@Gigaflop The problem with OLED is its still a form of LCD tech and LCD just can't reproduce the type of vibrant colors found on a Plasma. I really had high hopes for SED but it looks like it is dead.
@Slvrgun Actually, the way an Organic Light-Emitting Diode (OLED) display creates a picture is closer to plasma technology than to LCD technology.
A LCD display has a white backlight that is constantly producing bright white light (by either CCFL, white LED's, or RGB LED's), which is then polarized and passes through the liquid crystal pixels. Each pixel in a LCD display consists of individual Red, Green, and Blue subpixels that act as "shutters" to the backlight - to display white they untwist to allow all of the backlight to pass through, and to display black they try to block all of the backlight by twisting shut. This is why LCD's generally have a harder time producing black compared to Plasmas (and OLED, SED, FED, and other light producing display technologies), as instead of just not emitting light they have to try to block all of the backlight and getting the liquid crystals to shut all the way is very difficult.
Plasma displays consist of pixels each having Red, Green, and Blue subpixels, that actually emit light instead of filtering it. Each pixel has a cell full of a noble gas which, when electrified, turns into a plasma that emits UV light. The UV light strikes a colored phosphor which then emits either Red, Green, or Blue light. Thus, to display black, a plasma display simply produces less light, enabling better native black levels than from a LCD (however, true black is nearly impossible as the gas must always have some electrical current applied to keep the gas in the plasma state and ensure fast response times - they are always emitting a small amount of UV light).
An OLED display also produces light from each pixel. Each pixel in an OLED consists of a Red, Blue, and Green organic light emitting diode. The advantage of OLED's over plasma is that instead of requiring a UV emitting plasma gas to excite a phosphor, the OLED's directly emit light in the desired wavelength (for red, blue, and green only, white LED's use a phosphor). This means that when no current is applied to the individual subpixel OLED's, they produce no light at all (no baseline current is required to keep response times up). This is much more efficient than both LCD and Plasma as the light undergoes NO filtering or phosphor conversion. Only problem now is that the life of the blue OLED's is significantly less than the red and green, so as the display ages the color balance changes as less blue light is emitted.
I think the confusion stems from the current use of LED tv's when the manufactures are actually referring to LCD displays that use LED's as the backlight source instead of CCFL's. The LED backlight is either a combination of red, green, and blue LED's, or white LED's (which use a blue/UV LED to excite a yellow phosphor to produce a white light, albeit not a perfect white spectrum).
This technology would improve the color reproduction and efficiency of LED backlit LCD displays by allowing the backlight to use blue/UV LED's, which are the most efficient, to emit the perfect wavelength red, blue, and green components of RGB white light by coating them with their product.
I hope that clears things up for people. Main point is what manufacturer's refer to as LED TV's are actually LED backlit LCD TV's and work COMPLETELY different than OLED TV's. In summary, LED backlit LCD's use liquid crystals to vary the amount of light seen by the viewer from a LED backlight, OLED TV's use individual organic light emitting diodes in each pixel to directly produce the light seen by the viewer and vary the amount of light by changing the current supplied to each OLED subpixel.
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And yet there is still nothing that beats Plasma in terms of PQ.
@Slvrgun I think the silver bullet will be OLED. But until then, you're right. Plasma lays the smack down.
@Gigaflop The problem with OLED is its still a form of LCD tech and LCD just can't reproduce the type of vibrant colors found on a Plasma. I really had high hopes for SED but it looks like it is dead.
@Slvrgun Actually, the way an Organic Light-Emitting Diode (OLED) display creates a picture is closer to plasma technology than to LCD technology.
A LCD display has a white backlight that is constantly producing bright white light (by either CCFL, white LED's, or RGB LED's), which is then polarized and passes through the liquid crystal pixels. Each pixel in a LCD display consists of individual Red, Green, and Blue subpixels that act as "shutters" to the backlight - to display white they untwist to allow all of the backlight to pass through, and to display black they try to block all of the backlight by twisting shut. This is why LCD's generally have a harder time producing black compared to Plasmas (and OLED, SED, FED, and other light producing display technologies), as instead of just not emitting light they have to try to block all of the backlight and getting the liquid crystals to shut all the way is very difficult.
Plasma displays consist of pixels each having Red, Green, and Blue subpixels, that actually emit light instead of filtering it. Each pixel has a cell full of a noble gas which, when electrified, turns into a plasma that emits UV light. The UV light strikes a colored phosphor which then emits either Red, Green, or Blue light. Thus, to display black, a plasma display simply produces less light, enabling better native black levels than from a LCD (however, true black is nearly impossible as the gas must always have some electrical current applied to keep the gas in the plasma state and ensure fast response times - they are always emitting a small amount of UV light).
An OLED display also produces light from each pixel. Each pixel in an OLED consists of a Red, Blue, and Green organic light emitting diode. The advantage of OLED's over plasma is that instead of requiring a UV emitting plasma gas to excite a phosphor, the OLED's directly emit light in the desired wavelength (for red, blue, and green only, white LED's use a phosphor). This means that when no current is applied to the individual subpixel OLED's, they produce no light at all (no baseline current is required to keep response times up). This is much more efficient than both LCD and Plasma as the light undergoes NO filtering or phosphor conversion. Only problem now is that the life of the blue OLED's is significantly less than the red and green, so as the display ages the color balance changes as less blue light is emitted.
I think the confusion stems from the current use of LED tv's when the manufactures are actually referring to LCD displays that use LED's as the backlight source instead of CCFL's. The LED backlight is either a combination of red, green, and blue LED's, or white LED's (which use a blue/UV LED to excite a yellow phosphor to produce a white light, albeit not a perfect white spectrum).
This technology would improve the color reproduction and efficiency of LED backlit LCD displays by allowing the backlight to use blue/UV LED's, which are the most efficient, to emit the perfect wavelength red, blue, and green components of RGB white light by coating them with their product.
I hope that clears things up for people. Main point is what manufacturer's refer to as LED TV's are actually LED backlit LCD TV's and work COMPLETELY different than OLED TV's. In summary, LED backlit LCD's use liquid crystals to vary the amount of light seen by the viewer from a LED backlight, OLED TV's use individual organic light emitting diodes in each pixel to directly produce the light seen by the viewer and vary the amount of light by changing the current supplied to each OLED subpixel.
Waiting for Quantum Dot displays, will blow OLED out of the water.