OLED TVs Arriving Within the Next Three Years

Anonymous Howard writes "Toshiba and Matsushita, in a joint venture, are going to be bringing OLED TV panels to market within 3 years! Granted, the size of the panel is only 20.8 inches, but that is a huge step up from the small OLED screens used in cell phones and other portable devices. It will have a resolution of 1,280 by 768 pixels (WXGA) and handles 16.7 million colors. No specifications on contrast, brightness, or refresh rates have been released, but such specs wouldn't necessarily be indicative of OLED displays to be released in three years' time."

Re:Better color gamut

[ajs]

In the article from Toshiba/Matsushita that TFA references [tmdisplay.com], I found the following blurb that answers my question:

In addition, the OLED panel features an ultra-wide viewing angle, a thinner profile due to the eliminated backlighting system and other peripheral elements, and energy conservation offering eco-friendly advantages.

Woohoo! I can't wait to buy one (though I'll likely wait for 32+" versions.

Root poster must be joking.

[Anonymous Coward]

OLED displays degrade very rapidly, from day 1 on... the blue elements have a life-time of about 5000 hours, the red and green about 60000 hours. You can expec to get about 40000 out of a typical display, which of course will look like crap due to loss in color fidelity.

I've very sceptical of this claim of OLED TVs in 3 years. Remember ? [wikipedia.org]

Re:Blue Is The Colour

[Anonymous Coward]

yes they have; now up to 20,000 hours

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OLED#Drawbacks [wikipedia.org]

Re:I'll believe it when I see it

[jonnythan]

Are you nuts?

Best Buy sells 720p plasma TVs in 42" and 50" by the truckload. They sell 720p direct-view CRTs and LCDs in all sizes as fast as they can get them.

Re:Consider the life of the product

[Asmandeus]

I'm sure someone else mentioned this; OLED are notorious for their short lifetime:

The biggest technical problem left to overcome has been the limited lifetime of the organic materials. Particularly, blue OLEDs typically have lifetimes of around 5,000 hours when used for flat panel displays, which is lower than typical lifetimes of LCD or Plasma technology. However, recent experimentation has shown that it's possible to swap the chemical component for a phosphorescent one, if the subtle differences in energy transitions are accounted for, resulting in lifetimes of up to 20,000 hours for blue PHOLEDs.

Also, the intrusion of water into displays can damage or destroy the organic materials. Therefore, improved sealing processes are important for practical manufacturing and may limit the longevity of more flexible displays.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OLED [wikipedia.org]

20,000 hours (2 years and some change of being on 24/7) isn't probably what you were hoping for, but also in the wikipedia article it does say that OLED has the potential to cost less than LCD or Plasma which is a big plus. If that is true, I could see myself replacing my (fairly old) 19" LCDs for OLED.