Sony, Panasonic team up on OLED displays
Sony and Panasonic have teamed up on OLED technology, starting with HDTV sets and hopefully bringing the ultra-fast high-contrast tech to computer monitors in the near future.
OLED technology is a common sight in the smartphone world, but the translation to large-format displays has been slow. Back in 2007 Sony announced the world's first commercially available OLED TV, but it cost a whopping $2,000 (around £1,283 excluding taxes) and measured just 11 inches diagonally. Despite its disappointing size, the set demonstrated just what was possible using OLED technology: Sony's TV was a mere 3mm thick and offered black levels still unreachable by even the best IPS LCD displays on the market today.
Unlike liquid-crystal displays (LCDs), OLED displays provide their own light. Without a backlight, displays are slimmer - hence Sony's 3mm-thick set from 2007 - and draw less power. More importantly, the lack of a backlight means that black portions of the display are significantly darker than with LCD technology, bringing a contrast ratio back to TVs that hasn't been seen since the departure of cathode-ray tubes (CRTs.)
OLED displays also boast improved viewing angles, sub-millisecond response times - a critical feature for gaming, reducing ghosting and smearing effects caused by fast motion - and a wide colour gamut. The technology also lends itself to transparent and flexible displays, although this is more important in the field of mobile devices than on the desk.
Sadly, OLED technology stalled shortly after Sony's 2007 announcement. Issues with complex manufacturing and component decay rates - with the blue OLED components degrading significantly more rapidly than the green and red versions - mean that the technology has been largely confined to small-format displays like smartphones and electronic viewfinders.
This year, however, manufacturers have been stepping forward to say the problems are solved and OLED is heading to the living room and the desk. Both Samsung and LG have shown off large-scale 55in HDTVs based on OLED technology, but Sony has been surprising in its absence.
Today's partnership announcement looks to change that. With Sony's experience in OLED technology and Panasonic's manufacturing base - Sony, incidentally, not making the LCD panels for its own displays but buying in panels from external manufacturers like Samsung and Sharp - the pair reckon they can offer competition to the Korean giants and bring the cost of OLED technology down to an affordable level.
So far, however, neither company has announced a date for commercial availability of large-format OLED panels - meaning the initial flood into the home theatre market will belong entirely to Samsung and LG, who have indicated that their 55in OLED HDTVs will cost around five times that of an equivalent LCD TV.
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Discuss in the forums ReplyI had a Sony/Fossil watch that had a blue OLED display, the display only lasted just over a year. I think I'd have to wait a while just to make sure the displays will last longer than the warrenty.
So you don't mind that black is dark grey ?
Yours in Absurd Awesome Gaming Plasma,
Star*Dagger
Would one 55" 4K TV do the job? Yours for a mere £7000 :o
http://www.whathifi.com/review/toshiba-55zl2
That said, I've seen 60" monitors, but they had terrible pixel pitch. What should be fascinating is how the yields translate on large format displays. Because on a small scale AMOLEDs aren't bad. It's just that yields for displays are lower the larger the panel.
Also, I'm boycotting PC world and the like until they start including resolutions of monitors on their shelf-edge labels, instead of just the physical size.
Ugh, you're absolutely right. PC World irritates the cr@p out of me with how they try to dumb things down. Rather than making a computer store for the everyman, they're keeping people in the dark and promoting consumer ignorance.
This is particularly bad instore where you hear the staff blagging customers as if they were new car salesmen. Nobody needs a core i7 over i3 just for email and web surfing.
Mind you, I'm probably biased since I never got over my irritation with them for being informed in a patronising tone some years back that PCI IDE expansion cards didn't exist because "computers can't have more than 2 disk drives, you don't know what you're talking about mate".
Yes, I am an angry old man.
OLED displays, though, are awesome and fantabutastic - they're already quite commonly used in film and TV work, where the contrast ratio is worth paying for. Strictly speaking, anyone with a lot of money could already go and buy a Sony BVM-E250, which is a 24.5" OLED and has HDMI inputs. They do cost about £20k, though. They're also about six or eight inches deep and weigh a ton.
I currently use two Dell 2405s and like them enough that I'm looking for another. The difference between these really rather high contrast TFTs and an OLED is in the off axis viewing, but from square on, it isn't exactly night and day.