Is OLED TV Technology In Jeopardy? 99
MojoKid writes "Sony recently announced it would halt sales of its 11" OLED TV in Japan, where the panel first debuted. For now, the XEL-1 will remain on sale in the US and other markets, but Sony's decision to kill the unit in its home market and reduce the rate at which it's investing in future OLED TV development has been perceived in some corners as a judgment on the long-term feasibility of OLED technology. In the wake of Sony's announcement, far too many pundits have rushed to declare OLED panels dead, dying, moribund, or otherwise abandoned. However, it seems more likely at this juncture that we'll see development focus shift from large panel sizes to smaller ones, particularly since the smartphone/handheld OLED market is growing briskly and larger screens are inherently more prone to defects. Sadly, this means that your chance of traipsing home with a truly cutting-edge display before 2014 or so could be pretty minimal."
Hmmm (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm not surprised if its been withdrawn. It's yesterday's news as far as early adopters might be concerned and they would be the people most inclined to buy it. Besides, the state of the art has moved on and we already know LG are delivering larger, HD capable sets this year and its likely other manufacturers would have similar plans.
Re:And Plasma (Score:2, Interesting)
Who is saying OLED is dead anyway? Are "Online Pundits" some random guy on a message board? Because I couldn't find any talk about it on google news. Trolling for hits I guess.
Re:size, not technology (Score:5, Interesting)
Don't forget the main problem, that the 11" TV cost like $2000. It was the first commercially available OLED TV, a limited production tech demo basically. As you say, 11" is really small, that's about the size of my laptops's screen and I can't imagine many scenarios where watching it from further than say a meter away is a good idea.
OLED seems to be making good progress for in smaller devices, it was only recently that only a few Kodak cameras and and tiny MP3 players had OLED screens, but now they're many of the new phones as well. It seems that we're moving up in size, so hopefully we'll see further increases in screen dimensions. The article even mentions the upcoming 15" LG TV, and although at around two grand it's still too expensive, at least we're getting there size wise. In any case, screw TVs - I want OLED computer monitors, which are luckily very usable even once you get to around 20".
Re:size, not technology (Score:4, Interesting)
In any case, screw TVs - I want OLED computer monitors, which are luckily very usable even once you get to around 20".
You won't get those.
Unless something drastically changes, which I highly doubt, OLED monitors just won't happen. OLED is extremely susceptible to burn-in, thus unsuitable for computer displays.
Re:If so what instead? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:size, not technology (Score:2, Interesting)
So were plasma panels, and LCD though..
Technologies change and get better. Since OLED is a technology that once printable like newspaper will be cheaper than manufacturing LCD panels, even with worse reliability they will find their way first as a cheap solution (yup, even for TV's possibly), and than will improve and make their way into more expensive and reliable devices..
Re:So (Score:1, Interesting)
+ no ghosting at all
There's burn in, due to the short lives of the pixels, especially blue. Technically not ghosting, but there can be a residual image.
For example, if you have a bright blue box in a corner of the display for two hours, and then fill the screen with bright white, you'll see a faint yellowish spot where that box was.
Re:size, not technology (Score:3, Interesting)
Depends, that may be something that can be mitigated. After all CRTs were extremely susceptible to burn in, but they seem to have dealt with it. The final generation of high end monitors seemed to be nearly totally immune. As far as I can tell they did it in part by having the display never be totally black. The guns would hit all the phosphors and perhaps that kept them decaying at a more constant rate.
However at present, Blue Phase Mode LCDs (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Phase_Mode_LCD) look more promising to me.
Re:So (Score:1, Interesting)
they're only lower power consuming than LCDs when the image being displayed is mostly black, otherwise they actually use MORE power. they also have burn-in issues that rival old CRTs.
Implication (Score:1, Interesting)
The implication seems to be that Sony is the only one working on this technology for TVs and monitors. Isn't Samsung working on this tech as well, and debuting some stuff this year? I seem to remember seeing other companies doing R&D on OLED on larger displays as well (I wish I had the sources handy). It seems silly to declare a technology dead when a single product is being discontinued.
Re:size, not technology (Score:2, Interesting)
Indeed. One thing people are doing now is building optical feedback into every pixel, so as the OLED material ages more current is pushed through it to keep the brightness the same.
Re:size, not technology (Score:3, Interesting)
One of the problems is that Sony's unit was based on lower IQE fluorescent OLED . Which required lots of heatsinking and precludes larger sizes than, say, 15". Phosphorescent OLED is where the true future of OLED lies and both LG and Samsung are using Universal Display's PHOLED red right now as a hybrid with fluorescent blue (green is imminent, deep blue is still a ways off). It's a matter of getting production going on gen 3.5+ lines and reducing distortion in the masking process.
One other thing, even if larger displays don't pan out, OLED lighting still has huge potential. Maybe even more than the smaller phone and pmp displays that are currently in the Zune and Samsung phones now.
Re:Or maybe ... (Score:1, Interesting)
well
In 2007, experimental OLEDs were created which can sustain 400 cd/m of luminance for over 198,000 hours for green OLEDs and 62,000 hours for blue OLEDs.
So if I leave the TV on 24/7 it will only last 7 years....... My last 2 TV's did not last that long. So I can live with that (and they did not run 24/7, so 62.000 hours is plenty of time for me)
Re:Or maybe ... (Score:3, Interesting)
OLED got some very nice properties over LCD and plasma screens, but I think the LED backlight was the killer. For the prices we're talking here, you can have a bunch of them selectively backlighting or not backlighting the screen. There's some trickery to this true, but if you look at some of the new LCDs out like this [expertreviews.co.uk] it says "a 240-block local dimming LED backlight". At that point you're starting to fake it rather well, with a dynamic contrast in the millions rather than in the thousands.
OLED sucks ... it only demos well (Score:3, Interesting)
OLED demos well ... you put a brand new screen in a dark room and with the right content you can blow people away. The thin displays you can make since there is no backlight demo well. The energy consumption demos well with a mostly-black screen. But when you get it home it doesn't work in a bright room, the colors aren't great and worse, change over time. The worst part may be that it's not even more energy efficient than LED-backlit displays when playing video.
On mobiles it's even less appropriate because of the varied lighting conditions you encounter. You would see people struggling with their Nexus One or Zune in daylight if they had sold more than a handful of either device.
The nerd infatuation with this expensive buzzword has been incredible. Some were calling for an OLED iPad, that is crazy. It would cost more than the whole device and have so many drawbacks in practical use. All for a buzzword.
Re:size, not technology (Score:3, Interesting)
I doubt OLED will make it to monitors any time soon. It'd have to compete with S-IPS, which is far far cheaper.