You've seen the
prototypes tucked away in trade show corners, and you've seen the
demise of existing generation technologies -- it doesn't take an industry expert to realize that the door is wide open for OLED to walk through. According to a new report from -- who else? --
industry experts, the OLED lighting market is set to boom in 2011, with OLED revenues expected to surpass PMOLED displays in the 2013 / 2014 time frame. Specifically in the
OLED TV market, manufacturers are scrambling to assemble large-screen OLED TVs that are even close to affordable, and estimates we've personally heard put those on the market just after the next decade begins. Clearly, the biggest hindrance from OLED domination right now is the prohibitive pricing, but once those
XEL-1s are given away inside King Size cereal boxes, we'll really be onto something.
posted Mar 15th 2009 8:17AM
I'm hoping in a decade or two you'll be able to buy a roll of this stuff from B&Q and stick it to the wall like wallpaper.
"The OLED lighting market is setting the stage to take off in 2011, with OLED lighting revenues forecasted to surpass PMOLED displays in the 2013/2014 timeframe"
WTF is PMOLED? The only metric worth talking about is OLED (organic light emitting diode) vs. current LCDs (liquid crystal displays).
There are 2 types of OLEDs... AMOLED (active matrix organic light emitting diode) and PMOLED (I believe it means passive matrix organic light emitting diode).
Besides that, I have no idea what the differences are.
From literally the first site in Google:
"Passive matrix (PM) OLED displays stack layers in a linear pattern, much like a grid, with "columns" of organic and cathode materials superimposed on "rows" of anode material. Each intersection or pixel contains all three substances. External circuitry controls electrical current passing through the anode "rows" and cathode "columns," stimulating the organic layer within each pixel. As pixels turn on and off in sequence, pictures form on the screen.
... (Picture comparing PMOLEDs and AMOLEDs)
PMOLEDs have a fairly simple structures to design and fabricate, they demand relatively expensive, current-sourced drive electronics to operate effectively. In addition, their power consumption is significantly higher than that required by a continuous charge mode in an active-matrix OLED"
On the first page of search results is also an article titled: "PMOLED vs AMOLED - what's the difference?"
Learn to Google, or you won't survive on the Internet.
KarlW, could you answer that without the attitude next time?
There wasn't meant to be attitude, but people (or maybe just me) always sound like a bitch on the internet.
Don't blame me, blame my medium.
I'll even summarise the differences in human-readable format to make up for it:
PMOLEDs have to manipulate one pixel at a time due to their design. Each cell (pixel) has one terminal connected all the time, and the other terminal (required to complete the circuit and make it light up) is "floating" - it can be connected to any other pixel in the same row/column (forget which). By connecting and disconnecting the circuit lighting each pixel in a row/column quicker than you can detect, they appear to produce an image in the same way waving a glowstick in the dark leaves a trail that you can make rings of. Note that floating means they are electrically in non-permanent contact (or at least not permanently non-zero). The terminals don't actually move.
AMOLEDs are much simpler. Each pixel is driven independently, with no floating terminals.
Don't blame Karl for bringing the facts. It literally takes 1 second to google something. Not that it's bad to ask questions, but really, next time...
http://www.justfuckinggoogleit.com/
Well, according to a report by the guy that lives behind the bus stop, OLED's are going to be perpetually on the horizon without ever coming out.
That said, another report by the same guy suggests that smoking spiders is the only way to stop government mind control, so take it with a grain of salt.
I'll take it with a pack of smoking spiders please.
Oi! I also said that tin foil hats were good to stop government mind control
How much salt per gram of spider?
@ tigurinn , that is what they want you to think!
What you need son is an enriched uranium helmet, the radiation will corrupt your thought pattern for them to read it.
Smoking spiders can stop mind control ... hmm you know what that kinda makes sense .. but I'm not sure I'd want to believe him if he's also going to make an outrageous claim that OLEDs are going to be perpetually on the horizon.
I cannot wait for OLED to take over, I'm sick of crappy LCD viewing angles, bleeding, ghosting with bigger screens, lack of vivid colors, bad contrast, etc. Most of these are associated with TN panels, but even the better kinds suffer from low response times and color shifting. OLED like juts flat out eliminates all of these issues, consumes less energy, looks awesome, is paper thin and it technically costs less to produce. The only issue is lifetime, but they're working on it hopefully. So once it becomes mainstreamed, it'll be cheap and amazing. For mobile devices, it'll decrease power consumption and free up more space for other things.
I mean, I'm sure you're all aware of all these, I guess I'm just too psyched for OLED, I don't wanna have to wait until 2011 :P
Check out the Samsung LCDs. They have excellent viewing angles, and great contrast, pretty good blacks too.
I feel the same way. I have some LCD displays, but I would gladly buy an OLED display right now if they had one around 24" for under 2 grand. I couldn't care less about the thickness thing (although in the future if you could wallpaper with it that would be cool), it's the true black and amazing color that draws me.
Yup, AMOLED is amazing - have it in my Cowon S9 and the viewing angles, contrast are simply mindblowing and on top of that there is no ghosting or problems I have with my LCD monitor. It is really only limited by the source material but since it can play DVD quality .avi files that's not a huge problem.
Lifetime is something they need to work on - although atm the average lifetime of an OLED monitor is around the same time it would take someone to break/replace your average LCD one.
I've never had any problems with viewing angles and response times tbh. Then again, it might be because I've never seen an OLED screen in person to compare LCDs to...
OLEDs are pretty cool but they're not anything like as good as they are claimed to be.
For starters, they're going to be more expensive than LCDs for the forseeable future. LCDs will get cheaper at a similar rate to the OLEDs, keeping the difference pretty constant. This is why there's been a market research report every year for the last 10 years saying that OLEDs will become mainstream "in a couple of years" and it never happens... wonder why?
To start with, OLED advantages are always overstated... the 1,000,000,000,000,000,000:1 (exaggerated for comic effect) contrast ratio figures they mention in their advertising are only valid in a completely artificial environment.
What is contrast ratio? Put the display in a dark room and display a white image on full brightness, measure the brightness, then display a black image and do the same.
Contrast Ratio = White image brightness divided by black image brightness. Brightness is measured in candelas per square metre.
Say an LCD is 400cd/m^2 on white and 1cd/m^2 on black and you will have a 400:1 contrast ratio.
If an OLED is 200cd/m^2 on white (OLEDs are usually dimmer than LCDs - a microscopic pixel-sized LED will never be as strong as a huge backlight LED used by the LCD display, so the max brightness will probably be quite a bit less) and a black picture where all the pixels are switched off, so ~0 cd/m^2, it's pretty much an infinite contrast ratio. Great. But what does that prove?
Of course, in a room with no light, an OLED screen showing a 100% black image, will produce a colour that is very black compared with a leaky LCD trying to stop its backlight coming through. But we don't normally look at our screens in an environment that is completely black.
Ever watched a projector that is too dim when there's light shining off the screen and had to go shut the curtains? Same problem.
Introduce any ambient light and some of it will be reflected off the surface, even when the display is switched off - suddenly, that 0.0000000000001 cd/m^2 starts creeping up.
So what about when its outdoors and has both diffuse and direct light reflecting off the glass?
I'll tell you what... that's when that very black black starts becoming very white. Then those figures start to change. A sunny day can drop an unwanted 5000cd/m^2.
So reflect 2% of that off the surface of the glass (hopelessly optimistic in favour of the OLED) and your contrast ratio becomes 200 / 100... that's 2:1 contrast ratio!!! Pretty damned unviewable
A transflective LCD can take advantage of reflected sunlight to boost its output. Assuming it reflects that same 2% surface brightness but also manages to reflect 5% inside the display (the intentional transflective bit) and we're looking at 650/100: 6.5:1 contrast ratio. That's still not great but is much better than the OLED, and it's only that small a difference because of my biassed stats in favour of OLED here.
In the real world, a transflective LCD kicks the arse out of an OLED outdoors.
Furthermore, OLEDs introduce their own problems
1) Poor lifetime - yes, researchers have shown some ways of lengthening it, but they're too expensive. Use it regularly and, in a few months time, that OLED will be as dim as an inbred cretin.
2) Uneven lifetimes - red and green OLED pixels age much slower than blue ones. Fancy watching your TV with all the blues faded and a nice yellow tint to everything?
How about power? OLEDs are much more efficient than LCDs, right?
Nope - again, this is only in a theoretical world. Having a single light source is much more efficient than putting it in each pixel if you want to output a lot of light. So, unless your content is almost 100% black, real world will use much less power on an LCD than an OLED display.
Also LCDs will get better as OLED prices come down, minimising the difference in viewing angle, contrast ratio, etc.
Smart backlights can make LCD blacks, blacker - removing the huge advantage of OLED.
RGB field sequential LED backlights can treble the power efficiency of LCD panels making the advantage even stronger. Clever films can improve the viewing angle.
Don't get me wrong - I'd love an OLED TV. Actually, I'd love an OLED wall but that's a different matter :) But I'll only get one if I'm filthy rich (which you don't become when you're a display engineer).
In the choice between a similarly priced 20" OLED TV and a 42" LCD TV, I'd take the LCD every single time - twice as large is worth much more than 10% better performance.
Just don't put it anywhere near my phone / MP3 player as it is fundamentally the wrong technology. I'm sure they'll sell a few; OLED's a great marketing buzzword.
I remember checking out an 11" OLED display (forgot the exact name of it) in a Sony Style store. Everything about it was awesome except I couldn't help notice the screen had a flicker to it (like a CRT monitor on a low refresh rate). Color, resolution, picture quality, etc looked AMAZING but that flickering/refresh rate was terrible. I hope all OLEDs aren't this way.
Maybe this will convince my father that CRTs are no longer the pinnacle of viewing technology.
Its been a few years since I was involved in the display industry, but then, and most likely now, the issue with OLEDs was driving them. LEDs need current to make them glow, and you have to get this current to the OLED via conductive transparent traces on the glass. The resistance of these traces looses a lot of power, and the longer the traces are, the more power is lost. This is why OLED displays are always small.
LCDs are just electronic shutters which regulate the light from a backlight, and hence require very little drive power, and the resistance of the traces which control the shuters is not so critical.
Sadly, a lot of this is laws of physics, I think, and we may never see large OLEDs. On the other hand, maybe we just need transparent Aluminum to be invented.
Thanks Bill for your interesting and informative comment. I am sure that at some point soon, industry will figure out 1. how to lower the resistance of conductive traces 2. how to deliver current more directly to the LEDs 3. how to make aluminum transparent or 4. something no one has thought of yet. This will enable large scale OLEDs to go mainstream without requiring modification of the laws of physics. Patience friend, patience.
Pfft, who needs physics anyways.
physics is for suckers!
Surely with OLED the conductors don't need to be transparent since they can be at the back of the display, behind the LEDs? Obviously you need transparent conductors for LCD because the backlight has to shine through, but I am pretty sure that OLED has no such problem.
Actually, never mind, I am just wrong. I didn't realise which direction the 'sandwich' goes in.
Another very good point - this is why expensive LTPS is the preferred backplane technology for AMOLED instead of bulk A-Si (higher electron mobility in the more refined glass = lower resistance).
It's really tough to make large P-Si glass and the manufacturers have focused on the smaller displays where it allows you to reach crazy resolutions like WVGA on a 3.8" LCD. Nobody that I know of really does large P-Si fabs yet.
2 words: carbon nanotubes...
Our grandkids are gonna have some sick tv's
TV's that are alive and can get ill? Whatever next.
@sambioni
It is called a colloquialism. It is a part of language, so don't bash him. Unless of course you were being sarcastic, in that case make it more clear who/what you are making fun of...
Well that certainly didn't go over sacapuntas's head.
TVs
apostrophe + S = POSSESSIVE
I fear the mass market that is guiding our TV technology. Pioneer Kuro's were years ahead of their nearest competitor in picture quality(panasonic plasma) and they didn't survive. LCD looks like crap in comparison and OLED is only being shown on screens too small to be used as computer displays - hard to say if that technolgoy is any good. We were so close to having 70 and 80" plasmas from Pioneer and now we'll probably be offered 25" and 35" OLED's in 2013 - and some idiots will be buying them - why must we regress?
Plasmas were feared by their 1st gen faults (burn in, massive energy consumption, etc.) and couldnt get past those fears despite fixing the problems but OLEDs are being harked as the 2nd coming so there is a distinct difference, at least in my mind.
@ boe: Conversely, it was "hard to say" if plasma tech would be any good at its inception as well.
OLED and plasma are very similar technologies.
Both are 100% emissive, suffer from screen burn, poor and uneven lifetime and high power draw.
But OLED's more expensive and harder to make!
'Sweden is the best country' A Swede said.
I think Australia is a better country :)
Since Obama lifted the ban on federal funding for embryonic stem cell research, there should be a lot more organic stuff available for OLEDs. And higher production that satiates demand should mean lower prices. It will be kinda funny in 2012 watching CNN-HD coverage of holy rollers carrying "It's a child, not a TV" signs on my 56" OLED Sony
That's a pretty disgusting statement.
it all sounds good but i hope it doesn't end up like SED TV
Hopefully the recession will be over by then.
I personally cannot wait for a 50" OLED TV in my living room. :)
I just live in an apartment but 50" would be fine for my bedroom if the picture quality was decent but I'd want an 80" for the living room. If I ever decide to buy a hours I'd want nothing less than 100"
Actually Bosco, Obama EFFECTIVELY DID NOT lift the ban because the ban went back into effect when he signed the Omnibus bill a few days later. I guess our elected officials did not read the bill in full and it was missed. Another oops to add to the long and growing list of oops'.
testing
i have to say, i think this whole flat-screen thing is a little bit ridiculous. i mean a plain ol crt has the best viewing angles, great blacks, a decent brighness, vivid, natural colours and a superb response time. the only downside is the resolution and, of couse, the size. and 2010 they are able to compete with that and bring out the new "must-have" oled. im just interested how long it takes that _proper_ flat screens are the price, old crts where for a long time.
I completely agree. Unfortunately, TV salesmen (and trolls on the internet) convinced everyone that CRTs are TOO HEAVY and BREAK YOUR BACK! Because, you know, a home television is a mobile and/or frequently moved device where we should consider the weight! So everyone took the bait and invested in shitty-quality LCD panels.
And guess where those panels are? Permanently fixed to the wall, where they will never be moved again.
Just FYI, Plasma has been on par with CRT for quite a while, to the human eye anyway. You also forgot to mention the convergence issues you can get with a CRT, you won't get that with a fixed pixel display. Plasma is the best you can do right now and OLED will blow it away. LCD is a joke compared to all of those, so I won't even discuss it.
High end manufacturers will have this out this year in consumer HDTVs
I couldn't wait any longer for OLED and got a plasma unit. I couldn't deal with the shortfalls of an LCD television, even the newest Samsung models. Apparently the viewing angle isn't as wide as the published spec sheet shows. I'll deal with the shortfalls with plasma. If OLED was out in a decent size, though, there wouldn't have been any question as to which one I would have purchased.
plasma is> than the consumer but leave it to the average consumer to listen to every clueless tv salesman. I went from samsung 5 series after two weeks to panasonic pz80u and the next upgrade will be this. Lets hope the first batches don't have any problems like plasma (screen burn) did, that will have everyone running to the obsolete option.