Sony Crystal LED Display - new display tech - Page 12

You seem to not understand those may be one and the same.
Yes, and incidentally, I believe a viable fusion power plant won't be on planet earth this century. But today, fusion is more real than CLED.
That's not relevant. I know you think it is, but it isn't. Once a blue laser diode was viable, BluRay was viable. There was Toshiba FUD about BluRay; not real issues. Sony is alone here and has disclosed nothing about this nor announced anything about even piloting a production facility. As they say, "you do the math".
The pixel pitch is entirely relevant as is the watt/lumens. Sorry, those are both real issues.
I see absolutely no issue at all with control circuitry. That could not be less trivial. On the other hand, assembly of the modules to a sub 1/10th pixel tolerance will be required, never mind module fabrication.
There is no similar product short of giant video walls. If scaling x to y were easy, we'd have 70" OLED TVs since, after all, we have millions of AMOLED phones. Scaling is often impossible.
Yields have killed hundreds of products you've never heard of.
This is where our definitions differ. Because something exists, that doesn't make it a viable technology. It makes it a hypothetical technology. There's a guy who can make hydrogen directly from the sun via an artificial leaf. It works. Now, go buy one to fuel your hydrogen-powered car. What? You can't? Oh, right. It doesn't exist as a product. Nor does the car. Bummer.
And I said they were wrong for several years, based on my knowledge of the industry. See, I wasn't caught up in the hype, the incremental commitment, the belief that my corporate will would solve insoluble problems. In this case, my knowledge > theirs. If you want to build a camera lens, though, consult Canon and ignore me.
True in 2000. Arguably true now. The reasons behind OLED are allegedly economic, but really about ego and some hypothetical economic edge in a decade. But we all know no one really builds a new technology today to maybe come out with a cost edge in a decade.
[quote[
That's assuming 1080p. 720p would allow for a reduction in panel size, even if pixel pitch were the constraining variable otherwise.[/quote]

A "state of the art" 720p display would be laughed out of the marketplace. In a major major way. And with the market going to 4K within 5 years, even 1080p might now cut it. Another problem for CLED commercialization.
And, again, you are wrong. Perhaps you ought to re-read the thread from the beginning.
So can OLED, which has broken promises dating back to 2000 if not earlier. Literally.

Maybe in 2013, there'll be an OLED HDTV for sale. Maybe.

Of course, it'll be 1/4 the resolution of state-of-the-art LCDs and less than 1/2 the size. So it's already playing catch up. Oh, and it will cost 4x a comparable LCD. Basically, OLED is 5 years from catching LCD -- more or less. And it's been 5 years from catching LCD for more than a decade. In that regard, it's awfully like fusion, which has been 20 years away... for 50 years.

Not at all. It's simply that you are using the terms "technology" and "product" interchangeably, where I view them as separate and distinct.

This is absolutely 100% not the case, as there exists a CLED TV, but there does not exist a fusion plant. Only plants attempting to be fusion plants. CLED: more real than fusion.

Of course it's relevant, because you seem to be ignoring several things. 1) These LEDs already exist in terms of the required color gradients, and 2) LED technology is an offshoot of semiconductor technology, and can benefit from advances which mirror that industry.

I didn't say those variables weren't relevant, I said they weren't likely to be a concern as the LED industry advances. See above - LED tech is improving in leaps and bounds right now. Already hugely efficient so far as watts/lumes go on a macro basis, I would expect that as scales come down - which directly effects pitch as well - aggregate wattage in this application will become increasingly manageable. To say nothing of the fact that even as it stood, the CLED prototype didn't appear slaved to any onerous or bulky power assembly.

"Easy" was never a word I used - but to use your own example, are not 70" OLED TVs not exactly the path the industry is striving towards? There is a way to get from a to b. What I have been saying is that it is simply a matter of time, expense, and dedicated resources. Using words like "impossible" implies something other than what is the actual barrier.

It's this sort of arrogance shown towards other posters that drew me into this thread, to tell you the truth. The fact that vivftp couldn't simply be left to be excited and hopeful about something even after conceding the effort of continuing debate. It's ok to let people be "wrong" sometimes when an argument has run its course. As for me, don't worry about my knowledge of killed products or the consumer electronics industry.

As you say, this is exactly where our definitions differ. To me, technology != product. When something exists, de facto, the technology also exists. No, there may not be the product, but there is the technology.

No comment on the above.

LCD has been a disaster for the industry on a net basis, as will be OLED, as likely will be all successor technologies. Commoditization in this new digital world, the push and pull between capacity build-outs and consumer retail competition, and the underlying need to be in this race-to-the-bottom rat race or risk extinction altogether will keep the industry hurtling towards OLED - because at this point it has been proclaimed to be the next destination. Consumer displays is the new airline industry. But, who knows - the inevitable launch of the Apple TV might change the game and reintroduce a focus on brand and a willingness to endure mark-ups and margins at the retail level. Whether that will ultimately benefit the industry as a whole, only Apple, or ultimately nobody... remains to be seen.

That's not true. The NIF absolutely makes fusion. It doesn't make a fusion chain reaction, but it most certainly replicates fusion. And it's probably as reliable as the prototype CLED panels Sony showed off.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelkanellos/2012/11/01/the-global-race-for-fusion-power/
LEDs are not improving anymore. Or more accurately, are not improving at any interesting rate. The lack of practical, inexpensive LED light bulbs speaks volumes. The fact that all 60-watt-equivalent LED light bulbs cost a fortune speaks even larger volumes.
Again, that has more or less stopped cold.
I see what you're missing. You seem to think the can just make the LEDs smaller. They can't. It's pretty unlikely a CLED at 55" will be able to made 4K compatible soon (ever?). The smallest possible LED is simply too large. If inorganic LEDs could be fabbed the way OLEDs could, we'd be onto something, Of course, that's never been possible, which is why smartphone displays don't use them and no one is working on it. It was ridiculously thick. You were not allowed close to it. And they were assiduous about providing no information about power usage. But I'm glad you've concluded erroneously that it's low power. "Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain, he's running the generator."
There is a serious issue making RGB OLEDs at 55", let alone 70". It is currently "impossible" for all intents and purposes. It's not necessarily an insurmountable impossibility, but it's currently impossible. By impossible, in this case, I mean, "you can't make enough of them per 'attempt' to sell them at any price anyone would pay for them". The yield is single digit, which would dictate a market price of perhaps $40-50K. Samsung is trying hard to perfect its small-mask scanning method and might succeed soon (at 55 inches). That method might work at 70 inches, too. Or it might never (more scanning might equal lower yields, might equal no economically viable result). The idea that because it can theoretically be done once, it can be turned into a product is wrong.
I actually tried several times to make it clear I wasn't trying to dampen his enthusiasm. But that doesn't entitle this thread to become a bogus non-resource for fanboys to post drivel for the next 3 years. That's not what AVS Forum is for. It's for information. I post information. My point about "killed products" wasn't that you don't know about them and I do; it was that none of us know about them. They get "invented" but not really because someone figures out "we can never make this" and so they don't.
I'm not saying technology equals product. I'm saying prototyping something doesn't prove the "technology" really exists. People prototype a lot of things that aren't quite real.
And why was LCD a disaster? One reason only: Overinvestment in fabs. Too much capital chased the opportunity which led to too much price reduction and commoditization of panels which led to zero/negative returns for most players. The idea with OLED is to (a) convince the world LCD is bad/inferior (b) develop a technological advantage to shake out the weak and right-size the industry around fewer panel makers. Will it work? I'm skeptical. The idea that CLED will be successful without an ecosystem of upstream technology providers is even more absurd, however.
Samsung has benefited in phones along with Apple and even marginally benefits in TVs (although that's from having brand + obscene market share, not so much the Galaxy S 3 / iPhone model). The idea with OLED is to make TVs like Galaxy S3s and iPhones, while controlling the inputs too. You can lose money making the panels if you can pull off the upscaling of the end product, at least for a while. That's why the two biggest TV makers are in this "ruinous" OLED race. If Sony thought it could play to win with CLED, it should've already gone all in. But Sony hasn't been a primary TV manufacturer at any point in the HDTV era. It never made plasmas and barely made any LCDs. The idea it's going to seriously go all in now after a decade of losses in TVs strains the imagination.

I just bought an LED lightbulb for my flashlight for $5.56. I bought a pair of car backup lights that were LED for $8.99. I've replaced every recessed ceiling light with an LED all-in-one. I've been watching this technology for a while----the prices are dropping. I'm not sure why you'd want to connect large bulbs with mini-display LED's though.

He did not erroneously conclude anything. He's pointing out that you are using speculation (albeit reasoned) to authoritatively conclude. Rogo, you obviously have enormous industry-level experience in this, especially for the nuts and bolts of production concerns, and you're making very reasoned arguments, but in a style that is completely confusing: the tone is as if you have corporate proprietary information. Do you have contacts inside the Sony R&D?

I personally won't dare to speculate on the charter of AVS, I'm a relative newcomer to this, but please don't run to the high road of protecting the forum as a way of defending your conversation style. Your posts are very informative, they truly are, but too often they're written in a very emotionally charged way. You have enormous amounts of information. But these posts of yours are written in a way to obfuscate it.

You all have likely seen this before, but here is an engineer claim made that the 55" on display was consuming 70 Watts. Fast-forward to video position 3:56.

http://www.phonearena.com/phones/Sony-Crystal_id6867/videos

And here is Sony's official press release on it, including the specs on power:
http://www.sony.net/SonyInfo/News/Press/201201/12-005E/index.html

I don't know to what extent they're honest, no one outside of sony does, but they did set a stake in the sand.
Edited by tgm1024 - 12/4/12 at 8:50am

Thanks for posting that link...which links to other videos on the CLED prototype. In the first video it is described as a prototype. To me that is both sobering and hopeful as it was not being touted as ready for commercialization.

Also, in the video the camera moves to show the thickness of the device, and it is not ridiculously thick as previously described, but seems on par with many current LCDs.

I tried to discern the thickness but couldn't quite; but it's a bit moot of an issue anyway. Even if it were 3 feet thick, the power rating claim is what it is. Further, whenever any of the companies I've been part of built a demonstrable hardware prototype, we've always used a chassis/cabinet/housing far larger than necessary. It's just asking for trouble to design a pre-alpha release housing down to the last millimeter because the deployment criteria continually shifts and your hardware guys need room "to work", you'll never get the size right if you aim too small, and it's bad karma show time. But again, moot.

BIG edit: Just saw an additional video showing the thickness. The prototype was not as thin as an edge-lit, or OLED, but you're right---it's pretty "LCD thin."

This is a good video: Go to approximately video position 0:56.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RFRRdEN0GAo
Edited by tgm1024 - 12/4/12 at 10:20am

Again - the comparison was in the context of the fusion reactors not yet achieving what they are supposed to achieve; a sustained thermonuclear reaction. Right now the energy inputs are greater than the outputs. The CLED display serves the role of being a "display." That's my differentiation in the matter.

That might refer specifically to their present form, but quantum dot advances may yet provide us another (significant) step up.

Well, again, I see the industry as in a lull but with a lot of further upside, and you see it as having flattened out. These differences of opinion inform our views on LED-based display possibilities.

We'll agree to disagree on this. There is a lot of breadth on the spectrum between a one-off example and boxes at Best Buy. But if you can yield one, you can yield two. And my position stems thusly. If what we are saying, in different ways, is that economic viability can kill progress along certain paths, then we do in fact agree in that regard.

Yup, and I can and do respect that. I can also understand the aggravation about seeing conversations soaked in "noise" and fanboyism. I'll admit to not having read anything other than the last few pages before posting, as I normally just "catch-up" like that when I haven't tracked a thread from the beginning, so I full well admit that I may have taken a slice of posting "tone" and drawn an incorrect conclusion from it. And truly, my sincerest apologies if so.

That's just the nature of the beast though - it literally is the equivalent of the airline industry, the semiconductor industry, any industry where additional capacity (or lack thereof) is seen as a competitive advantage or disadvantage. With the LCD manufacturers, on top of the plants themselves, you had the push into larger substrates. Are you going to be the LCD manufacturer stuck at 4G when Samsung is pushing two gens ahead?

Sure, absolutely. It works... for a while. Sony I do in fact think could reenter serious display creation should it ever deem fit to do so or feel the opportunity was there. By Sony's own admission, CLED is not near commercialization, and they are seemingly recommitting to OLED in the short term. However I do hope this tech keeps getting worked on in the background - I simply like/enjoy novel technology whenever there is a demonstrable advantage along some axis. As for Apple, I really do feel that event has the potential to be a sea-change moment for the industry. For example, a couple of manufacturers have smart TV apps for tablets/etc to interact with their TVs. Yet the consumer is completely ignorant to this for the most part.

But Apple will come along, put an ad on TV demonstrating iPad to television interoperability, and it's going to be the next cool "must have" thing - and people will pay the $1,000 premium or whatever it is. The fact that this is almost preordained and so obvious highlights again the utter failure of the present industry to market their wares and get their message across. They will be seen as playing catch-up by the media, when really it was a failure of messaging from the outset.

Comments regarding the expense of LCD manufacturing development and the probable desire to recover those investments causes me to conclude that there is likely pressure within these organizations to not invest in OLED manufacturing until the old LCD manufacturing lines have recovered investment or are at least fully depreciated.

I'm not sure I understand. If a viable [C/O]LED shows up in a competitor's lineup, you won't be able to recoup anything.

Xbdestroya, this is OT, but whenever Apple is mentioned I start to wonder if I'm in the land of Oz.

I don't know *how* to regard them....there's nothing akin to them that I can think of. I would *never* have predicted that they would have succeeded since their SJ return as they did. When they came out with what looked like yet-another-mp3-player for an extremely high price, back when I thought for sure the market was sewn up by the likes of ever cheaper Rio's on the market, I thought they had completely jumped the shark. I never thought that it would be the start of a crazy adoration by a huge percentage of the visible universe. Far beyond anything the original mac line was able to do.

So to what you're saying: I can't imagine the wrench that would throw into the whole tv pricing/specifications/home-theater model. Basically Apple can get away with nearly anything. That said however, there have been an increasing set of mini-disappointments coming in from the reviewers---but they just don't stick to this teflon company. Most non-Koolaid folks didn't see the "wow" of the iPad "3". Nor do many reviewers think that the iPad mini is sensibly priced. But then again, for Apple, all the rules are re-written. I love wondering where SJ was planning on going with the AV world, but just keeping track of their trending technology makes me dizzy.

I don't want to connect them. My point is that LED is more or less done getting cheaper. By the way, how are you enjoying your lights? I'm reluctant to invest in the cheap LED bulbs.
So it's been a year and it's really possible I'm fuzzy on some details, especially not recalling they provided some power data that is beyond acceptable, for instance. I apologize for that.
I don't really think I'm writing to obfuscate information. But I'm also not going to cheerlead another vaporware technology.

No, that's excellent info. As I note above, my memory on that must've been hazy. 70 watts is more than good enough.

Hmm, I remember it as being a fatty and remember being told that "key components were not inside the display at this point". Again, though, the above post comes across wrong. I actually believe they can make these more than sufficiently thin. I don't believe they have, but I believe they can. It's not going to be a dealbreaker.

They are fully depreciated or written down by everyone at this point.


By all means, define things as you wish. I define things as "the CLED display only works when hooked up to whatever magic one-off driver box Sony created and could not be used by me any more than the NIF could. They are equally impressive demos, but neither is what it is supposed to be.
Ah yes, more vaporware we've been hearing about for a decade, with zero products.
I see huge upside in the industry, but in terms of luminous efficiency? It appears the good stuff is done and there is no real reason to keep going. The problem with the Philips LED bulbs is not luminous efficiency -- they already use next to no watts -- it's that they suck at being light bulbs: too expensive, funky shapes, not for enclosed fixtures, can't make a 100-watt equivalent. Those are the 4 things the LED people need to fix, not luminous efficiency. Expect all R&D in those areas and no spillover to a display tech no one is pursuing.
Two still isn't a product. You need to make 2 million to get close to commercial return with probably 80% yield on the first 2 million and about 10% yield on the first 100,000. Daunting math indeed.
It's fine. I'm out of hand here and I apologize for it.
It wasn't Samsung that destroyed the LCD business, it was actually mostly Taiwan on top of Japan and Korea, if memory serves. But, actually, 2-3 players should never have built. Someone ended up getting bought for a song and everyone lost money when capacity > industry demand. Samsung and LG should've conspired to buy some Taiwan fabs and closed them before they opened. In fact, not all the announced capacity of the 2000s even went online and it still was too much!
Sony is clueless. I wish that weren't true, but it's true.
Apple figures out how to build products that deliver great user experiences. People pay them for those user experiences. Sony hasn't done that in soooooooo long. I suppose miracles could happen, but I don't believe Sony is going to have a hit product, even with retail stores to push it. Incidentally, I wonder about tablet/computer stuff. I have tried out most of it. To me, the best "2nd screen" is for doing something else that isn't the program I'm on. Therefore, I want the best tablet, therefore I use my iPad. I think I'm not alone.

Sorry. I wasn't clear enough in my post. It wasn't the initial video wherein the camera moves to show the thickness, but the second or third video on the page.

It's backlit-lcd-thin. Not bad at all.

I need more time to pass for me to have any level of credibility with the DC LED's. DC (cars/flashlight) bring with them a wonderful non-flicker, and a lot of color temps available. You're not stuck with the horrifyingly bluish uber-white if you don't want it, but I like it. They are very tightly directional beasts, so be careful to get one with a lot of LED elements on it if you don't want something akin to a parallel-light source.

The AC lights as you can imagine are plagued by flicker problems inherent to 60Hz and it's up to the manufacturer to deal with it. Many of them have circuitry that attempts to tune this down by terrible rectifiers (basically the negative sines flipped up to form a lumpy feed) plus extra circuitry to manage odd temperature effects of the LED's themselves. In a real world example though, I'll just rattle out the observations I have of the uber-discounted (Home Depot) Cree LED recessed lighting I have in my kitchen:

• They are built together in their own attractive housing. Basically connect, and push up into the receptacle in the ceiling and >poof<, look *very* nice.
• It is *much* brighter than the lumens quoted on the packaging. Which is great, because it looked like I was going to have something like an effective 50 Watt incandescent level output, but instead ended up with something over an effective 80.
• Whiter than white. You have to decide if that's ok.
• There's a "Harshness" to the light I don't like per se, but am "ok" with. It's almost certainly a flicker issue. LED's apparently have nothing comparable to "persistence of phosphor". So I suppose you can do better than the bottom of line Cree. Time will tell on the circuitry abilities. I don't remember the cost but it was truly inexpensive.

Hope that helps. Horribly OT guys, I'm sorry.

That's okay, the OLED thread went into LED bulb land itself for a spell.

Thanks TGM.

I have outfitted my house with the 4 Inch Home Depot CREE fixtures and I am very happy with them. I understand the harshness but I attribute that to the directional nature of the LEDs. Though diffused, there will be more defined shadows and more light is bounced off the surfaces in your room.

Blue rooms look bluer, pink rooms look pinker.

- Rich

Maybe. The 4 inchers have a much smaller lighting center than the 6" ones I'm using, so you're going to get more of a point source of light effect anyway. The extreme version of that are the lights that jewelry stores use overhead: The smallest conceivable bulb and filament making so that all gems, no matter how dirty, sparkle like crazy, but the light is very harsh.

I'm not convinced that is it though. You can have sunlight, another small source, casting severe light and dark shadows outside---there is not a lot of diffusion there, and it's far nicer to see. This particular light though almost has a CFL harshness to it that leads me to guess is the strobe nature of it. It isn't quite as "painful" as CFL is, but "harsh" remains a good adjective. I'm interested in trying the other brands in a bazillion years when these things burn out.

Like CCFLs, LED's use a phosphor coating(over a blue die) to make 'white' light.

I'm FARRRRR out of my league on the physics of the LED's, and I only vaguely understand the band-gap inherent in the materials and how it relates to EMS frequency. But I really don't understand something else. That phosphor has almost no excitation persistence. Very short. The phosphor, unlike in CRT's, just doesn't want to glow long. I have absolutely no idea why this is. Do you?

It is just a different phosphor. One that probably uses only fluorescence with out phosphorescence. Phosphorescence involves a forbidden transition between energy states and consequently takes milliseconds to seconds to happen. Fluorescence is nearly instantaneous taking nanoseconds or less.

Different phosphors use both different host materials as well as different dopant atoms. Both will affect the kind of transitions used.

A little later...

I recalled that the phosphor used in white LEDs was YAG based but did not remember the dopant. In the following, I found that it was Cerium. A nice plot of the spectrum is about half way down:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Light-emitting_diode
Edited by Larry Hutchinson - 12/5/12 at 2:23pm

One last bump now that CES is here after Sony shammed their faithful once again (and since this tech was mentioned in the OLED prototype thread), and this thread can sink into the dustbin of history.
Not the answer you were gunning for, I suspect.

Sony has never claimed anything other than Crystal LED being a prototype display, with no plans to bring it to market any time in the near future. When it was on display last year, they were actively telling people not to expect it any time soon.

I don’t know where anyone got the impression that it was anything but that.

Read the last few pages of this thread. A handful of folks expected this to be coming down the pike in a manufacturing capacity in a mere year! I like to call it the Sony mesmerizing effect.

I wasn't expecting Crystal LED to be production this year but I was hoping Sony would be showing it off at CES again this year.

A couple may have, but I think the gist of the last couple of pages was more a back-and-forth between what constitutes fantasy/vaporware or not. In any event, to the topic itself, an interview with Peter Molyneaux after the press conference indicated that they are still working on CLED for larger display size applications. When where and if we'll see it resurface, who knows - it does seem however that Sony continues to put R&D dollars into the "triluminous" concept, across several different display technologies perhaps.

So the part where they talk about "working on" stuff is bogus. Sony does that year after year and the lack of products speaks more volumes than the big words.

These are the guys that were "working on" commercializing OLED after the 11" model and showed off a much larger set with it. It never materialized outside of broadcast models.

They went to CES last year without an upgraded flagship and finally bumped it mid-year with the most marginal changes imaginable.

They lack credibility.

*shrugs*

CES is about spectacle and technology. Should anyone around here care about more than what is going to be on the shelves? I mean yes in this section of the forum, discussing technology is why we are here - but credibility? Which of these makers has credibility in the context of CES?

In any event, I think the presence in broadcast models is more a positive wrt their record than it is a negative, and so far as sets that one will cross-shop in stores this year, their offerings seem very competitive.

Keep on believing, I guess.

Not the one I was hoping for, but 4K OLED being shown was a nice consolation prize.

From the various interviews done so far, it seems that Sony currently views CLED as something only for larger sized displays. So as always, wait and see

http://www.techradar.com/news/television/tv/sony-to-choose-between-oled-and-crystal-led-1123759?src=rss&attr=all