd be fine but until then, for true videophiles, I just can't recommend an LCD still, hence me having a near 200lb CRT beast in the loungeroom as a television.

    Help me OLED, you're my only hope.

    • Re:That contrast ratio implies the blacks are good (Score:5, Informative)

      by wrmrxxx (696969) on Monday October 01 2007, @08:18AM (#20809149)
      An LCD shows a black pixel by trying (not quite successfully as it turns out) to block out the light from a bright white back-light behind it. An OLED shows a black pixel by just not turning on the pixel - there's no back-light to try to hide because the pixels themselves are the light emitters. You can reasonably expect an 'off' pixel to be as black as the whole display is when it is switched off.

    • Re:That contrast ratio implies the blacks are good (Score:4, Informative)

      by Cowclops (630818) on Monday October 01 2007, @01:12PM (#20813439)
      There are in fact two relevant contrast ratios to consider. One is the ratio between the brightest white it can display in a full screen and the darkest black it can display full screen. The other is the ratio between the white and black when both are displayed simultaneously.

      What people don't realize (because CRTs typically don't include contrast specs) is that while a CRT can achieve ~15,000:1 dynamic contrast (i.e. the ratio between an all white and an all black screen), the reality is when you put both black and white together, one washes the other one out. CRTs, in actuality, can't do much more than about 500:1 contrast.

      The key point is that dynamic contrast is not a bullshit marketing term. The reason CRTs have apparently great black levels is because their dynamic contrast is much higher than that of LCD screens. An LCD with a panel contrast of 1000:1 and no other backlight tricks will have a dynamic contrast of 1000:1. Thats why in bright-overall scenes, it looks GREAT, but in dark scenes it washes out. In bright scenes on an LCD vs a CRT, you're basically comparing ansi contrast to ansi contrast, and LCD can get ~1000:1 with no washout. A CRT can't. In dark screens, an LCD can't make quite as dark blacks, so you're now comparing dynamic vs dynamic contrast. The CRT could pull in 15,000:1, but the LCD is still stuck at 1,000:1.

      Current displays improve this by varying the intensity of the light source, then stretching the brightness of an average-dark image to maintain the full panel contrast. That way, you can get the full ansi contrast over a wider range of actual brightness values. It looks like current LCD monitors vary the black light to increase dynamic contrast from 1000:1 to 3000:1, and LCD projectors can open and close an aperture in the lens to jack dynamic contrast up to 10,000:1.

      The point is, there are two types of contrast. LCD beats the crap out of CRT in one type, but CRT beats the crap out of LCD in the other type. Neither specs are marketing BS, and you need to know both to understand how contrasty a screen will look in practice.

  • Analysis (Score:5, Insightful)

    by suv4x4 (956391) on Monday October 01 2007, @07:48AM (#20808869)
    1. They will produce only 2000 of those per year.
    2. The product for OLED was selected not to be practical but newsworthy. Everyday Joe cares about TV-s, although he won't buy this one, he'll read about it, so newspapers will write about it. Consider: OLED has shorter pixel life and wastes less power than LCD+light. Where is this useful? Laptops (limited energy and no constant use). Where is it harmful? TV-s (constant use and unlimited AC power).
    3. The design is made to impress, not be practical. Notice they put the tuner down in an ugly box to show off the very thin OLED display (no backlight). Notice the off-center hinge, designed to stress how light the screen is (puts unneeded stress, however small, on the materials).

    Bottom line is, of course, great that someone is pushing OLED for something bigger than a camera preview screen. But it's NOT mass produced product. They make just few units, to make the news.

    It's a product straight from the PR department. I suspect Sony Rolly will have similar fate.

    Those aren't products made to sell, they're made to rebuild the image of Sony as the cool tech company. However, years ago they were the cool tech company which mass produced goods that are at the same practical, high tech, and luxury.

    Those new gadgets don't send the same message. Wish them good luck with this, maybe if they keep producing gadgets like those at this pace, at some point they'll hit a homerun again...
    • Why aren't they made to sell? Since it's actually available to consumers, this is more than just proof of concept. After all, a product's existence is eventually determined by market's demand, and its price will be determined by the increase in scale of production and improved manufacturing techniques. Take a look at LCD/Plasma TV prices and sales levels Pre Y2K; OLED may follow the same path. Whether or not that technology will do so, however, willd depend on market conditions (demand, costs, competitors,
  • why are they marketing it as a tv? who the hell cares about about have 1M:1 contrast when watching a 80s rerun? they should be marketing it as an awesome desktop publishing and imaging monitor for PCs and Macs, or perhaps studio monitor. i'm just happy they are finally coming out with something that actually may have better image quality than my 22" CRT, looks like i could be upgrading in 2 years or so :)

    • they should be marketing it as an awesome desktop publishing and imaging monitor for PCs and Macs
      Except that at a resolution of 960x540 (or so I read), it isn't so awesome...
  • Where's my 2-way wrist radio [answers.com], which we'd now call a "wristphone"? Starring another Modern innovation, the videophone?

    I might not whine about no flying cars as much, if we could just get some of the cheaper items that don't crash into neighbors' roofs.
  • Was whoever wrote this paid for each time he/she/it wrote "XEL-1 OLED TV?" I count five instances of "XEL-1" in the summary alone.

  • obligatory monty python reference (Score:3, Funny)

    by kevin.fowler (915964) on Monday October 01 2007, @09:03AM (#20809631) Homepage
    Oh sir... it's only wafer thin!

  • "Only" 3mm thin? (Score:3, Funny)

    by ivan256 (17499) on Monday October 01 2007, @09:52AM (#20810279)
    That's too bad. I was hoping for 2mm thin, but this one is only 3mm thin.

    Those marketeers are too smart for their own good.

    • Re:Sir Not-so-Thin (Score:5, Informative)

      by mwvdlee (775178) on Monday October 01 2007, @07:27AM (#20808717) Homepage
      Actually, it has.

      The display itself may be 3mm thin, but it's connected to a much bigger stand.

      I really don't see the point of having a display 3mm thin when it still needs more than a thirtyfold space of that to place it somewhere.

      If it could be mounted to a wall and the whole thing was still only 3mm thin, It'd be useful.

      • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

        by Artichoke (34549)
        No it wouldn't. It would be very nice though :)

      • I really don't see the point of having a display 3mm thin when it still needs more than a thirtyfold space of that to place it somewhere.
        It might not look so great now, but when the screen scales up to something large and the base gets smaller due to better integration it will probably all look a lot more impressive.
      • I think ultimately you will see them hung on walls, installed in aircraft seats or whatever. If the screen is ultralight then they could always split out screen from the technical gubbins and put them in a box that can be hidden somewhere.

        I agree that this particular device is not that useful and very expensive. But it's undeniably sexy.

    • Re:Contrast ratio claims are ridiculous (Score:4, Informative)

      by cnettel (836611) on Monday October 01 2007, @11:29AM (#20811699)
      There is no reason that projected film should be superior to everything else. Projected film is still just that: projected, i.e. a negative mask hiding part of the light from the projector. The contrast ratio is completely depenendent on the light absorption of the actual film material. A diode with no voltage is very dark indeed, so the real issue is the quality of the driving electronics.

      Now, what makes this irrelevant is of course the fact that because of the very nature of this display, the real issue for contrast is not the contrast ratio in a completely dark room, but the actual brightness related to ambient light. When you factor in the ambient light as the real source of light in the black parts, you'll get a different ratio, but this is the only technology where the ambient light, even in a really dark room, is close to the only source of light in the black parts of the picture.

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