Sony Crystal LED Display - new display tech - Page 11

Will these Japanese CE companies survive long enough to deliver these new displays?

Was it Sharp that said they might not survive?

And Panasonic's profits weren't good I think.

Sony also is struggling of course.

\



all 3 ce divisions of these companies are in big trouble. sharp is currently in the worst shape and may go out of business

Ugh, it would suck if we were stuck with Samsung, LG and even cheesier Chinese brands.

IIRC, Sony has managed to cut the losses of their TV division by a lot this past quarter. They're still making a loss, but it's a lot smaller loss than before. That seems to be the way the entire companies finances are now. Their losses are considerbly less than they were this time last year. In fact it appears they actually managed to make a profit this past quarter in their business, but then the taxes they had to pay brought them back to a loss. Even still, it's a much smaller loss than they've been suffering in the past several years. Hopefully Sony will see a return to profit before the end of the fiscal year.

... and yeah, still patiently awaiting CLED news

I would prefer it if Panasonic (or even Sharp ) could make a return to profitability, but that outlook is grimmer still.

Well it would seem both of those companies have to dig themselves out of a MUCH deeper pit than Sony ever did, and at least Sony is already on its way out of said pit. I'm not sure what sort of steps Panasonic or Sharp can take to survive, but this entire "race to the bottom" for TV prices seems to have killed them.

Back to the Sony front, their TVs are still unprofitable as of right now but we'll have to wait until next quarter to see if the steps they've taken could possibly turn a profit so soon. The prospect of CLED and OLED TVs will help to generate additional buzz about their products and if they can eventually heavily mass produce CLED in smaller sizes at reasonable prices, it could wind up being the new Trinitron for them. Meh, wait and see I suppose. Assuming they can get both OLED and CLED up and running, we could eventually see CLED take on the large size display market and OLED would be used for smaller sizes. I figure that'll at least be a bit more suitable since CLED will be harder to miniaturize and OLED is harder to make larger... from what we understand of CLED so far at least.

I think your outlook is far too rosy based on a prototype but hey, dream big. There are already more 55" OLED screens in existence than this CLED creature, which so far only exists in the land of prototypes. Sony's large screen OLED prospects are on similarly rocky shores since they are contingent upon Panasonic's participation to be realized.

I doubt strongly that Sony will ever commercialize CLED. I'm more certain they will not do so in 2013 as they have announced nothing about planning to build a manufacturing facility.

Meh, I'm an optimist

I'm hopeful, but naturally will wait and see if rumours turn out to be true. It's definately something Sony needs, and they are a company going through a lot of transformations right now. In that type of situation I can allow a little more room to hope for the unexpected or for them to swing for the fences and go all out.

It's not about optimism. It's about the fact that in the history of display, the industry has commercialized two flat-panel TV technologies ever: PDP and LCD. Each took about 10 years to make for viable TVs. OLED has now taken at least that long. CLED is not going from a prototype to a product in 1 year. Or 2. And it's certainly not doing it until they announce they are building a production facility to make them, which they haven't.

Not going down this road again. Gonna play the sit and wait approach... less than 2 months to go!

Again, do whatever you want. It's a free country.

I'm just going to keep responding that your timeframes are pointless, including the 2-month one. Even if they show up at CES with a prototype (a maybe, but no guarantee), the idea that anything they say 2 months from now is especially meaningful is actually mistaken. They either are or are not announcing plans to commercialize the technology at some point in the future which is as likely to coincide with a trade show as it isn't.

You're conflating the seeing of a prototype with some kind of significance and I'm trying to explain that whatever significance that indicates has already come and gone. Even if they announce commercialization plans, the availability of TVs is no time soon. And, further, the idea that said TVs are going to be great is not even guaranteed. It took years to get us to product-ready OLEDs and even they are not going to be some kind of perfection; there are some small but real issues (beyond price).

My point is that in 2 months at CES we will have more answers. Whether those answers are yes, they have CLED ready to go right away, or CLED is still just around the corner, or if they don't show CLED at all then that's an answer as well.

^^ My bet would be that there will be no CLED at the CES 2013 (or the same CLED as last year including the same story ).


CES, we will keep y http://www.cesweb.org/ ou informed

Pray for any display technologies that will stop the horror story of world wide LCD domination because OLED costs trillions.

We truly are staring at the abyss.

The LCD cliff is worse than the fiscal cliff! Even if there was a worldwide depression we'd still be watching TV--if the only one that is cheap is LCD there will be world wide video anarchy!

I can hear it now...there will be industry plants posting in---"I like LCD BECAUSE it sucks!"

I lol'd when I read this - awesome!

In all seriousness, I do hope Sony continues with the R&D expenditures to pursue this technology - I love where it's coming from. It should seem achievable in that its underlying aspects draw from other fields where advances are currently underway, independent of display specifically. But... we've seen Sony experiment and have the bean counters blow things up before. I suppose CES will give a sense of where TV under Kaz Hirai is headed. It would be in Sony's best interests to focus on top PQ going forward and actually follow a top-down approach, with margins, rather than simply say that's what they're going to do. And in that vein, the pursuit of a halo or differentiating technology I feel is important.

Is Sony beholden to any other critically expensive patent holders for CLED?

I sincerely hope that Sony will come out with CLED. The only thing that worries me is that Kaz Hirai's name is too similar to chazarai (or hazarai), which is Yiddish for junk or junk food. What does this mean!!! :
Edited by taichi4 - 12/2/12 at 8:31am

They have never announced a product. There is simply not any possibility on earth they will be be telling anyone it will be "ready to go right away". I want to disabuse you of this notion right now. And if I can't do that, I want to disabuse everyone else of it. There is no product, no fab, no known method of manufacturing the display, no announced intention to build a product and absolutely no chance of any kind the products will be ready anytime soon -- let alone right after CES.

Doesn't seem like it. But that's really the least of the issues related to this technology.

But there was a functioning prototype - and so long as that was the case, it is simply a matter of scaling/establishing production. The only question is difficulty in yielding consistent LED-based pixels and the back-end expense of the operation. These are not trivial matters, but the screen size of the prototype was large enough to indicate that it wouldn't be an issue beyond the scope of the present industrial base. Manufacturing expense is the bottom line for that set, so in that vein, it's a matter of whether costs come down fast enough to warrant investment vs whatever other display technologies will be at their own respective points of maturation along the development curve. However, LED technology will continue to advance irrespective of Sony's own direct investments - both on the nano-scale side and on the color LED side. If Sony rides the wave in tandem and invests dollars intelligently, certainly it could be a viable road to go down.

Further, I don't think Vivftp is saying come CES we will know that Sony has succeeded in commercializing this technology or not - as that answer will be no - but whether they are still pursuing it and putting R&D dollars into it. Nothing more, nothing less, and in that vein he is correct.

That's simply not correct. There was a hand-built prototype that was (a) ungainly (b) using a prodigious amount of power in all likelihood (c) not made in a way that would even slightly resemble a production model. The logic of saying "there was a functioning prototype and therefore...." would suggest we will have fusion power in a few years. And I can assure you we will not have that either.

Um, there are a lot of questions. (1) How to mass produce the modules. (2) How to assemble the modules into displays (3) How to afford this. (4) The yields (5) Whether these displays will meet Energy Star (6) Whether these displays will be saleable at a price that is even remotely interesting to the market or to Sony.
Well, I'm glad you've got it figured out.
It's not just an expense question. There seems to be a fundamental misapprehension on your part (and others) about how the TV works and what it would take to build a TV with 6 million LEDs. There are very fundamental questions about whether manufacture at scale is viable at all -- irrespective of cost.
I think the English-language interpretation of what he said in the material I'm about to re-quote is crystal clear and not open to ambiguous interpretation:

"Whether those answers are yes, they have CLED ready to go right away, or CLED is still just around the corner...."

They will not have CLED ready to go right away.
It will not be just around the corner.

Those refer to the actual product not to whatever vague things you are referring to.

While I'm not trying to burst his bubble, I am most assuredly trying to burst everyone else's. This technology may be pursued by Sony and may lead to shipping products (I very much hope it is and does). But it will not lead to products anytime soon and anyone expecting to is going to be sorely disappointed.

I was under the impression that sony showed us something at CES what they were working on...in the lab. I don't believe sony pretended it was more than that.

The "hand-built" prototype though did not have these various pixels with the tri-LED elements assembled by hand though in the absence of machine assistance; the scale alone would be prohibitive. And if there was machine involvement in the assembly of the pixels themselves, then it is a technology that can be scaled. Whether they will pursue it or not, that is a different matter. But the comparisons to fusion are absurd. And in my mind, a functioning fusion reactor prototype would be one that self-sustained; this TV displayed an image and was plugged into a socket - it's already a step (or twelve) ahead.

Question 3 (with question 4 as a subset) are the only questions. How to do it is not the question. I remember people around here feeling similarly that the consistent yields on the diodes required for BD players represented an impossible wall to scale. No. It is simply a matter of expense and process maturation. And "simply" is not a word used trivially, but to act as if the industrial base could not accommodate the technology required to create these sets en masse were the resources dedicated to it is simply false.

If it can be done by hand, it can be done by machines - that's my take. And when it comes to electronics assembly and nano-scale projects, so much the truer. The barrier is in the decision to invest in the capacity & technology vs other display technologies. Which could very well doom it, but not because it's impossible. The engineers wouldn't have bothered trotting it out last year if there were already a predetermined 0% chance that it would ever see a drop of additional R&D funding - and wouldn't have received said funding in the first place to lead up to that moment. Sony could just as easily trotted out some 55" OLED like everyone else.

Yes, ok. Well I agree that there is no way it will be ready to go.

Something slipping by the arguments though is that if even if it took 15,000 failed panels to get a 55" using whatever smoke and mirrors technique the Sony guys came up with, we don't know how hard it is to produce smaller panels. That radically changes the notions of "ready to go", "anytime soon", "around the corner", and any other amorphous descriptor.

There's no way of knowing this is any closer to reality than Pioneer's infinite black panel shown at CES 2008.

I wouldn't think that smaller screen sizes would be inherently harder than larger sizes - when you think about the empty space in most sets, increased control circuity and PSU considerations should still fit in a traditionally sized cabinet. It might not be less than 1" thick or what have you, but I wouldn't think something that would be considered unduly "fat."

Anyway I agreed with Pogo as to the notion that 'ready to go' and such was off the mark for where this technology is at the moment. For me, I'm looking for one thing alone from CES as it pertains to CLED: is it present, is it discussed, or is it absent, and is Sony silent? Given the state of Sony's executive ranks and a shift in philosophy, I will interpret a CLED presence as evidence of - at least for the moment - further investment in the technology. Further colored of course by whatever they might say at the show.

If the set is absent and Sony has not much to say about it, then I will consider the technology as abandoned.

Always seemed to in the past. For example, I remember eons ago, there were small financially viable TFT displays in use long before TV sized ones. I remember it had something to do with the manufacturing process yielding failure rates exponential to the screen sizes attempted. I could be wrong in this recollection, but I also seem to remember that it was hailed as a triumph when Philips managed to produce a TV sized plasma for $13,000 because it was a dramatic decrease using a new manufacturing technique.

With this technology - and I might be wrong - I would think the major hurdles would be consistency/yields on the production of the individual amalgam LED pixels, and refinement of their control circuity. I don't think that we would suffer through the glass panel generational increments that had LCD take so long to reach present sizes, and I wouldn't think that panels down to around 32" would be an issue either on the move down. Smaller than that, not sure if case/PSU/circuitry/cooling constraints would start playing more of a role. Granted this is total guesswork...

Correct.

Your reasoning is wrong. I tried several times to write this more politely, but I lacked the ability to do so and still convey meaning. Your reasoning is simply wrong. The module fabrication may not be possible in an economic way. You need to stop getting caught on the whole "hand built" vs. "machine" and try to understand that they will be able to mass produce the LED modules cost effectively or they won't. Then they will be to assemble them or they won't.
The National Ignition Facility is closer to making fusion than the Sony prototype was to being a product in Best Buy. So, yes, to an extent I was being kind to Sony.
That conclusion is in error. It fails to account for the very real possibility that a hand-built prototype took, say, 50,000 man hours and a machine-built prototype needs to have a cycle time of perhaps 1 hour. It's very possible the gap will never be bridged. No FED display, for example, ever crossed the threshold of manufacturing viability.
Actually, it might be impossible. It might also merely be too costly. It might be both.
Well, first of all, no one said it has 0% chance. But they most certainly would have trotted it out without any promises of a single yen of additional funding. That's the way these things work. Sony's 27" (or thereabouts) OLED TV, for example, was shown when they announced their 11" model. Never produced, announced for manufacture, funded for manufacture, etc. As to whether Sony could've prototyped a 55" OLED, well, I doubt very much they could have.

The pixel size seems to render smaller panels out of the question.

Again, it's not depth, it's the pixel pitch. The CLED didn't seem to have much fill ratio to begin with and I'm sure the individual LEDs are large. I doubt strongly you'll see smaller sets anytime soon.
I would like to see some evidence of something as well; but I'm not particularly excited about this technology. It's years from the market in all likelihood even if they decide to produce it, which seems unlikely. As for Pogo, didn't he say, "we have met the enemy and he is us"? Sounds like Sony's corporate motto.

That reasoning is exactly my reasoning. I'm the one taking the position that cost is the barrier, whereas you seem to be taking the position that the technology to achieve it is essentially impossible.

I take issue with the absolute manner in which you state hypothesis as fact. Fusion I would say is still decades away. If CLED is pursued as a display technology, it will arrive sooner than that. If it doesn't get pursued, obviously it won't; but those decisions will full well be made within the span prior to fusions appearance on the scene as anything more than a weapon.

I find it ironic that you claim my conclusion is in error, yet as your support, you cite only the unknowable. Again, I go back to the drama surrounding blu-ray diode production back in the day, and the thought that the discs themselves could not be yielded in a cost effective manner. The issue here is the LEDs themselves, and the control circuity, just as I stated. As nano-scale efforts and development into LEDs across several industries continues, I don't think pixel pitch or watt/lumens will be an issue that doesn't at some point solve itself so far as applicability in TVs goes. Now whether it will be relevant for display technology at x-given date is another matter. But for CLED the questions on achievability revolve only around the control circuitry and building the modules. Unless you can put forth a theory based on some specific point as to why you feel such a module would prove irreconcilably difficult to create, I think you need to acknowledge that the limits of industry are not the limits at all - it again goes back to the economics.

But, it's probably not impossible. Or at least we haven't heard a reason why yet.

I definitely think that 27" OLEDs would have been easy enough to make for Sony - at that time it simply would have been a matter of the insanely high gross costs associated with terrible yields on those panel sizes. But the technology was absolutely there to create them if expense were not a concern. As far as SED/FED, likewise I think if pushed the sets could have been commercialized. Certainly Sony, Toshiba, and Canon all thought so for several years of analysis. But the LCD industrial complex has simply proven to be such that other technologies can't find an economic window via which to warrant funding.

That's assuming 1080p. 720p would allow for a reduction in panel size, even if pixel pitch were the constraining variable otherwise.

To be 1080p in a 55" space limits the pitch of the pixels to a known higher-end bound. One that should come down naturally and gradually. Certainly I can tell you are not excited about CLED. That's completely fine - but it does represent a technology that would offer incredible black levels, a super wide color gamut, and "brightness" to boot.