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Lg reveals oled roadmap - rollable tvs in 2017

4K views 42 replies 23 participants last post by  rogo 
#1 · (Edited)
#7 ·
Rollable tv's are not necessarily stupid. They will save tremendously on shipping and be easier to mount. They may also be better screens for taking to a business meeting than a pico projector where you would need to have the host already have a screen ready. How many times have you gone to a business meeting where someone forgot to order the screen for the room. I know I have.

I do agree that it should not be the focus until OLED can prove that it can survive the near giving away of LCD tvs.
 
#8 ·
Rollable TVs will be far more difficult to mount, actually. They won't stand on their own. Corners will need to be "pinned." They won't automatically lay flat.

That's a lot of yuck on a plate.

The applications for rollable television are so niche, they make curved TV look downright practical by comparison.
 
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#9 ·
Rollable TVs will be far more difficult to mount, actually. They won't stand on their own. Corners will need to be "pinned." They won't automatically lay flat.

That's a lot of yuck on a plate.

The applications for rollable television are so niche, they make curved TV look downright practical by comparison.
Could perhaps stick the panel to a square sheet of plastic/MDF/glass, whatever? ;) Lo and behold, there's a flat screen OLED TV! :)


:eek:
 
#14 · (Edited)
Just speculating here, but reading the LG recent press release in which they tout their new dedication to investing in the development of glass free flexible OLED products, with the intention of bringing them to market over the next three years, has lead me to wonder; if they are going to actually do that, then why would they bother investing in expanding the production of their current OLED display technology? After all, they are committing to abandon it in favor of the glass free Plastic approach, which they claim will be less costly and simpler to manufacture?



Could this be LG tacit way of letting those who have been waiting for them to start shipping more OLED TVs now, down easy, by issuing this Press Release at this time?

Might this be the reason why this guy said "OLED in the long run" instead of in the near future?

"Jung Do-hyun told a meeting with analysts that OLED was a superior technology in the long run, although quantum dot technology does provide tangible benefits."

http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/10/29/lg-elec-results-tv-idUSL4N0SO3CD20141029
 
#16 ·
I don't know how difficult it will be to make rollable displays, but it seems that if the technology is there it would allow shipping the screen in one tube and the parts for a frame in another (or all in one tube). Then assembly could be done at or near the final destination.

Moving the tv from the store to home in a car would likely be easier for many people this way, not even counting other shipping benefits and benefits getting larger displays into some places.

With a frame (or frame options) I would be more concerned about waves or other inconsistencies nearer the center than whether the 4 corners can be made flat, since I think the corners are less of a challenge.

I'm trying to think of products that can be reasonably shipped rolled up or in pieces that are shipped whole and taking up more space instead. Maybe high end desks, with other desks being shipped in pieces for assembly later? Maybe I'm missing something obvious shipped whole where assembling after shipping would be reasonable. It wouldn't be with cars, but generally is with things like kitchen cabinets.

--Darin
 
#20 ·
I don't know how difficult it will be to make rollable displays, but it seems that if the technology is there it would allow shipping the screen in one tube and the parts for a frame in another (or all in one tube). Then assembly could be done at or near the final destination.

I believe that's precisely where the win is for something like that. On NPR they had this little mini discussion (or whatever they call it) about how the TV industry hadn't solved the shipping problem for ever larger displays that drop in cost. It's an untenable model down the road: The shipping goes up dramatically and the overall cost structure descends.

And then there's the issue of what you can fit up the stairs, around the corner and through a door of someone's 5th floor apartment.

So perhaps (my crazy speculation) having roll-up displays would allow for a kind of sub-industry called "unrollers". Basically the kind of value-added retailing where BB is shipped a mini kit that is assembled quickly after they got the behemoth in your living room.
 
#17 ·
As the graphic shows, the first applications will be in mobile devices that are less prone to breakage (watch) or can fold to have a bigger screen in a device that fits in your pocket. The rollable TV is way out in the future (that last timeframe is 2017-). The dash is there for a reason. Here's a link to a press release earlier this year. Notice they say they will develop a 60" flexible transparent panel in 2017, not that they will be mass producing them and selling them at Best Buy for less than the price of LCD.
http://lgdnewsroom.com/press_releases/4117?ls_page=1

Even when it is here the applications initially may be not intended for home use. It might be useful for places like business conference rooms or trade shows where today you have a projection screen that unfolds or need a really big screen in an auditorium but don't want it there permanently. Or where the user wants the screen to conform to a non-flat surface perhaps for marketing. These are some of the things that OLED can do that LCD can't. Similar to the way that LCD provided form factor advantages over CRT which helped ensure continued investment in LCD.
 
#19 ·
Darin, I'm not sure what your point is at the end. I certainly agree that if you want to sell a 100+ inch panel, you could benefit from on-site assembly. How this applies to general TVs, though, is another matter. Millions of people seem to be acquiring TVs today just fine. Making them marginally easier to transport but less good/rigid/mountable at the back end doesn't feel like a worthwhile tradeoff.

ynot, agreed on videowall/wrap-type displays. It's pretty clear this is a great OLED application and that it will become more common. That said, it's not a "rollable" application. It's an "apply a flexible substrate" application. That's a critical distinction.

One of them is a one-time use of a fully flexing display. The other is a roll/unroll/re-roll display, which is far less useful for most applications. A notable exception would be a cleverly designed smartphone/tablet hybrid (I'm of the mindset that 9 of 10 designs for that are idiotic and the 10th is an incredible device that I'll lineup to buy the first day).
 
#21 ·
The thing where today's TV is perfectly free of undulations and entirely rigid vs. any other solution still leaves me more than skeptical. Whatever binding method is used to allow the unrolled display to become rigid has a lot of compromises. And the reason for this is logistics?

Sure, we can talk about this for 100+ inch displays. But already you can sell 80-inch TVs for less than $4000. And those are comparatively obese LCDs. Switch to OLEDs and you already make them much thinner and much lighter. It seems like an unbelievably false logistics gain to start taking apart TVs and requiring reassembly for anything below Size X. My sense is Size X is at least 70 inch, which means we are talking north of 98% of TVs. Even if you believe it's 60%, we are still talking north of 95% as far as the eye can see.

So this might be useful, but for the sizes it's most useful, the ability to get the end result right will actually be the most challenging. I'd still prefer a factory built rigid 100-inch display to something "pinned" on site. I remain more intrigued by my fantasy of seamless tiles, which I still think might be achievable.
 
#24 ·
It would be nice to have a screen that rolled down out of the ceiling, like motorized projection screens. I could go for a 100" motorized OLED screen that will fit in the pass through of my trunk.
 
#30 · (Edited)
Not sure who you're trying to impress with your constant negativity, but it ain't working.

Adding you to ignore, that's enough snark / negativity for me. Coming from someone with such a poor prediction track record, too, making all these grandiose claims that almost always turn out dead wrong. It's 2014 and I can get a 55 inch OLED full HD TV for under 2 grand, something you said wouldn't happen till 2018 then 2017 then 2016 then 2015 until it did. Whoops.

Rollable OLED will allow 100 inch TVs to be shipped from Amazon and fit through your doorway. I know, I got a projector screen that way. Try that with a normal TV, even a flat one. It will kill projectors too, giving much better contrast and sharpness, and make fools out of the naysayers. What was that? You want a native 'Scope 5K screen with perfect blacks and viewing angles? That barely sips power and can fit under your arm? Sure, click here to print one. This tech is coming, for sure. The WAF factor of a piece of wallpaper that turns into a piece of art and sips power but can still be watched with the lights on even during daytime, is not to be laughed at. Rollable, printable TVs in 2017 is really not that impressive a feat of technological prowess. They just created mice that are transparent, and connected two human minds together. And we're supposed to be in awe of incrementally improving TV tech? Really now.

Yawn.

I just can't take some posters on this site seriously.
 
#34 ·
I'd love to have a 110" roll down OLED to replace a PJ + screen.

I'd also love one to roll up from the footboard of my bed.

I'd also love one to take with me on vacation. I'd wrap it around my skis.

I'd also love one to roll down from the trunk of my car. Perfect for tailgates.

So I think I need 4.
 
#37 ·
To me the best use of the technology would be in the mobile area... Imagine saying in your best Cleavon Little voice, "Excuse me while I whip this out!" followed by a bit of reverse origami with your phone leading to a tablet sized screen. Pie in the sky for sure, more so than most of what has been mentioned in the thread so far but I'd drop coin for a taste of it. Not feeling the love for the roll up TV, all I see is reduced reliability for no particularly compelling reason.
 
#38 ·
Crab, that is the killer app. No doubt about it. It's very easy to imagine some brilliant designs for a ~5" smartphone that could morph into a ~10" tablet. I would gladly pay for such a device and would never again want to have iPad/iPhone as separate things (or Android equivalents).

The good news is Samsung, LG, Apple, et al. are all fantasizing about the same device. I suspect we will, in fact, see it in some form within about 2 years. Mass production is likely a minimum of 3 years away however.
 
#41 ·
"At Display Week this past June, Changho Oh, Senior VP for LG Display’s OLED TV Development Division 1, told me that the company’s Fab 1 was producing panels for LG’s 55″ OLED TV at a 70–80% yield. That was a remarkable improvement from what was widely estimated to be a 10% yield in the middle of 2013 and 50% early this year. Manufacturing yields for 55″, 65″ and 77″ panels will vary by size, Oh said. New-for-2014 OLED-TV models will all have curved screens.

The striking improvement in yield has been due to improvements in IGZO stability. Oh told me very openly that the oxide-TFT process has very narrow process margins and obtaining good yields was difficult in the development stage. It is necessary, he said, to understand all of the characteristics and to be able to control them precisely. The situation with the OLED frontplane, he said, “…is not so difficult because we use WOLED”, referring to the white OLED process LG uses for its TV panels. He confirmed that most of the yield issues were related to the oxide-TFT process and the “very complicated backplane”, which uses four transistors per pixel in LGD’s design. As a result, an extra power line must be designed into the backplane."

http://www.display-central.com/subs...nel/lg-display-pushes-oled-tv-panels-forward/

use link to read about what he said about the lifetime of Blue, and LG's research and timeline goal on Solution Based OLED TVs.
 
#42 ·
"At Display Week this past June, Changho Oh, Senior VP for LG Display’s OLED TV Development Division 1, told me that the company’s Fab 1 was producing panels for LG’s 55″ OLED TV at a 70–80% yield. That was a remarkable improvement from what was widely estimated to be a 10% yield in the middle of 2013 and 50% early this year. Manufacturing yields for 55″, 65″ and 77″ panels will vary by size, Oh said. New-for-2014 OLED-TV models will all have curved screens.

The striking improvement in yield has been due to improvements in IGZO stability. Oh told me very openly that the oxide-TFT process has very narrow process margins and obtaining good yields was difficult in the development stage. It is necessary, he said, to understand all of the characteristics and to be able to control them precisely. The situation with the OLED frontplane, he said, “…is not so difficult because we use WOLED”, referring to the white OLED process LG uses for its TV panels. He confirmed that most of the yield issues were related to the oxide-TFT process and the “very complicated backplane”, which uses four transistors per pixel in LGD’s design. As a result, an extra power line must be designed into the backplane."

http://www.display-central.com/subs...nel/lg-display-pushes-oled-tv-panels-forward/

use link to read about what he said about the lifetime of Blue, and LG's research and timeline goal on Solution Based OLED TVs.
Seven years for blue OLED! I don't know if I will be around that long but at the price of OLED now, I just can't make it work for me.
 
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