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Displays

Sony Begins OLED Mass Production 193

Posted by timothy from the not-a-moment-too-soon dept.
Dodger73 writes "According to their press release at sony.net, Sony beings mass production of full color OLED displays at 3.8" size for their Clie PEG-VZ90 'Personal Entertainment Handheld.' The press release claims, that their 'Super Top Emission' technology reaches 150cd/m^2; at the familiar 1000:1 contrast ratio. Not quite the 19" display I'd like for my computer at home, but definitely a step in the right direction."
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Sony Begins OLED Mass Production More

Sony Begins OLED Mass Production

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  • For those of you who don't yet know... (Score:5, Informative)

    by JamesD_UK ( 721413 ) on Wednesday September 15, 2004 @08:31AM (#10255140) Homepage
    OLED = Organic Light-Emitting Diode [wave-report.com]

    • Re:For those of you who don't yet know... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by BoldAC ( 735721 ) on Wednesday September 15, 2004 @08:40AM (#10255187)
      These translate into image quality and clarity that could previously viewed only on CRT (cathode ray tube) displays.

      Even after all these years, CRT is still the standard. Amazing...
      • which is imho because of a two simple reasons:

        price (you still pay a lot less for a crt)
        resolution (you can use any resolution on a crt, on lcd's you are limited to the built in resolution, important especially for newer games if you dont want to buy every half year a new pc)

        • Re:For those of you who don't yet know... (Score:4, Informative)

          by saha ( 615847 ) on Wednesday September 15, 2004 @10:01AM (#10255794)
          CRTs also have other advantages, of higher viewing angle than LCDs and higher color gamut and larger dynamic range. I still prefer using a LaCie Electron Blue [lacie.com] CRT to do my Photoshop work. Most video cards RAMDACs are limited to 8-bit (exceptions I can think of are SGI Onyx IR and Tezro [sgi.com]systems and other specialized gfx cards), CRTs could easily do 10-bit, 12-bit color per pixel. If you're in the print and publishing industry you'll still want to use a CRT unless the 21" CRT hulk is crowding your workspace, or a radiologist who needs 10-bit [matroxmed.com] or greater grayscale to discern which legions in the x-ray have a tumor. I don't want my radiologist looking at no 8-bit (256 shade) video card and monitor for my X-rays. I haven't seen any specs on what the OLEDs can do. All that stated is that its comparable, which is vague and ambiguous to me.

          • CRTs DO do 10 bit colour! (Score:5, Interesting)

            by purduephotog ( 218304 ) <hirsch@inorbitSLACKWARE.com minus distro> on Wednesday September 15, 2004 @10:52AM (#10256200) Homepage Journal
            Seriously- I know. I calibrate them.

            Of course you need a good probe to know read the CRT- and that means something like the SLS9400, which retailed around 5K at last recall. And you can't ever shut the monitor off, it has to be on ALL the time.

            And of course you need a specialized interface for Windows, because windows simply chokes on anything other than 8 bit. Certain cards, like the Dome boards (10 bit BW) are great. Others actually have internal 10 bit ramdacs but don't allow driver access to them. Such a pity.

            The underlying subsystem is broken for windows which will limit everyone to 8 bits for years to come.

            Never mind that CRT manufactures are calling daily to say they're discontinuing this model, that model... sigh.

            (and you need 8 bit to 10 bit internal to avoid banding/quantitizaiton errors after calibrating...)
            • you can get as high as 14 bit colour.

              Of course that means you need specialized EVERYTHING for displaying a photo, down to how the image is scanned (high end scanners can do *real* 12 and 14 bit imaging... don't believe that 16bit crap- it's usually 'marketing bits' for the last couple.

              So if you have a dedicated viewing system that can display an image appropriately at the bit depth (which is a bit of an oxymoron when you're talking about analog systems) you've got an easy 13 bit display.

              And want to know something really interesting about that? The image looks lifelike. As in, you could almost reach in and touch it.

              8 bit really sucks.

          • Apparently one of the best price-performance ones at the moment is the Sony Artisan [displaysbysony.com] (unless you've got serious money to spend, that is). There's a review over at Luminous Landscape [luminous-landscape.com]. Wish I had a spare $1800, my (Spyder-calibrated) Trinitron is starting to annoy me: the blacks are a bit undefined, even with good desk lighting (Solux [solux.net] bulbs) and a hood :(

            And that's a damn good point about viewing X-rays. I went to the new hospital the government just built here - at a cost of some GBP£111.7 million! -

      • Re:For those of you who don't yet know... (Score:4, Insightful)

        by k98sven ( 324383 ) on Wednesday September 15, 2004 @09:46AM (#10255663) Journal
        Even after all these years, CRT is still the standard. Amazing...

        Amazing, why? What's so bad about them?
        It's a fundamentally simple design, which has had lots of room for improvement. -Like the internal combustion engine.

        And like the combustion engine, that means there's a high barrier to get rid of them.
        So, while they are going to be replaced eventually.. it's hardly strange that they haven't been yet.

      • The main thing is there light emmiting, thus you can get a true black (no light emmited) and strong colors, where as with a LCD display where the light is blocked off, which not only means you've got a huge great big backlight which can't produce the same brightness in many cases as other displays, but you don't get a true black as liquid crystals can never block off 100% of the light.

        Personally I'm hoping to see OLED displays in case-mods, since unlike LCD's they won't light up the area even when black vi
        • I don't know about you, but pretty much all the LCD's I've used have been VASTLY brighter, on average, than the CRT's I've used.

          In fact, at work I have an LCD and a CRT on my desk in a dual-head setup, and I had to LOWER the brightness of the LCD to make it more balanced, because the CRT is absolutely no match for the LCD in terms of brightness.

          Additionally, LCD's seem much better at rejecting glare from overhead lights as CRT's. When the office light is on, the readability of the LCD is unchanged, wherea
          • The LCDs *are* brighter, but that doesn't make them better. The manufacturers cannot get the blacks to be any more black, so they make the whites more white to increase the contrast ratio. As you correctly point out, many LCDs need their brightness set well below max, because generally to avoid eye strain you wouldn't want your display to be more than three times brighter than ambient.
      • "Even after all these years, CRT is still the standard. Amazing..."

        I used to think that LCDs were steadily growing in number, until I read your post...
    • Wikipedia-link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OLED [wikipedia.org] Wikipedia states that the main advantage is that (apart from the contrast ratio and the response times) it doesn't need back-lighting and thus has a lower power-consumption. Will this also be true for very large OLED displays? I can imagine that, since every single pixel has to light up by itself, it can be more efficient to use a backlight. Anyone has an idea about the power consumption per pixel for OLEDs and TFT/LCD?

  • its not (Score:5, Funny)

    by booyah ( 28487 ) on Wednesday September 15, 2004 @08:35AM (#10255158)
    Its not the size that matters, its how you use it... I will be very happy to have my 3.8"
    • Not quite the 19" display I'd like for my computer at home, but definitely a step in the right direction.
      19"? Nah... A 21" [dell.com] would be much nicer (Dell 2001FP).

  • OLED is described in article (Score:5, Funny)

    by tod_miller ( 792541 ) on Wednesday September 15, 2004 @08:37AM (#10255172) Journal
    So now we have Organic LED's and Organic speakers.... perhaps one day we will have an organic computer! :-)

    As OLED works with self-luminous organic materials, it has outstanding response time, without producing any afterimage even when displaying moving images (movies). Also with wide viewing angle and contrast ratio as high as 1000:1, high quality images can be realized on mobile products which are used in various occasions.

    As the saying goes, mother nature knows best. With all our technical skills, nature can produce a better light emitting substance than we can!

    This is super sexy, I cannot wait until I have a paper thin wall sized display...

    Good work sony.

    • Re:OLED is described in article (Score:5, Funny)

      by Epistax ( 544591 ) <epistax@g[ ]l.com ['mai' in gap]> on Wednesday September 15, 2004 @08:44AM (#10255215) Journal
      As the saying goes, mother nature knows best.

      Not to set up a patriarchy but perhaps father time knows better. Nature has a few billion years of work we need to catch up on.

    • Re:OLED is described in article (Score:4, Funny)

      by LiquidCoooled ( 634315 ) on Wednesday September 15, 2004 @08:45AM (#10255220) Homepage Journal
      Pah!

      I have been using a grid of Glow-worms for years.

      Green screen only so far, but the chocolate food dispensor works as expected. The biggest problem I have is the noise they make when trying to shove replacement ones into place.

      I'm sure the RSPCA would be on at me for something, but its in the name of science!
    • So now we have Organic LED's and Organic speakers.... perhaps one day we will have an organic computer! :-)

      Everyone has at least one of those (sometimes two in the banjo-playing towns). Unfortunately, there seem to be some serious quality control issues in the production process.

      That's probably because so few engineers ever manage to get involved in it.
    • `Mother nature knows best' :) Unfortunately the word `organic' here just means based on carbon chemistry. The organic materials used in OLED and PLEDs (polymer LEDs) do not occur in nature and have to be synthesised by chemists (eg. Alq3, PPVs etc.)
    • As OLED works with self-luminous organic materials, it has outstanding response time

      This quote is worded as if it were obvious. Am I missing something? What makes an organic material inherently more responsive?

    • Re:OLED is described in article (Score:4, Informative)

      by phobos13013 ( 813040 ) on Wednesday September 15, 2004 @09:53AM (#10255722)
      perhaps one day we will have an organic computer!

      hate to burst your bubble but just because they are made out of 'organic' materials doesnt mean they are natural. All it means is that instead of oil based acrylics, and metal laden materials, they are using carbon-based materials that have fast-transfer dendric properties. These materials are about as natural as DDT. They are still really cool devices tho and have a great contribution to technology, just dont go around thinking its like an extenstion of the human body or about to go reproducing on its own now...
    • Millions has been poured into research on making those chemicals in such manners that no way mother nature couldve come up with them.

      In fact, she'd have to be as high as a kite to come up with some of the formulations I've seen. And yes, before being laid off I worked on OLED chemicals so I'm fairly knowledgeable about both their manufacture and their design.

      Although I'm sure you didn't mean it this way, but did you really interpret 'organic' to mean 'natural' ??? Because if you did... well, I'll be nic

  • Chin up, little fellas (Score:5, Funny)

    by gregduffy ( 766013 ) on Wednesday September 15, 2004 @08:37AM (#10255177)
    Just don't use any anti-bacterial soap before handling it! ::swish::

  • 2nd september, Opto OLED's (Score:5, Interesting)

    by tod_miller ( 792541 ) on Wednesday September 15, 2004 @08:42AM (#10255200) Journal
    Opto Tech introduces 1.5-inch OLED panel for handsets [digitimes.com]

    "The company said that the panel has the highest resolution among all current OLED panels"

    Perhaps OLEDs will lead to 300dpi displays, or at least 160dpi. ~72 just don't cut it.
    • It's currently available on LCD from IBM. Can't remember the panel cost but it's up there. 200 PPI is about 12 cycles/degree, which isn't very good for detecting stuff.

      I've seen OLEDs made to high resolutions in test fabs but the biggest issue is putting the chemicals down- oddly enough they can't figure out how to etch organics as easily as silicon :P
    • Perhaps OLEDs will lead to 300dpi displays, or at least 160dpi. ~72 just don't cut it.

      The monitor on my notebook (X1000 with 1920x1200, 15.4") is 147 dpi. It didn't cost much more than a typical 1024 or 1280 display.

      The only disadvantage is that neither Windows nor linux scales all GUI elements properly. If I make the text the size I like, all my dialog boxes are way too small, the labels don't fit in the buttons, the title bars and widgets in them are too small, etc. Windows and X are both still ridd

  • OLED power consumption (Score:5, Interesting)

    by grunt107 ( 739510 ) on Wednesday September 15, 2004 @08:47AM (#10255234)
    The story did not say anything on power consumption for the Sony OLEDs. I would hope, since PDA/Cell battery life is fairly low right now, that this OLED consumes far less than its backlit counterpart.

    Otherwise, the sharper contrast/light quality is nice, but no thank you.

    • Power consumption.... (Score:5, Informative)

      by imsabbel ( 611519 ) on Wednesday September 15, 2004 @08:52AM (#10255269)
      should be quite a bit lower than lcds. The diods are far less efficient than the lcd backlights, BUT:
      -You dont need polarizers and color filters (those absorb >2/3 of the light in a lcd)
      -Dark pixels are just not powered/lower powered (if the typical brightness level is low, this is another factor of 2-4).
      So the organic leds only need 10% of the effience of normal ones to break even, which should be very archiveable.
      • Funny, with OLED your battery life will depend on the color of your wallpaper - I guess my new favorite color is black :)
      • The big problem with OLEDs is you need some way to make them dark. Really- the ITO substrate is highly reflective, and given the nature of the panel that means your 'off' colour is actually your ambient light level reflected right back at you.

        Which lowers the effective contrast to about 30:1.

        When you add a polarizer, you can get up to about 250:1. Crank the driving current from .5ma to 1ma and you can get your 1000:1 but at the cost of lifetime (chemical migration, etc).

        So yes, you don't particularly n
    • It was my understanding originally that OLED's where being promoted/created to help fight the power consumption. OLED was promoted to be used to replace light bulbs eventually becuase of the lower power consumption as well I believe. Even some Cells are starting to experiment with them.

  • It's about time (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Dolphy ( 569457 ) on Wednesday September 15, 2004 @08:50AM (#10255251)
    One step closer to everything we've been promised the past few years. You want a roll-up screen to go with your fold-up keyboard? This is the technology line that will make it happen. Window curtains that can change color, table-tops that are skinnable...think of it.

    Now if we can only get the price down enough to make such trivial applications a reality.

  • Human Side? (Score:2, Insightful)

    by webword ( 82711 )
    I like to read about this geek stuff. Understanding the technology is important to me. However, I am most curious about how the technology is applied. What software applications will be better for people now? How does this impact the elderly users? How will the usability be improved overall? The technology is great, but I like to understand the business benefits and the user benefits.

    • Re:Human Side? (Score:3, Informative)

      by Paulrothrock ( 685079 )
      How does this impact the elderly users?

      OLEDs can be made much bigger and lighter than CRTs without sacrificing performance. This means the elderly can run Firefox with 72 point fonts so they can read them and still fit a page width on the screen.

      • OLEDs are made by sublimation, currently- earlier ones used a spin coat (easy) to make small panels. New panels are on the order of LCD raw stocks. Since you have to sublime chemicals (which could be as low as 150C to as high as 450C) the 'mask' which prevents the chemical from contacting where it shouldn't usually warps.

        Until this problem is solved (or they go to a rotary repeatable drum method) they'll never get the panels much larger then what theyre at.

        And yes, making 1 off panels are easy... but it
    • How does this impact the elderly users

      It's proposed that OLED displays would eventually be bendable. Therefore, make a facemask of the material and they can display a picture of what they USED to look like while trying to perform bedtime activities.

      Then again, imagine the halloween costumes...
    • I haven't seen many elderly people using handhelds, but I've seen quite a few using cameras. They have trouble looking through viewfinders or watching tiny LCD displays. Bigger and/or brighter displays (with the same battery consumption) would make them use digital cameras more often, which of course would cause more pictures of grandchildren to come into existence than we have today.

      I think the ultimate technology here would be a digital paper display that covers the whole back of the camera. It would

  • Clie? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by man_of_mr_e ( 217855 ) on Wednesday September 15, 2004 @08:54AM (#10255278)
    I wonder if this is going to change their policy in regards to selling Clie's in the US? [slashdot.org]

    • Re:Clie? (Score:2, Informative)

      by daiakuma ( 812576 )
      The new Clie that they've just introduced is more of an entertainment device than a traditional PDA. Since the Clie brand is well-known and respected, it would make very good sense for them to start selling entertainment devices under the Clie brand in the US, I guess.
      • That makes perfect sense. Sony's always geared their devices toward media and entertainment. They touted their Clie line's mp3 capabilities and built-in camera before most other PalmOS based handhelds had the ability. Looking at their Japanese PEG-VZ90 site [www.sony.jp] it appears their device is still running PalmOS. I see the spin now "we're not selling PDAs, they're so 2001. We're selling 'personal entertainment devices'."

        Although, I guess before getting my hopes up I should wait for them to announce a US rel

  • lifetime of display? (Score:5, Informative)

    by mshultz ( 632780 ) on Wednesday September 15, 2004 @08:56AM (#10255287)

    Has any progress been made regarding the life of these displays? Last I heard, the longest these things would last was about a year or two before going too dim to be useful.

    Unless Sony is figuring that the early adopters will be people who tend to buy new PDA's quite frequently anyway, and will therefore be willing to get rid of this one once the next generation comes out the following year...

    • Re:failure rate is still high (Score:5, Informative)

      by Blitzenn ( 554788 ) on Wednesday September 15, 2004 @09:33AM (#10255556) Homepage Journal
      NO real progress has been made in that area. The color failure rate is still pretty high. the typical failure is a pixel getting 'stuck' in the on or off position. Being that the display is more expensive to make than other available technologies, they probably won't be replaceable and will make the units, escentially, throw aways or disposables.

      See my other comment [slashdot.org] for details and supporting links.
    • Is that a year of shelf-life or a year of constant use? No way a cellphone or PDA ever gets 24*365 hours of on-time.

      • What I've read (but I am a violinist, not an engineer...) is that typical OLED displays have a life of about 5-10,000 hours. These folks [onestopdisplays.net] apparently market a 20,000-hour OLED panel, but I believe that's for the monochrome version. That measurement is the amount of time until the panel display reaches half-brightness, I believe.

        Even a 10,000-hour display would give you a decent useful lifetime, but according to this page [kodak.com], little things like exposure to air, humidity, and temperature extremes can reduce t

    • Well, Blue was the most troublesome colour to make, but as CDT have a 40,000 hour half-life Blue now (well, that is how I understood their website), I'd imagine that the whole issue isn't that bad anymore.

      Even if the lowest colour component half-life was 5000 hours, you could use the device 3 hours a day for 5 years, or 8 hours a day for 2 years. Given that this usage pattern is incredibly unlikely, I reckon you'll be replacing the hardware before it stops being easily usable even if you take your time upg
    • Frankly, I have yet to have a palm device live for very long. They get lost, mangled, or obsoleted.

      Maybe I'm bitter because I just sent my 6 month old Clie back to Sony so they could fix a defective backlight.

  • PSP bound? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by PorscheDriver ( 698772 ) on Wednesday September 15, 2004 @08:56AM (#10255293) Homepage
    Will these end up in Sony's PSP? Would be nice...

    • Re:PSP bound? (Score:3, Insightful)

      by LilMikey ( 615759 )
      Not this one specifically. It's a 3.8" display and the PSP specs seem to claim a 4.3" one. Besides, the PSP is going to be a more budget oriented device than their Clies so using the latest greatest screen technology would probably be cost-prohibitive.
      • At the same time though, the only profit in the Clie is actually the Clie itself (well, not counting indirect stuff like potential music sales). The PSP doesn't even have to turn a profit on the hardware if the software sales are good enough, given past console history they could even loose a bit of money on each and still turn a profit in that segment of their business.
        • It's true that all of the console makers sell systems at a loss but they generally try to mitigate that loss by using cheaper componets, not by selling the best hardware at a tremendous loss. That's one of the reasons PC games will probably never die completely. PC gamers are in the 'upgrade often' mindset and while a console released today will look as good as a pretty decent PC, in 2 years the PC will kick it's ass and the next console will be another 2 years out.

          Right now, Sony should be feeling fairly

  • In other news... (Score:3, Informative)

    by tcdk ( 173945 ) on Wednesday September 15, 2004 @09:02AM (#10255327) Homepage Journal
    ...Sony releases the Clie VZ90 [palminfocenter.com]. To bad it's for Japan only, as Sony has decided to pull out of USA and Europe when comes to PDAs [palminfocenter.com].

    • Re:In other news... (Score:4, Interesting)

      by hey! ( 33014 ) on Wednesday September 15, 2004 @09:52AM (#10255711) Homepage Journal
      One of the toughest things I've learned about business over the years is the importance of identifying and concentrating on your best customers for a product.

      Your best customers aren't necessarily the ones with the most money, or even the ones with the greatest need. They're the ones who are willing to pay the most money for things you're good at. Looked at this way, in Japan, there are tons of people who will pay top dollar for sophisticated, cutting edge technology in a small package. In the US, being a gadget freak makes you a -- freak. Look at the phones people use! Look at the networks! The height of technological sophistication among well heeled US executives is a Blackberry, nothing against RIM or anything, it's a nice device, but nothing very astounding.

      So, the size of the early adopter market in the US is actually much smaller. Sony can have a pretty sure hit in Japan among the early adopters without the extra investment in marketing and production that seriously targetting the pragmatist segment would require. Once the kinks are worked out and the production costs are trimmed, then they can consider introducing something for the pragmatists at a lower cost, or more likely licensing their technology to somebody geared up for that particular headache.

      I really wish I'd learned that lesson in software marketing.
    • Well maybe they intend to sell the displays as components for other companies to integrate into their products. You don't think that Dell or Palm actually make the display portion of their devices do you? They buy them from other companies like Sharp, Samsung, and AU optronics.
  • For one of their Cameras awhile back? Whatever happened to that? And why wasn't it ever realeased in the US?

    I'm glad to see Sony utilizing this technology. Now I just have to wait for the eventual OLED gameboy :)

  • Seems I've been hearing about this technology for years. Does anyone know what Technical road blocks may have been keeping it from entering full blown industrial production for so long? Or maybe this is just the normal gestation period of a new technology?
    • Production cost is one factor. It is still more expensive to manufacture these things. There are articles out there that claim otherwise, but they are simply wrong. Here is an Independent analysis [frost.com] of manufacturer who happens to make OLEDS. It is a good synopsis of what the real problem is there.

      The other problem is that the operation life span of an OLED display is much shorter than other comparable display technologies. The link here [www2.vdma.de] is a really good PDF on OLED, what it really is and what advanta
    • The Almighty Yen

      They're doing extensive research to determine how complicated they can make the manufactuing process look like. This way, they can charge the absolute maximum without anybody realizing they're being pumped out at a unit cost lower than a sweatshop t-shirt.

  • Response time (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Lank ( 19922 ) on Wednesday September 15, 2004 @09:13AM (#10255396)
    They keep saying they have excellent respone time, but how fast is it? To quote TFA: "As OLED works with self-luminous organic materials, it has outstanding response time, without producing any afterimage even when displaying moving images (movies)." I think LCD screens make the same claims, although they actually can and do leave afterimages a lot of the time, making fast moving games, like first person shooters, very difficult to enjoy.

    • Re:Response time (Score:2, Informative)

      by close_wait ( 697035 )
      The data sheet included in the press release gives 16msec for LCD, 0.01msec for OLED. That's 1600 x more responsive by my calculation.
      • Well no doubt it's faster - otherwise they wouldn't have mentioned it. What I want to see is comparisons to CRTs. That information is not there, but maybe because it hasn't reached large enough sizes to really replace a CRT yet.
        • OLED should be much more responsive than CRTs. CRTs work by the luminescence of phosphors on the screen, excited by electrons being fired from the guns in the back of the monitor - you know, directly at your face. Anyway the phosphors have some persistence; they have to, because the monitor only paints the screen so many times per second. You may have noticed that even the newest monitors will do 60Hz refresh rates. That means that phosphors continue to glow for at least 1/60 of a second, or 1ms. In other w
  • Super top emission? Sounds great. Maybe NVidia will add super-duper-mega-fast graphics technology to their next video cards.
    • Dude! Don't you know that "Super Top Emission" is actually an FCC approved rating for display technology. Here's the rating summary directly from FCC Document BU11-SH17:

      25 cd/m2 -- Cheap Bastard Emission
      50 cd/m2 -- 'Not too bad' Emission
      75 cd/m2 -- Very Good Emission
      100 cd/m2 -- Mega Emission
      150 cd/m2 -- Super Top Emission
      175 cd/m2 -- Ulta Super-dee-dooper Emission
      200 cd/m2 -- Mega Ulta Super-dee-dooper Emission
      300 cd/m2 -- Nocturnal Emission

      No really...

  • 150 cd/m2 is pretty dim (Score:5, Insightful)

    by GuyFawkes ( 729054 ) on Wednesday September 15, 2004 @09:19AM (#10255456) Homepage Journal

    Must be 5 years ago now for a project I was working on way back then, I got hold of a 12.1 inch 800 x 600 native Sharp industrial grade TFT (for those of you not in the know indusrial grade are the pick of the yield) which the had the standard sharp backlight, which was about 300 cd/m2 even way back then, removed and replaced with one from an american company called Landmark Technology which meant it was 1500 candela and true daylight readable even in direct sunlight... the screen was driven by an expensive (I forget the make for the moment) graphics engine which took the input RGB and converted it to the TFT native electronics signal format.

    The image quality was absolutely astonishing, even blew away things like my current 21 inch sony 520, white WAS absolutely white, the most minute details such as the - - - - - - effects you get around selected dialogue buttons in windows were absolutely pin sharp, and when showing images such as some of the nature type pictures included in xp as default desktop backgrounds the effect can only be described as feeling like you were looking at a high quality photographic transparency backlit by a professional grade light-box.

    The horizontal and vertical viewing angles were also pretty dramatic, with a very wide range over which brightness and contrast didn't appear to vary, response was also more than enough for multimedia playback.

    So that was 5 years ago.

    I haven't seen anything since that was actually better quality, except today I could get an 18 inch 1600 x 1200 panel, so these "new" ideas are cool and all, but I think their unique selling points must be anything other than true image quality, it must be something like very low power consumption, very much more robust, or perhaps extended operational temperature range.

    Until one of those uses applies to me I'm quite happy to use the tft built into my dell laptop, but for desktop work it has to be CRT, for everything else such as the digital camera then the tft screens in built are no more use than thumbnail browaing in MHO.

    • "when showing images such as some of the nature type pictures included in xp as default desktop backgrounds

      (...)
      So that was 5 years ago.      "

      I hate to point out that five years ago it was 1999 and we did not have Windows 2000 - let alone XP.
      Also, the good quality of a high-end, probably insanely expensive TFT does not mean much about the stuff we have to use in our lives - for example, the TFT in my Fujitsu-Siemens Lifebook has very sucky viewing angles.

      • "..some of the nature TYPE pictures included.."

        not the nature picture included, just that type.

        yes it was expensive, 1,000 UK pounds back then for the complete screen (inc a resistive touchscreen) and bespoke casing, but then again ALL tft was insanely expensive back then.

        we don't _have_ to use shit nowadays, it is just another way for laptop manufacturers to save money by using shitty screens.

  • Working temperatures? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Kokuyo ( 549451 ) on Wednesday September 15, 2004 @09:34AM (#10255570) Journal
    I'd like to know at what temperatures those thing still work... They'd come in handy as GPS screens in cars. But cars usually get very cold/hot during the seasons.

    Hey, if they came in the right size I'd put them in my KARR (yes the one from Knight Rider) once it's finished.
    • The Hole Transport Layer is usually the weak link in the OLED device. This material (hah) transports holes, if you like to think of it that way) between the substrate and the luminous amount.

      I believe kodak has HT1 and HT2 ... most companies have differing versions of their HTs, some of them are optimized with their own dopants (funny that).

      Itumitzu (sp?) had some nice ones, but it's been a long while since I've worked on anything like that and the market changes fast. I can't even recall all the big pl

  • Just a thought (Score:2, Funny)

    by Tibe ( 444675 )
    As I sit here infront of my four current LCD's... 'crap'
  • I expect that the life of this display is rather short. Will it be affected by image burn? Can you freeze them? Get them wet? Clean them with household cleaning products? Will they grow?

  • AMOLED's suffer from terrible burn-in (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Theovon ( 109752 ) on Wednesday September 15, 2004 @12:03PM (#10256992)
    I work at a company that develops medical imaging display systems. To make displays uniform and produce correct grayscale images for viewing xrays, etc., there are some strict standards for "gamma" calibrating monitors, referred to as DICOM.

    I was at the last SID convention, talking to one of the experts on this stuff from IBM, and I ignorantly commented on how I was looking forward to OLED displays because of the contrast ratio. He explained to me that OLED displays suffer from burn-in worse than any CRT.

    Until the recent past, the lifetime of OLED displays has been measured in months. Apparently, what happens is that for each pixel, the junction between the electrodes and the organic diode decays over time (relative to the amount of charge that has gone through it), increasing resistance. At first, this just dims the LED, until the resistance gets so high that you can't meet threshold voltage for the diode, and it stops working entirely.

    As I'm sure you can imagine, medical displays can't afford to have any non-uniformity. But given that medical images are non-uniform by nature, non-uniform burn-in will occur, making the xray or MRI image look different, depending on its placement on the screen. The point is that I'm sure you won't appreciate having your monitor suffer non-uniform burn-in, even IF what you're displaying can't affect someone's health.

    (The advantage with LCD's is that the liquid crystal doesn't decay, and the only things that do break down are the fluorescent back-lights, and that decay is relatively uniform.)

    As I'm sure is the case with everyone else, I look forward to the day when OLED decay is practically non-existant. The problem is that the progress is incredibly slow. LCD's been around for a LONG time, yet it's still far from perfect. OLED will require just as much time to get as good, which means it'll be decades before it catches up. Meanwhile, LCD's will continue to get better.
  • There have been lots of sources for hobbyist LCDs [earthlcd.com] for some time now. They can be purchased in low volume, the interfacing is fairly easy, and the physical mounting is taken care of.

    Why haven't OLEDs made it to this market yet? The superior contrast ratio would seem to make them ideal for all sorts of homebrew applications.
  • Didn't Sony stop to produce the palm os clié handhelds? Or they just build it for the japonese market?
  • Last I heard of OLED displays, they were definitely there with the red cells. The green cells were a problem - they lasted long enough that they could go to market with it, but their lifetime was short enough that there'd likely be lots of complaints.

    The blue ones, however, had such a short lifetime that they (at that time) definitely were not ready for prime time.

    I wonder what the expected lifetime of the blue cells in these displays is?

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