Toshiba pledges 30in OLED TV will ship in 2009

By Tony Smith
3rd October 2007 10:50 GMT


Toshiba has cocked a snook at the 11in OLED TV Sony announced this week and pledged to bring a 30in model to market effectively within the next two years.

A company spokeswoman yesterday told IDG that the screen would go on sale in 2009.

Sony unveiled its XEL-1 OLED TV in Japan - an ultraslim screen that contains a display panel that's just 3mm thick. That, along with a massive contrast ratio of 1,000,000:1, are the big advantages to OLED (organic light emitting diode) technology.

It's all about the backlight - or, rather, the lack of it. Because the diodes themselves emit light, no backlight is needed. That allows the panels to be made much thinner than LCDs and plasma TVs, and since there's no light illuminating even black pixels, the image is brighter and displays a higher contrast. Power consumption is reduced too, partly because there's not always-on backlight, but also because unilluminated diodes consume no power.

The downside: OLED panels don't last as long as LCDs and they're harder to make, which is why Sony's starting out with a small, 11in screen. OLED lifespans are currently rated at around just under three-and-a-half years' continuous usage, compared to under six for LCD technology. That's continuous use, not the much more occasional usage of the real world.

Toshiba is also developing, with Canon, TVs based on SED (Surface-conduction Electron-emitter Display) technology, said to produce a picture a bright as an CRT TV's but in a flat-panel casing. However, both companies have had a tough time getting the system out of the door.

http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2007/10/03/toshiba_30in_oled_tv/

Superb news if Toshiba dumps SED and releases OLED TV instead.

But since this is Toshiba, I'm a bit skeptical if they can release this at all (although I'm waiting for Toshiba to prove me wrong).

If they do release this though (and before their year 2010 promised deadline), then I may have more respect for them this time :)

I thought Tosh had already backed out of SED, that only Canon was onboard now; and it sounds likely it'll never be a commercially viable product. Seems like this last paragraph in that article is a little out of date.

From Impress Watch via engadget (http://www.engadgethd.com/2007/12/11/toshiba-no-oled-tvs-until-after-2010-seds-you-must-be-jokin/#comments):

Toshiba: No OLED TVs until after 2010 -- SEDs, you must be joking

If you're one of the many hoping to see Toshiba join Sony in the OLED TV game, well, we've got bad news. While Tosh will continue its efforts to commercialize small OLEDs for cellphones and such, they have shelved plans for that 30-inch OLED TV due to manufacturing costs. At least through 2010 when the effort might again, become viable. Oh, and they commented on their SED tech too. You remember, the 100,000:1 sets they told us would hit the market in late 2007. No change, no SEDs on the horizon. Ouch, was it something we said?