Samsung Places A Big Bet on Quantum-Dot TV, Acquires QD Vision

Quantum-dot televisions promise "better picture quality and are also cheaper to manufacture than organic light-emitting diode sets," ZDNet reports. And now Samsung has confirmed their acquisition of Massachusetts-based QD Vision for $70 million, according to this article shared by Dthief: QD Vision, previously known as Color IQ, is a specialist in quantum dot display technology. Developed for displays including PC monitors and television sets, quantum-dot technology uses semiconductor nanoparticles to change the properties of quantum dots, improving color definition and sharpness... QD Vision will become part of Samsung's research and development unit in the hope of creating quantum-dot LED displays suitable for the consumer market which could, in turn, become a strong competitor against OLED displays... The agreement follows Samsung's pledge earlier this year to launch a total of 14 SUHD television models this year, all of which use quantum dot technology.

Not exactly a big bet

[Anonymous Coward]

A big bet for a company Samsung's size would be $1 billion or more. $70 million is more like taking a flyer, maybe one of these small acquisitions will turn into something big.

Re:Not exactly a big bet

[theskipper]

What you say is true but no matter the price tag, imo it shows real commitment to the technology. They could have done the same thing with OLED back when Universal Display (the supplier of OLED chemicals) was around $100-200m market cap but didn't. So perhaps this shows that Samsung really is making real progress toward true emissive QLED displays, with QD enhanced LCD as the stepping stone.

Btw, various articles I've seen speculated that emissive QLED TV would be released in the 2019-2020 range but of course every estimate turns out to be way optimistic. However, this purchase does make one think that's it's more than a PR maneuver against the chinese and LG. Unlike OLED where there were so many manufacturing problems along the way, they're hitting the ground running with QD enhanced which will actually be a revenue driver. Then QLED TVs, monitors and general displays being the ultimate displacement of LCD. Jmho.

Money in your pocket!

[Anonymous Coward]

Cheaper to manufacture means the price I pay for a TV/monitor is going to drop right? Right? *crickets*

Re:Money in your pocket!

[Kjella]

Cheaper to manufacture means the price I pay for a TV/monitor is going to drop right? Right? *crickets*

I don't think anyone has said QLED TVs will be cheaper, only better. Like OLEDs, there's one light source per pixel so you don't have all the backlight and uniformity issues of LCDs - not even the latest full-array local dimming ones with 600+ zones come close to per-pixel dimming. Unlike OLEDs, the colors are produced by a quantum dot layer so you don't have the intensity and lifespan issues of OLED. So the sum should be a TV with insanely high contrast (0-4000 nits?), extremely wide colors (90%+ of Rec. 2020) and excellent edge-to-edge performance with no halos or bleeding backlight but the cost would probably be beyond OLED because you need 3840x2160 = 8 million LEDs with an additional, expensive QD layer on top. Except for extreme brightness - but then you don't want to wear sunglasses to watch TV either - it should be damn close to looking out the window.

Re:

[slickwillie]

So it's an explosive technology?

Cadmium based LEDs

[ChrisMaple]

Organic LEDs age badly. Cadmium based semiconductors age badly. So they'll be combining 2 technologies to enhance the disadvantages of each.

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

Huh? Where does it say that this is enhancing OLED? It doesn't because they're not, there is no organic component.

Reading is fundamental.

Re:

[pushing-robot]

Perhaps, but it's used in terribly small amounts; you could coat a thousand or more big screen TVs with the cadmium in one NiCad AA battery.

Like mercury in CFLs, the increased efficiency of QD also means less cadmium gets spewed from coal plants worldwide.

Finally, there are cadmium-free QDs—not quite as efficient as cadmium QDs yet, but still an option.

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

OLEDs are crap. I have an MP3 player that used an OLED display and after about 3 years, all of the blue subpixels had faded such that the screen had a yellow tint. Because of that, I stopped using it and bought a new player (making sure it had an LCD) but non-use apparently doesn't stop the degradation as when I power it on now, the screen is almost impossible to see at all.

For contrast, I had a Sony Trinitron TV that was manufactured some time in the mid 70s. It still worked fine 30 years later. Modern day

Re:Cadmium based LEDs

[MobyDisk]

Your experience with OLED seems to match the theory. [wikipedia.org] Blue degrades fastest. Some causes of degredation are proportional to usage, while some are not. As a counterexample however, I have a 2.5-year-old Samsung Galaxy S5, which uses "Super AMOLED", with no noticeable degradation so far. Unsurprisingly, the OLED association claims that OLED lifespan is as good or better than LCD. [oled-a.org] Wikipedia implies that too, but it sounds like it depends on exactly how it is constructed.

Re:

[thegarbz]

Well I'm glad you're basing your entire technological experience of a shitty display in an MP3 player. I have an LCD screen on my MP3 player and quite frankly the technology isn't ready for prime time yet. Everyone should stick to CRTs for at least another 20 years.

In the mean time in the real world when you spend more than $0.85 on a display panel the quality goes up. LG's OLED TVs are frigging amazing. OLED displays on phones have effectively fixed the burn-in issue.

I'm glad your Trinitron TV works 30 yea

Re:

[thegarbz]

Um no they're not coming these two. The two technologies are competitors against each other.

Most of us just want to know when to jump in.

[rbrander]

It's cool to read about this stuff, but as I lack the multiple PhDs to really follow the physics, I'm afraid my brute need is to know when to buy. Everybody wants to avoid buying the next Betamax or HD-DVD, obviously, but also you want to not buy in just as the price drops below $3000 ...and also shortly before it crashes to $999.

I managed to hold off buying a large flatscreen until 1080p was standard, at least (remember the nail-biter of choosing between 720p and 1080i ?) and feel very smart to have grabb

Re:

[David_Hart]

It's cool to read about this stuff, but as I lack the multiple PhDs to really follow the physics, I'm afraid my brute need is to know when to buy. Everybody wants to avoid buying the next Betamax or HD-DVD, obviously, but also you want to not buy in just as the price drops below $3000 ...and also shortly before it crashes to $999.

I managed to hold off buying a large flatscreen until 1080p was standard, at least (remember the nail-biter of choosing between 720p and 1080i ?) and feel very smart to have grabbed one of the last plasma sets before LCDs more-or-less pushed them off the market; everybody comments on the superior colour. That's not near to wearing out yet at 5 years, so I'm in no hurry to jump ship until I get even better colour, resolution, and anything else they're cooking up.

This may be the Next Big Thing, but it's become a hard call with things like 3D, 4K, high-frame-rate, and HDR zooming in and out of popularity on a yearly basis.

I wasn't in a hurry to jump either, but my plasma developed the dreaded vertical lines. Bought a Samsung 4K HDR KS8000 with Quantum Dot. Colors look good, whites are brighter than what I am used to, the ideal viewing angle is smaller, the blacks look good, much better than most LED screens that I have seen.

I have to say that 4K HDR Blu-ray movies look great!!

Re:

[drinkypoo]

I managed to hold off buying a large flatscreen until 1080p was standard, at least (remember the nail-biter of choosing between 720p and 1080i ?) and feel very smart to have grabbed one of the last plasma sets before LCDs more-or-less pushed them off the market; everybody comments on the superior colour.

Have you actually tested your color reproduction? I hooked a laptop up to my TV and used my i1 Display LT to check the color of my Sharp LC52somethingorother old-school LCD TV from Costco and it has 100% of the normal RGB gamut and the color was actually really close to dead-nuts on so I just left it alone. Better than say this Samsung computer monitor I'm sitting at right now, which is a 25.5" 1920x1200 pivot display with flaky pivot detection. Hope it doesn't burst into flames!

Anyway, some LCD TVs actuall

Too late?

[thegarbz]

OLED TVs have started hitting the market at high resolutions and panel sizes. Marketing material seems to suggest the blue fade is a solved issue (though time will tell, it certainly is solved on mobile devices but they have a lower duty cycle).

I wonder how long Samsung will take to get to market with this. It's especially surprising given they are a maker of OLED displays themselves.

Name

[dohzer]

So what are we going to call these things once the word "quantum" goes out of fashion?

I call bullshit on Samsungs "QLED" claims

[ffkom]

Samsung lost a huge gamble when they stopped developing OLED TVs, and left the whole lucrative market of high-end-TVs to LG's OLED displays. Now they keep spinning their story that "Quantum Dots" will be soooo much better - no, they won't. "Quantum Dots" can provide more brilliant colored light from a source of less brilliant light, while sacrificing lumens-per-watt in the process. They solve no other problem, especially not the problem that you first need to be able to put 32 million light emitters on a display that can be controlled to emit precisely the amount of light that you want them to emit, at reasonable cost and efficiency. Samsung has no ace up their sleeves, they have no new light emitting technology at hand that could illuminate their "quantum dots" to compete with OLEDs, they just try to make people wait instead of buying OLED TVs today. Disclosure: I own and operate an OLED TV since early 2015, and haven't experienced any "degradation" or changing colors, yet.

Re:

[ffkom]

I actually owned a TV that was advertised utilizing "Quantum Dots" for more brilliant colors - which meant, of course, some conventional backlight lit those quantum dots, causing them to emit that "more brilliant" colorful light. Where did you get the idea that "quantum dots" are stimulated to emit light by anything other than light shining on them?

Quantum TV

[fox171171]

So can the TV be both on and off at the same time? Can we watch all channels at once?

We live in the future!

[RivenAleem]

We have the capabilities to manipulate the quantum state of semi-conductor nanoparticles and what do we use it for? A new type of Television. What a time to be alive!