Samsung's skinny 40-inch OLED panel
By Barb Dybwad 
posted May 19th 2005 3:15PM
posted May 19th 2005 3:15PM
Next week Samsung is set to unveil a prototype 40-inch single-sheet OLED panel that, when paired with their field emission display technology, could mean supper-skinny high-resolution TVs in the near future. A few months ago they busted out a 21-inch screen capable of high definition resolutions (1920 x 1080 pixels), whereas the new 2.2cm thick 40-incher will do 1280 x 800 pixels at a screen brightness of 600 nits and a contrast ratio of 5000:1. We won't be able to drool over its largitude until it's officially rolled out at next week's Society of Information Display Symposium in Boston.
Society of Information Display Symposium in Boston?...... I'm crashing THAT party.
Now please tell me they plan to put this on the market for under $500. Please.
No mention on how they solved the uneven lifetimes of the different colored LEDs. My bet is that that issue is still at large.
OLED and SED do not have an easy path ahead of them. They have to compete with plasma which is decreasing in price every year. 30% price drops every year. OLED and SED are supposed to be cheaper to manufacture but that advantage gets slim when you consider plasma is already selling large volumes and has new huge factories coming online every year.
Plasma used to get killed over there 20k half life. Well, new plasma tech has 60k half life - plasma lifespan is no longer an issue. Plasma used to get killed over burn-in issues - new plasmas now have burn-in comparable to direct view CRTs.
The only real nitpick on plasmas now is resolution. They are not yet at 1080p (some LCDs are already there). Only 50" plasmas have true 720p. I assume in the next year or two the resolution disadvantge will be solved as well.
I believe the market of 37" and up screens will belong to plasma until at least 2010. Smaller screens are LCD. -- I'm only talking flat panels here.
Monmin: What about weight, special transportation requirements, heat problems? Those were also concerns of mine when I bought my LCD projection HDTV a year and a half ago. The resolution was my primary concern, however. That and the inability of plasmas to deal with low-quality signals very well. Personally, I think it should be illegal to even say the word HDTV in advertisements if your display cannot do 1920x1080 without up-scaling.
Right now, 37" and up is owned by LCD projection and DLP sets, not plasma.
Monmin, The last I read about Plasma is that not many companies are investing any longer in the development of new Plasma Monitors. Samsung and most other panel producer put their money into developing other technologies such as OLED.
I would think that by 07-08 most plasma monitors will be history.
Plasma screen still run at lower resolutions, and still suck up quite a bit more power than the SED displays.
http://www.dansdata.com/gz044.htm has really good info.
Dustin (#4), as I said, I'm only talking about flat panels here. If you want to talk about front projection that is a completely different tech. All these different tech have their pros and cons. If front projection worked for you then great.
RR (#5), I think that is just wrong. Samsung is introducing a new line of plasmas as we speak.
If you do a quick google news search you will see that plasma manufacturing is expanding. I found info on both Samsung (the #2 plasma maker) and Matsushita (panasonic - the #1 maker) they are both increasing their yields to meet rising demand for plasmas. So, you say in '07 or '08 plasma is history? HAHAHHAA that is plain wrong. In those years plasma will continue to lead flat panel sales of 37" and above.
Ben (#6), I agree, I missed the point about plasmas sucking up a lot of power. To me and many this is a serious issue. The pessimist in me thinks the average consumer won't care that much about power consumption though.
I don't really care that much about plasma tech. My main point though is that it will be a long time before SED or OLED takes a significant portion of the market in flat panels.
And just one last time, I am only talking about flat panels - please don't tell me how DLP or projectors are a better way to go. Maybe they are but thats not what I'm talking about.
Thing that's nice about plasma is its here already and its beautiful. I have both a 7th gen 42" ED panasonic plasma and a 26" sharp aquos. Plasma by far has the best picture in my opinion, is more durable and keeps getting cheaper. Considering that there are only a few 42" LCD tv's and the fact that they're are DOUBLE the price of a better looking plasma, I'll stick with plasma for a while.
Blue has proven the most difficult color to get a lengthy halflife for OLED displays. However, materials have been found that last well beyond 10k hours (what is necesary to be considered commercially viable by many) and Cambridge Display Technology has done research that has yielded a 60k hour half life for blue.
I think OLEDs have great potential, but will first find their way into smaller screen sizes before challenging the large scale plasma market.
Wow how are these screens powered? How much power is required? Do they generate alot of heat? And less than 500? Better be less than 100 if they ever want to over take plasma.
Haven't the proponents of OLED tech been telling us that OLED is far cheaper to manufacture than LCD (simpler electronics, wider QA tolerances, minimal or no clean-room time)? A $299 40-inch flat screen should be entirely possible.
However... Samsung isn't about to crash the LCD market, which they are still heavily invested in. For that reason, the likely case will be an OLED on the market that's price-competitive with other flat screen tech, but not amazingly so.