LG Official Announces 55" OLED for CES- - Page 29

If the first generation turns out to have some serious technical defects it could fail. At such a steep initial retail price, it has to perform almost flawlessly for the few early adopters who take the plunge. The feedback from them will have to give the product rave reviews or it very well might not take off. The old saying comes to mind: One never gets a second chance to make a good first impression.

I think it's great that folks can come here and get recommendations on what TVs enthusiasts and experts recommend. But if you are going to tell people not to buy a particular set, I think you should make it clear what your line of business is and who you work for. It's too easy for people disguised as enthusiasts to come into a forum and influence readers unfairly. We saw a lot of that during the Blu-ray vs HDDVD battle a few years ago.

So Rogo, what is your line of work and who do you work for? If you are attending CES you are supposed to be in the CE industry, right?

I'm a consultant (with AV-related work) and writer. I'm also working on a startup outside the CE industry.

I have no ties with any manufacturers of display-related technology and would benefit in no way from the failure of OLED (if anything, I'd probably benefit from its success, albeit marginally).

As I'm independent of manufacturers, I don't have any "who I work for" disclosures to make. I've been clear on my support for LG's technology approach over Samsung's and I'm explicitly telling you not to buy either of them. They are bleeding-edge products on production lines that are so immature they are yielding well below normally accepted production levels. That doesn't mean the TVs will fail early, but it doesn't bode well either.

There are dangerous precedents here from things like Sony's SXRD.

But, specifically, Samsung is not currently using IGZO -- and it will most likely as soon as 2014 -- which will make the first-gen stuff inferior there. It's also likely to abandon its SMS technology but even if it doesn't, it will need to improve it by an order of magnitude to mass produce OLED TVs.

LG is likely to jump to 4K very, very quickly on OLED because there is nothing stopping it short of getting its IGZO working at all. The density change will be trivial once they do.

These are going to be orphan sets with relatively lousy performance. LG will have full-resolution passive 3D on its second-gen products if it goes 4K and its first-gen products have gorgeous depth on 3D but lousy resolution. It also will produce the 2nd-gen stuff on 50+% yields, which means products that are likely to have much better longevity and 30-50% lower prices.

I think my objectivity is pretty freaking clear here. No one is forced to take my recommendations not to buy, but the idea that these recommendations are coming from a place of bias on behalf of a manufacturer or self interest is patently false.

You will overpay for under-featured products whose longevity is very very much in question. Why do that? Buy nothing or buy a "hold till reinforcements TV" and revisit this question in 2014 (or more likely 2015).

Thanks for clarifying. That's what I used to be also.

Yeah, I have to say that I agree with this general assessment and emphasis on the key point is mine. With 4k and OLED trying to hit market at the same time, it's not exactly a great time to jump on board the first-gen of the OLED tech. Or the first-gen 4k sets either.

In a couple years, OLED 4k sets will replace the OLED 1080p sets. They may still be expensive, but I wouldn't be surprised if the LCD 4k sets aren't cheap enough compared to OLED 4k to be worth it. They'll both still be in the premium market space, so I'd wager that the benefits of OLED will be enough to draw the premium TV buyers.

To me, a more interesting question is how this affects Plasma in the coming years. OLED will certainly start to eat away at LCD for large screens as the price comes down. The real question is if it will start to eat at Plasma at the same time, or if the cheaper price (at the expense of weight) will keep it around for some time to come?

regrettably, plasmas death certificate is already written. panasonic will abandon plasma in 2014 and maybe the 60 line released this year will be the last model line.
sammy and lg will follow and there go the only 3 manufacturers.

if oled don't pan out, were left to the desolation of all lcd.

That's a shame. The only reason my current TV wasn't an ST30 or VT30 is because of the phosphor lag issue. I'd still be open to it if they've taken enough strides towards addressing it in newer models.

OLED is all but inevitable at this point. They are being used successfully in smaller displays. The issue is really scaling up the yields for the larger displays. One of the same things that kept LCD so expensive for TVs for a long time. As they lick the various yield problems, you will see appropriate price drops. I think it will take some time though. It might be a while before they are as cheap as LCD now.

The issue with OLED is really, "will people invest billions in it when LCD is really good enough for 99% of consumers and LCD is getting IGZO anyway"?

I'm not sure it's "all but inevitable" anymore. Not one company has committed to a volume-production fab. Not one.

So...get 'em while they're not? *goes couch diving*

(*realizes this is the opposite of the advice you gave before, but you are just confirming Artwood's proclamations of doom in that last post )

Well, I could argue that buying an orphan 55", no matter how good, makes no sense for $12k period. Honestly, I say do not buy now... at all. But I could have a very different opinion next year. And well might.

It's obviously a fluid situation so I understand the possibility of an evolving position...and I have to echo the sentiments against grabbing one for $12k.

The President of LG Display says we are going to that fab commitment next month. The key questions will be the size and the timing. Anything projected to be commercial by the end of 2014 pretty much has to be started within the next few months so I would take that kind of commitment much more seriously than if they said something about the middle to end of 2015.

http://english.etnews.com/device/2703756_1304.html

LG Display Makes New Investments in AM OLED Panel Production Lines

2013/01/09 By Moon Bo-kyung

LG Display makes an investment in M2 production lines for the manufacturing of AM OLED TV panels.
“We’re currently developing OLED panels of various sizes in the M1 pilot line and additional lines are required for mass production,” said LG Display CEO Han Sang-bum on January 7 (local time) at a press conference at the Bellagio Hotel in Las Vegas. He continued that he would determine the specific investment schedule next month.
In the meantime, LG Electronics released the world’s first 55-inch TV on January 2 and LG Display started the manufacturing of its panel. Still, the production volume is rather low for now due to the low production yield and demand. Considering that the OLED TV market will come into full bloom in 2015, the display panel maker is intending to take the lead in the OLED market by putting the M2 line into operation next year.

I read "M2" as "another pilot line" and the determination next month as a decision to say when, not a decision to start doing something. Perhaps you read it as something more.

It would be enough to carry LG toward 1 million unit production by 2014-5, but would still leave OLED at very low market share by 2015.

The current pilot line (M1) actually has fairly substantial capacity for a pilot fab. M2 has always been used to refer to an even larger commercial fab. My guess would be anywhere from 25-50K substrates a month which would translate to total theoretical capacity of 2.3 to 4.2 million 55" televisions a year. Anything below that and I'll agree with you that this really isnt the fab that we had been expecting. Regardless though, OLED's are going to have a very low share in 2015. I dont really think that is the right marker for whether OLED's are a success though. The first question is whether they can capture a significant portion of the high-end television market. I just looked at a chart from DisplaySearch which indicates that >50" televisions only make up 8% of the television market. That is the target for 2015 and likely 2016 as well.

As for timing, I agree that is the important part. They have said that 18 months is about as fast they can move on a fab conversion so if they expect production by the end of 2014 they will have to put out purchase orders in the next few months. FWIW, there are some articles in Korean that seem to indicate that the LG President predicted sales of 1 million OLED televisions in 2014 and 3 million in 2015. I am not sure if that is for LG alone or for the entire industry and as always, translations are tough to trust.

Thanks for clarifying on the designations, slacker. The translations of the article are often incomplete.

I saw the same DisplaySearch data and I agree with you. If we use that number, 50"+ is a ~20 million category. If they can scale to, say, 3 million per year and Samsung is also in the market, OLED could capture 25% of that market -- of course, only if pricing is very, very close to LCD already. Since LCD is not evaporating, it's not as if they could capture 100% of the high-end 50+ market unless pricing was within 10-20% at the outside. Mathematically, there's a distribution of sales of TVs even within the category and high-end 50s are probably only 15-20% of that category. So even if we assume the market mix tilts to 50+ over that time, there's a math challenge here. Say the category is 25 million, and the high end of it is 6 million (this seems plausible, if a bit aggressive.)

Within that, you'd need 50% share to sell 3 million and to achieve that you'd need more or less price parity or else the bell curve gets you again. Now, what I mean there is price parity with top-end 55" TVs, which are probably a $2500 product at that point. So perhaps the OLED could run up to $3000, but not higher.

If it's still $6000, there is simply no chance of this scenario coming to pass.

We are on the same page.

My assumption is that the management at LG Display understands these numbers as well, but who knows? I have long thought that CEO's need a chief jester whose only job is to tell them when they are about do something catastrophically dumb.

If LG plans on hitting these kinds of numbers we are going to need to see a sub-$6000 television at CES 2014.

Might be true, however I prefer to hope that when consumers have a chance to see OLED and LCD displays side by side, under appropriate lighting, such consumer complacency, apathy, or whatever, will be dispelled...

The cost of OLED will come down in time and it has great potential in the arena for very large displays, I think it will take the crown in time no doubt about it. Additionally picture wise it has the potential to be vastly superior to current display technology especially in black levels, off axis viewing and response times to name just a few.

I agree!

In my view, it's not that LCDs are at all bad, and they are evolving all the time. I'd be thrilled to have an 84inch 4K LCD!

But I believe that emissive displays have many intrinsic advantages, and that printable, and affordable OLEDs will be coming.

^Noticing your curious omission, plasmas aren't all that bad either (see the flagships on display at CES from Samdung and Panasonic this year). If I grab any TV this year, I'm afraid it will be one of those over this costly experiment.

I don't know exactly what "printable" means. I saw an episode of CSI New York where a man "printed" a handgun--seems like it was made out of some sort of carbon and glue composite epoxy material.

The advantage was that no one could decipher the rifling marks it would leave on bullets since no one knew it was "printed"--course the handgun only worked once and then blew up on the individual firing it the second time I believe.

How are video displays "printed"? What is the advantage to "printing"? Is it cheaper, better, or both?

Please forgive the dumbo questions but I'm sure there may be others that peruse here who might want to know, too.

That sounds like a 3D printer.

Panasonic goes into some detail about this in their press release: