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Samsung teases with 50-inch OLED TV for CES, scolds us for caring
When SED development hit the brakes a few years ago, OLED technology quickly stepped in to fill the emptiness felt by our fickle hearts' desire for the blackest of blacks. Up until now, prototype OLED panels have been limited to a max size of about 40-inches. But these won't be available for consumers until 2010 or so. For now, we're "stuck with" Sony's little 11-inch XEL-1 if anyone actually wants to purchase an OLED TV for their living room kitchen. Samsung's vice president of flat panel development, HS Kim, says that Sammy "may demonstrate" a 50-inch OLED TV at CES in January but quickly tempers any enthusiasm with a crushing blow of reality, "I'm sure that if we marketed such a set at ten times the price of current LCD TVs, which is what it would be now, no-one would buy it." Kim then shifts into sales-mode by pointing out that Samsung's more power-efficient 240Hz LCDs and Plasmas with highly-reflective black panels and LED edge-lighting are quickly cutting into any advantage offered by OLEDs -- including thinness if you factor in the additional electronics you'd have to slap onto the back of those 3-mm thick OLED panels to create a TV. Of course, manufacturers can also dump all that tech into a display-side box much like Sony does with it's XEL-1, but hey, he's on a roll. When the interview with What Hi-Fi ended, Kim presumably kicked a puppy just to drive his points home. [Via OLED-Display]
