Sony produces 7.4-inch OLED display for professionals, prices it accordingly
By Tim Stevens 
posted April 13th 2010 9:56AM
posted April 13th 2010 9:56AM
posted April 13th 2010 9:56AM
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Ummm....nearly $4000 for a 70" TV...oh wait, what's that you say 7 INCH?!
Is this 1954 prices when color TV's first came out?
@BenThereDidThat
Actually, that's kind of an accurate analogy.
@BenThereDidThat
Oh hey, this new, way advanced display technology has just come to a limited market. Wait? It's not cheaper than the technology it replaces? What is this madness?
Answer: A market economy.
@BenThereDidThat, yea... I loled too.
@BenThereDidThat
This is a professional display, obviously it's going to be expensive. Even a good non-OLED 7" monitor can go for close to $2k, so this is not really that outrageous if it performs well. In either case, OLED or no, this was never meant for consumer pocketbooks.
Yeah, I'd rather just buy, say, 8 iPads and wear through them consecutively.
These kinds of comments always make me laugh and wonder how stupid some commenters here actually are...
@BenThereDidThat If this was a consumer product your coment would make sense but this is professional equipment which has a smaller market (they're selling thousands not millions of these so all the R&D costs and requirements that consumers are oblivious to (ever heard of peaking, tally or genlock features on a consumer screen?) have to be spread over a smaller number of units.. It's not unusual to pay $9000 for a small camera viewfinder or $20K for a 24" reference monitor. If these prices for the features provided didn't make sense to pros, they'd be buying TVs at Walmart.
And some people predicted a iPad model with a OLED screen.
Idiots.
@SCXFAN
we can still hope for two of these in the courier...
Someday, Sony will price itself out of the market, I hope. $4K for this thing is significantly more than I would ever consider paying, but I am not a professional.
However, I do think Sony is playing with fire with some of their prices. Already, Samsung has some LED backlit TVs that are rated better than Sony's and they are cheaper. So, being a "value" buyer, my bucks would be better spent on the value of a top-rated Samsung model over the prestige, if you can call it that, of owning a Sony.
Sony just might have to learn the hard way like Compaq did. For now, we have to tolerate Sony's apparent arrogance.
@wiyosaya
LED Backlit TV consume so much more energy than OLED. In LED, every pixel has to be lit even if it's a black pixel, which is a waste of energy. In OLED, pixels are only lit if they need be. So if you have black pixel, it'll remain unlit, thus saving energy. In the long run, OLED is more cost efficient when it comes to consumption of power
@wiyosaya Normally you'd think that Sony pricing everything so high is because of the "high quality" parts used in their products, but even with the Sony Bravia, who some blindly say is the best TV, uses less-than-excellent parts. They outsource all their parts from Japan and Mexico. Japan isn't really a problem with parts because all HDTV's (sans Olevia) are made outside the US, but what isn't these days? However, I do find issue with parts being made in Mexico.
It's like how Budweiser claims to be America's "King of Beers", when in fact they're owned by Belgium/Brazilian company InBev. That doesn't seem very American to me.
@inspiron41 Please do a study for me.
Get a 7.4 inch LED TV and this Sony 7.4 inch OLED TV, and tell me how long it would take for the savings to offset the cost of going OLED on this tiny screen.
Plus, look at the resolution on this thing. Do you really think such a tiny screen with a just-above-my-future-HTC-EVO 960x540 resolution, will REALLY make a difference between OLED and LED's energy consumption?
@inspiron41
How long do you think it would take to be cost efficient to go with a 4 grand screen compared to a lcd screen? It would probably take 50 years at least for it to be efficient. I'm basing this off doing absolutely no math, other than just using common sense.
@Paul J Ha, 50 years? You wish. The amount of energy consumption would be so negligible that I'm sure we'd be long dead before it was even close to efficient.
@Paul J
i didnt say anything about cost efficient when it comes to purchasing the damn thing. i said it was more coefficient when it comes to consumption of energy.
@BenThereDidThat
From Wiki: "While an OLED will consume around 40% of the power of an LCD displaying an image which is primarily black, for the majority of images, it will consume 60–80% of the power of an LCD"
@BenThereDidThat "However, I do find issue with parts being made in Mexico."
As a Mexican industrial engineer, I do find issue with this "issue you found".
For those who don't know, this is replacing $10,000+ CRT broadcast monitors.
I don't think the commenters above me "get" what this is used for.
@grumbles They aren't 1000 dollars but they are still pretty expensive.
@trentryan Actually they are, I work with them, for a grade 1 hd monitor you can easily pay that much and there is quite a difference between these and consumer devices. All peanuts compared to the cost of the new 3d monitors being used now.
@grumbles
No, they don't have real jobs yet, which is to say a typical engadget commenter.
What is the outdoor performance on OLED screens anyway? Anything which removes fiddly hoods in the field is good for me.
Typical Sony profiteering, are you sure this isn't the 'UK Premium Market' price? :P
The comments sections for expensive stuff aimed solely at professionals are more or less interchangeable.
If this is going to be mounted onto a 4K digital camera , the body alone costing at least $40,000, I think this is a pretty affordable accessory.
@Oliver Taylor Just because companies CAN charge more for "professional" equipment, doesn't mean it's worth it. Just because I own a Lamborghini doesn't mean I want to pay $50K for more efficient tires, even though it's "affordable" because my car was $500K.
To those of you that think this is too expensive, it is not for a broadcast quality monitor. OLED mean less power consumption which is great when you are in the field. Having to carry many heavy 5-10 lbs dionic batteries sucks. This monitor also has HDMI input for some of Sony's lower end products such as XDCAM, as well as HD-SDI inputs for use with almost every Sony camera from Betacam (yes it is still used today) to the high-end HDCAM CeneAlta F900. Plus add the 4:2:2 color space and you got a great preview monitor.
LOL
I love the styling!
They've kept the look of their studio monitors, nice.
I used to build surveillance vehicles and the old Sorny CRT studio monitors were the monitors of choice for their ruggedness and great performance in the field.
The real question is, how much is the markup on it? How much does it cost them to produce?
I think we have some other issues to consider here. Firstly, this is a professional unit meaning a very high standard of manufacture: such pricing discrepancies compared to consumer grade equipment are reasonable. Secondly, the unit is using something Sony calls Super Top Emission technology, which may be similar to Samsung's Super AMOLED in giving a great result in ambient light. Let's wait a bit to see the unit in action before passing judgement on value.
@Bozzor Consumers commenting on pro gear is always good for a larf.
@stridermt2k Canon's new SLR is over $3k! What is this 2001? My samsung phone has a digital camera built in and was way less than that!
I saw this and the price and went "Wow that's cheap I might have to buy one." Which just goes to show the consumer market and general public have different views of what's cheap. When we can spend 100k+ On just a body for the camera and think that's not a bad day or 20k for just the body and go holy ***** that's a cheap camera. Oh our industry gotta love it.
@Edrick All these years we've been complaining about the proverbial $500 toilet seat. We didn't realize it must have been a 'professional' toilet seat...
@Invalidd
Ever built or purchased stuff for a government, commercial, or any other type of corporate / business world thing? They charge extra for everything outside of the consumer market it sucks I'm willing to bet there is such thing as a $500 toilet seat and its probably made out of plastic. But in the business world people will buy it.
But as far as this monitor compared to consumer or prosumer we're talking about the durability, precision, and connections for example your home monitor isn't going to have SDI and the such.
This monitor is cheap.
These OLED monitors are great for viewing outdoors when the ambient light level is high.
For example a comparable monitor from Transvideo (Ultrabright series) cost around $6,000.
The picture quality is good, I've seen it at a trade show.
Also I think this monitor has the facility to load a LUT. Which can be very useful in some instances. For example shooting a feature film with a F35 or SRW-9000 which records in S-Log gamma.
Although maybe it is only the bigger OLED Sony that can do this.
I can't remember exactly.
Interesting that in this thread, all comments about Sony just making an outrageous profit have been down ranked to oblivion. Must be some Sony rep concerned that the truth of the matter is coming to light.
Anyone commenting on this thread ever see an XEL-1 in person? I did. For $2,500 US, the picture quality was, IMHO, no where near a bargain for the price. The sole advantage that an OLED in that size has is the fact that you can see it in sunlight. For me, it is not worth the price nor is the "energy savings" anywhere near enough to justify spending 100 times the money on a display of that size.
IMHO, you would think that Sony had learned its lesson with the XEL-1 (Engadget did post an article saying that Sony was taking them off the market). Yet they come out with this.
Though there undoubtedly some out there who will have to have this either for a good reason or because they have to have the latest in display technology, my bet is that it will sell no better than the XEL-1 did.
Like it or not, while OLEDs like this and LG's 15-incher are priced in the $200+ per inch range, they will not sell well no matter their advantages. However, the geniuses that run these companies will probably take the fact that OLEDs in that price range do not sell well as a sign of "no market interest" instead of facing the truth and realizing "we priced it to high for the market."
Dream on Sony!
@wiyosaya
Which part of 'Professional' did you not understand? The pro market is so distant from the consumer market, any comparison is hopelessly (and hilariously) irrelevant. Maybe you should take a look at the wares of other purveyors of professional products and accuse them of 'making an outrageous profit' too.
Of course the commercially available OLED screens will only sell in tiny numbers, they cost a lot, and are only available in very small sizes. If you genuinely think these were produced to sell in great quantities, you are misguided. It's an almost identical story to LCD TV's initial commercial release twenty-ish years ago. Small screens, prohibitively priced. I wonder if we'll be posting these comments again twenty years from now when the replacement for OLED shows up in a small, very expensive form...