Sony Shows Off Flexible OLED Screens At CES 150
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 ..."
Re:Am I the only one who feels... (Score:4, Insightful)
TV content stays the same quality; it's your taste that's changing. A five-year-old will love pretty much any trash you put in front of her; a fifty-year-old is either (a) still in love with the same stuff she saw when she was five, or (b) watching on a much more complicated level, and requires far more meaning and technical skill in their content.
The fashion changes, but the target demographic remains the same - gullible people who are easy to convince to spend money.
Re:Do they come with rootkits? (Score:4, Insightful)
Boycott the Sony record label by all means.
However, I don't think it's practical in boycott entire mega-corporations since they are really just umbrella legal entities.
Whilst I wouldn't buy a Sony CD, battery, or anything that uses a proprietary recording format, I would buy another Sony TV because they've been of good build quality, and none have expired before I chose to upgrade myself.
Re:Am I the only one who feels... (Score:4, Insightful)
Have you checked the quality of old TV content lately. It is quite bad and predictable. Just because your getting Old you fail to see that.
Flamebait is not necessarily wrong (Score:4, Insightful)
That's about when I might give up CRT (Score:3, Insightful)
Fine with me. That's probably about the time I'll finally give up my tried and true CRT for something new. Up to now, I've just kept it, because what with format wars in the blu ray space, expensive content sources (whether it be players, the discs themselves, or HD cable), three competing large screen technologies (LCD, Plasma and rear projection) all with their own problems, TVs not always being 1080p, and sometimes just 1080i, changing cable designs, etc, I figured I just keep my CRT until OLED came along and killed them all. No sense spending thousands trying to guess which technology isn't going to be obsolete or which one isn't going to have tons of problems.
Re:Am I the only one who feels... (Score:4, Insightful)
Not sure why you're modded flamebait - I feel like as I've gotten older there's a lot more TV shows that I actually like. Characters are more complex, shows tend to be more serial than episodic with plotlines extending over the course of a season. Also because there are more channels you get things more tailored to specific tastes. Shows like "Dexter" or "The Shield" or even BSG would not have made it in the 70's or 80's.
Re:Am I the only one who feels... (Score:4, Insightful)
Don't forget there is a difference of getting older and getting old.
Get older and gaining experience is a good thing.
Getting old and closing your mind to new ideas is a bad thing.
Flexible is a red herring (Score:3, Insightful)
Forget about flexible. Sure, it sounds sexy, but who really cares? The roll-up stuff will probably not withstand normal wear very well in any case.
Why are all the new display technologies like oled and e-paper mainly being marketed on the unimportant qulaities like flexibility?
The real appeal of OLED is the simplicity, i.e. thinness and low cost. Only incrementally from before at first, but the simplicity is really orders of magnitude away from everything else. So once the tech is solid (i.e. good lifetime and low defect rates) and production scaled up, they will be so cheap it's silly.
The real appeal of e-paper is good reflective contrast. i.e not only high contrast, but contrast that gets better in stronger light, and in general better contrast than any screen you have seen. This is something absolutely nothing else can offer right now (electrowetting might eventually, but it's still stricly lab stuff. It promises color, though, so stay tuned on that one). People tend to forget, or not understand, how important this is, even when they talk about books being better to tread than on-screen. But once most peopole have seen a really good one, I think the penny will drop. I wish they'd forget about flexibility and persistence for now and just focus on getting them fast, reliable, cheap and even higher resolution. this is something I'd want on my laptop right now. Work on that other stuff after they've become _good_, and popular.
On oleds I have the impression thay _are_ working on the right stuff, flexible is just a by-product and makes headlines. For e-paper, i'm not so sure.
Re:Am I the only one who feels... (Score:4, Insightful)
TV content stays the same quality; it's your taste that's changing.
TV's content varys considerably, and always has. Even between episodes of the same series; some of the old Star Treks were inspired ("City on the Edge of Forever" comes to mind), while some episodes were downright embarrasing.
In some ways TV content has gotten better since its "golden days". Back in the 1960s nobody would have dreamed of a comedy without a laugh track, while My Name Is Earl and that one doctor comedy has no laugh track. If you need a laugh track, your comedy isn't funny.
When cable was new, HBO was free, cable channels didn't censor, and cable channels didn't show commercials. Now Comedy Central removes all the funny parts from every movie it shows, and A&E cut "swear words" like "ass" and "shit" before breaking for a commercial. And which channel is it that shows movies with two dumbasses talking about the damned movie before and after commercials? What idiot came up with that idea?
And they didn't have those damned logos in the corner, don't get me started on the animated logos!
In many ways TV has gotten better. It's just that in the 1960s you might have three channels, while now you have dozens of channels of pure crap. When ESPN shows poker and pool you know there are too many sports channels. And who are the dimwits who watch "shopping channels?" And why do I have to pay for them?
Re:Do they come with rootkits? (Score:3, Insightful)
Given that it's a Best Buy, I would say:
3 - They pull the display model TV out of the box and hook it up. However the engineers at the factory set it up is how it is on the shelf, and Sony and Samsung tune them differently.
4 - The customers have been screwing with the settings.
Or the TVs could be different. I've got a Samsung and Sony LCDs in a dual head set up on my PC, and no matter how I screw with the settings on the Samsung the Sony has a better picture.