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HOME REVIEWS CONTACT ABOUT March 14,
2009
OLED Newest Display Technology for HDTV
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One of
the most important product introductions in recent years was
made by
Sony, with an Organic Light Emitting Diode (OLED) display.
The new
11" Sony TV is called the "XEL-1". The Sony HDTV is
extremely
thin (less than 1/10") and light-weight.
Other
companies, Samsung, Toshiba, Matsushita (Panasonic), and
others
are investing hundreds of millions of dollars, trying to develop
this
promising technology. Toshiba plans to sell a 30" OLED display in 2009.
Kodak
holds a several patents in OLED technology. Manufacturers will
probably
be required to pay a licensing fee to Kodak for every OLED
TV sold.
There is
a lot of money to be made. According to DisplaySearch,
in 2007, the market for LCD TVs was estimated at $27.4 billion, while the
market for plasma TVs was estimated at $7.5 billion. An OLED TV that was cost
competitive would likely get a significant share of this market. According to iSuppli, the current market for OLED devices is a little
more than a half-billion dollars per year. Samsung currently has a 70% market
share. But cost and technology problems have prevented OLED from being used in
larger equipment such as HDTVs or computer monitors.
Easy Wall-Mountable HDTV
Most
consumers say they want a wall mountable HDTV. However, according to the NPD
Group, a consumer and retail market research information firm (NPD.com), only
13 percent of current LCD TV owners and 25 percent of plasma TV owners say
their set is mounted on the wall.
"Consumers
are drawn to flat-panel technologies for their wall-mounting capabilities, but
the difficulty of such an installation often leads them to explore alternatives
such as stands or retailer installations." said Ross Rubin, director of
industry analysis, The NPD Group. But with OLED, the job of mounting the
hardware would be much easier, more like hanging a painting on the wall. The
hardware weighs a fraction of LCD or plasma.
OLED Performance
OLED
displays have already used for some time in digital cameras, cell phones and
other devices with relatively small panels, because they are very energy
efficient, which is very important in portable devices.
A
significant benefit of OLED displays over traditional liquid crystal displays (LCDs) is that OLEDs do not
require a backlight to function. Because of this, they draw much less power.
And because there is no backlight, an OLED display is much thinner than an LCD
display.
And
because there is no backlight, an OLED system has a larger viewing angle than an
LED system, and an OLED display can be much thinner than an LCD display.
The
response time for OLED is faster than normal LCD screens. An average of 8 to 12
milliseconds in response time is normal for a LCD compared to 0.01 milliseconds
in response time for an OLED. This means that OLED will be less subject to
"blur". Blur occurs when there is rapid motion in the programming,
such as sports. When the picture changes quickly, the pixels can lag in
response.
One of
the problems that has limited OLED use was that the
blue OLED technology had a short lifetime, but a new type of blue LED, the
"PHOLED", has a 20,000-hour lifetime (20-25 years of normal TV use).
This was a major breakthrough in the effort to commercialize this technology
for the HDTV market.
In
theory, OLED displays can be more efficiently manufactured than LCD or plasma
displays, meaning that they should not be as expensive. The Sony XEL-1 sells
for $2500, but you should remember that the first large LCD and Plasma displays
were much more expensive when they were first introduced. If production costs
can be cut, the OLED HDTV set should eventually be less expensive that
comparable LCD sets.
OLED
Performance Pluses:
Ø
Power Efficienct
Ø
Very Thin and
Light-Weight, 1/4" or less
Ø
Better Brightness
than LCD
Ø
Wide Viewing
Angle (~ 160 degree viewing angle)
Ø
Excellent
Contrast (> 1,000,000:1)
Ø
Once developed
the Manufacturing Process should be Inexpensive (the process is similar to
ink-jet printing)
Ø
Very Large
Displays are Possible (> 100 inch)
Ø
Response is
better than LCD(good for moving images like Sports)
If the
OLED does not live up to its promise, it will not be the first HDTV display to
do so. Remember the surface-conduction electron-emitter display (SED TV)?
Toshiba and Canon were ready to go into production, but patent disputes with a
company called Nano-Proprietary killed the
technology. That probably won't happen this time. The main obstacle will be the
manufacturing process. If units can be manufactured cost-competitively with LCD
and Plasma, it should get very interesting.