Shockingly bad news for the future of affordable large format OLED displays - Page 2

*sigh*

Did you even LOOK at the graphic at the bottom of the linked page?

Obviously not.

"Shockingly bad news for the future of affordable large format OLED displays" is not what that article says, nor does it portend that situation.

Your OP is misleading.

I'd counter what you're saying entirely with "high resolution cameras are hardly ever as good as their advertised megapixels would make you otherwise believe". Or perhaps, "The picture quality (sharpness / chromatic aberration / lenses / CCD vs CMOS / etc.) is rarely tight enough to make use of the small pixels." Or similar. One of the reasons that cameras must absolutely have optical image stabilization (not Electronic Image Stabilization) these days. Endlessly bifurcating conversation tree here.

I *don't* know you at all, but I would hardly think you're happy about this. I just like giving folks the 007 license to say "ha ha" when they deserve it.

All that aside, this article doesn't read like something armed to the teeth with supporting references, but you all are better judges of that. For me however, It reminds me of the Wikipedian warning against weasel words. A.K.A. (outside of Wikipedia) as "Anonymous Authority".

Someone please explain this thing to me:



I don't understand. What does "->MP" mean, and why dumping of LCD in 2014 as a priority if emmisives are having so much trouble?

According to the original plan (per the graphic), 1080p OLED was supposed to have its commercial launch in 2012, with capacity expansion also in 2012. 4K OLED would follow in 2013-2014.

Instead, now there'll be no ommercial launch of OLED in 2012 or 2013. Next year we'll see some OLED demos, but there'll be no mass production until 2014, and then only 4K OLED (ie $$$ OLED) is to be marketed.

So yes, this is shockingly bad news for the future of affordable large-format OLED displays.

So, all your comments about cameras are, again, fair. It's just also true that most high-end cameras also have excessive (and pointless megapixels). In other words, having the extra pixels doesn't get in the way of having good quality too.

As for the article, it's from DisplaySearch, the most respected industry analysts in the field. And, honestly, people whose business benefits from hyping new tech, not throwing cold water on it. They sell more reports when the reports are bullish. So when they are bearish, you can trust them even more than usual (and you can usually trust them).

MP = Mass Prodction.

The graphic doesn't show anything being dumed in 2014. All it shows is that 4K LCD will reach mass production by 2013. So in the bottom set of boxes, once you reach mass production you stay there...

The problem is the top and bottom cells are not entirely parallel, so it's confusing... But if you view the bottom line separately, understand it to mean, AMOLED reaches demo state in 2013, mass production in 2014, 4k LCD reaches mass production in 2013, and stays there, so we didn't include that obvious fact in the 2014 box, there is no more to say.

(If you really want to parse the top line, consider them as saying, "progress happens between 2013 and 2014, but it's pretty slow, so we don't reference 'mass production' explicitly, but it was building toward that over time").

I have read some reports from people who have viewed ultra resolution units, and they have concluded that aside from when you view them from very close up, they see no difference between them and 1080P panels except for the super large displays, which are very expensive; and will not sell in large numbers.

Might all the manufacturers now jumping on the ultra resolution bandwagon be going after the same small very expensive high end market, which there will not be enough of for all of them to grab a worthwhile share of? The irrational herd mentality, and fear of missing the boat might be driving them down the wrong road, full of false assumption potholes once more, like it did when they all thought they were going to make a killing on 3D TV sets.!

You and I have talked past each other regarding this very concept elsewhere: The concept of having a "good quality camera" in my view is a "per cost" notion, otherwise it's not the "good news" you refer to. The bulk of the new very high mega pixel cameras ("new very high" works for any year) aren't "good quality" because there is too much money on the pixels. You have an absolute notion of quality. For me, once (as you say) they have "excessive megapixels", the camera is inherently too expensive for what you get. AND this means that people are lemming themselves off the cliff to spend money they shouldn't, because they don't understand. It's not, as you say here: ....it's precisely the case that those high resolution cameras are often awful. Imagine you shelled out enormous money for a 50MP camera, and it gave you 50 million fuzzy pixels. You'd probably say it was "awful".


Ah, THANKS! Now I get it. But are they implying to us then that in 2014 they will hit MP like they claim, or that the advent of UD makes this merely a priority (and hence a pipe dream)?

As I see it, the sad fact is that people are likely to do what they believe to be future-proofing themselves. The general public doesn't have a clue about FOV as a concept, and how it can only be perceptively divided up only so many ways before cost/resolution becomes stupid. They know about "latest and greatest".

Four words? I have one:

Surprise!

Who didn’t see something like this coming after the constant delays?
I like this one, but I think I am a bit of a Sony fan these days…
Crystal LED is their Inorganic LED TV. http://www.sony.net/SonyInfo/News/Press/201201/12-005E/index.html
I’m not sure I’d agree with you there. Once you start looking at the image rather than pixel-level detail, it turns out that most higher megapixel cameras do in fact put out a better picture. And these days with the way that sensor technology is advancing, the pixel-level detail is nearly as good on the extremely high resolution cameras as moderate resolution cameras now.

There was a time when the sensor technology wasn't there to justify going to higher resolutions, but that is in the distant past now.
People throw out that sort of thing without any knowledge or evidence. Current lens technology far outresolves current sensor technology by a significant margin:


The image at the far left is a crop from an 18 megapixel Canon 7D with a 300mm lens. The image on the right is with three teleconverters attached (2x, 2x, 1.4x) giving it a 1680mm equivalent focal length.
This is equivalent to the resolving power of a 1500MP sensor at the original 300mm focal length. (actually, a native 1500MP sensor would be better, due to the lack of teleconverters)


Same thing goes for display resolution. People argue that 4K is worthless—just wait until 4K is widespread and affordable, and then let’s see who argues that 1080p is enough.
How do you explain the fact that the highest resolutions sensors, are also ranked highest for overall image quality? http://www.dxomark.com/index.php/Cameras/Camera-Sensor-Ratings

Similar to TV resolution, the people proclaiming that “X resolution is enough!” are the people that can’t yet afford them, or have no experience with the products.

I was reading reviews for a modern entry range digicam above 10MP that reported on some fuzziness at the pixel level, so it's not unheard of.

And no, 4K is not needed until you reach a certain screen size threshold (and there's actually some content).

The thing about semiconductors is they go forward, not backwards. CMOS imagers are going to have lots of pixels, especially when they go full frame. What you want to see -- and I'd agree -- is improvements in making them great.

What's never happening is a return to fewer pixels. Foveon tried to market it; it was unmarketable. Sorry.

There is no important part of the budget being spent on pixels; the imager in a $2000 D-SLR costs less today than the one in a $300 point-and-shoot from 10 years ago I'd bet. I'm well aware of all the noise and other imager problem. And I agree they should've stopped adding pixels millions of pixels ago (to some extent, they actually have on high-end cameras). But I think in diagnosing the problem, you overstate the cause.
Probably yes. And you're welcome.
Edited by rogo - 12/19/12 at 2:25pm

You're confusing a few things. First, the highest resolution sensors are also the *biggest* for clarity, often "full frame" (36mm x 24mm), and now we're talking uber dollars, and these beasts are NOT what I'm talking about in the least. The number of people interested in the uber-expensive cameras fully outfit with uber-expensive lenses fills a thimble by comparison.

It does not matter if the highest resolution sensors are rated the highest for overall image quality. You are making precisely the same common mistake----a misunderstanding of precisely what it is I said. You're ignoring cost. You can always find the very top quality cameras with the highest resolution sensors.

As a second point, I'll simply try it again. The *majority* of the very high resolution cameras have crap image quality PER cost, or to put it another way, you're paying for megapixels that just don't perform. I've dug this up endlessly on my own. Go onto dpreview.com and you'll find endless anger about too many megapixels or words to the effect of "a megapixel too far". I have no inclination to supply you with links since you were so quick to say something inflamatory like
There's no point discussing this, because you're at a non-starter with what it is I said in the first place. This business once again ignores what I said about cost. And completely ignores the concept of the other parts of the camera that are often just not there.

Again, I'll rephrase it regarding the cost factor yet a DIFFERENT way. For the average consumer, they start shelling out money for the megapixels count alone under the mistaken belief that this means a better picture. It does not. Without the image properly getting to the sensor in the first place you can toss the extra megapixels. Further, there's a thing called chromatic aberration which often is very hard to correct for. This also has to do with qualities in the camera that have nothing to do with how many pixels they deliver to the image file. AND, to make matters worse, cameras without a sufficiently sized sensor array end up making non-tripod non-optical-image-stablized images inherently fuzzy because of the nature of holding a camera.

I'm just not interested in this debate any further.

What you see is marketing confusing what is important. Pixels and marketing certainly move forward, despite the fact that the parts of the camera in *front* of that array just isn't enough. By simile, I'm stating that people will march to UD despite an increase in quality. Could be that the panels can't perform. Could be that the panels are peachy, but there just isn't that big a difference optically in the FOV. The march forward is the same.

Yep, marketing again. And public confusion.

I disagree. This has been the push forever, an increase along the model lines. "Important" is a good way to put it though, and I believe we're arguing degrees.

Bingo, and look at the progression of models in any camera line. MP goes up, price goes up, and often the consumer thinks that is the bottom line.


Ok, well this actually makes me feel better because we're now discussing degrees. And I'm glad you actually know the term "full frame", which by itself puts you in a different category than the average consumer, not that I assumed otherwise. We're pretty much done on this diversion.

Your argument against high megapixel cameras are very confusing and sounds like arguments that people had 2-3 years ago.
Please give some examples of awful high MP cameras to show that you know what you talk about.

No.

Then all your arguments fell dead. Just like I suspected.
All your arguments are taken out of thin air to bolster some kind of position. Because non of the arguments you put in several posts have anything to do with modern camera technology, image capture or image reproduction on high resolution displays.

Those very large units you cite are hugely expensive,and way beyond the budget constraints of the vast majority of potential buyers. Sticker shock will make all but the very rich suddenly come to their senses and realize that in any size under 65inches 1080P will do just fine

Yes, I think all we've been discussing is degrees. I tried to oversimplify it a bit because we are way off topic but were both trying to use the example-by-analogy method.

I am pretty familiar with the trajectory of digital cameras, understand what sucks about overly pixeled image sensors and agree with the vast majority of what you say on the topic.

I'm just (a) resigned to accept most of it (b) generally feeling like smartphones are within 5 years of killing off all but really good cameras anyway. So much more can happen in software that isn't going on yet which will mean the next generation of image improvements come there, not from hardware. That doesn't mean we couldn't have also improved the hardware. But with everyone already carrying a pretty decent camera, the idea of a slightly better one becomes more and more pointless. This is why things like CD had no chance vs. MP3 (again, the analogy is imperfect).

We can hope that by mid-decade, the remaining cameras -- which exist only for truly serious photographic endeavors -- are focused on image quality, rapid capture (an image you don't get isn't relevant no matter how good), etc. and not marketing. We can hope.

Absolute nonsense. "Chromatic Aberration". "CMOS/CCD arrays". "Optical Image Stablization". "Full Frame". These have nothing to do with modern camera technology? And the simile to displays? Agree or disagree you just made a big mistake when you said that "non of the arguments you put in several posts have anything to do with modern camera technology, image capture or image reproduction on high resolution displays".

Besides, the example I gave was to show how his terminology of "awful" was not mine because it was disconnected from cost. It was a push to the extreme to show the meanings of the words used. It was to show how cost is involved. It was clearly not an direct example of anything other than that. It's connecting "cost" to "awful" to "megapixels" as an example. And I'm not interested in an inflammatory exchange, which you seem to be.

The reference to the "awful" term was connected to Rogo's comment: "the good news is that high resolution cameras are rarely awful." My point is that "awful" depends upon the price. Further, I'm not even talking about the highest end cameras, as stated (re-read the thimble comment), the 50MP comment is obviously an extreme to clarify the "awful" usage that he and I use differently. All boiled down, terms or not, I'm talking about the way the general public believes that the bottom line is the number of megapixels involved, which it just is not. If the all this is still a mystery, and you insist on being inflammatory, then re-read this "The general public believes that the bottom line is the number of megapixels involved, which it just is not".

Me too, the other way.

Sure. Maybe mitigated by the fact that they still get rammed into pockets. And you can't swap out nifty lenses. And lens optical quality itself is far tougher when small. Longggg discussion on the "etc." part of this.

Most of this thread is about hope and despair.

You throw out a lot of words but fail to put them into any meaningful context that makes me doubt your understanding of camera technology and usefulness of megapixels.
By the way; "Chromatic Aberration", "Optical Image Stablization" have to do with optical/lens technology and not the camera. Image quality and high number of megapixels goes hand in hand.
You reference to high megapixel count and cost makes me doubt your knowledge of the camera marked. You can get cameras with excellent image quality and high megaoixel count for some hundred dollars.
So if you try to argue that only the expensive cameras provides quality you need to update yourself on the camera marked.

What you in your posts try to argue is that higher megapixel count is just a sales argument. That is a debate that went on some years ago when some argued that lower pixel count was better because higher pixel count just produced more noise.
That is a argument that now is dead because actual camera models proved it to be false.
The understanding now is that much of the improvement in image quality comes from high megapixel count that is sub-sampled to the intended display pixel count.

In a previous post you referenced dpreview and claimed that there was a lot of discussions where people asked for lower megapixel cameras. Those arguments I haven't seen on dpreview for a very long time.

I am not being inflammatory, but all of your several argument are so flawed as to what is happening in Camera technology today and the trend which is driven by the realisation that high megapixel count is more important than what one thought just some years ago.
You also claim a lot of "facts" but without giving examples of actual products that can back up your arguments.
That's why I question your understanding of camera technology because non of what you argued makes any much sense in the real camera technology world.

I follow camera technology developments both for stills and digital film cameras closely, and can just say that your arguments are so very outdated.

And from there we can move to the argument of "future proofing" your images. You be fine with a 24MP camera today for sub-sampling to a 8MP 4K screen. But what about 20 years from now when you want to watch the same pictures on your 8K screen in full resolution? Then you have to up-convert those 24MP pictures to 33MP.

Wow, there is more to quality than a high MP count. That's the gist of his comment. Even cams with a high MP count can fail to look sharp on a pixel level because a digital camera is the sum of its parts (software and hardware).

I know full well what these terms are.

You still fail to realize that the image needs to get *past* a good lens, and needs to be stable, before any registration in the CMOS/CCD array can help. That's what I'm talking about. I'm having a hard time turning the other cheek with you continually here. You have absolutely no idea what you're talking about, please stand down. I've had it with your inflammatory remarks, you are unqualified for this discussion. For the record, OIS can be accomplished by moving the sensor. Further, it doesn't matter if the lens is what's floating or not in a point-n-click because they're together in the same housing. But that isn't the point at all. The point is that by the time the light hits the sensor it is too late. Think in terms of Mega Pixels as worth being high if the image is sharp and correct.

I can't explain any more to you how it's only part of it. Good grief. You're out of your league here.


And you're still missing the point.


You have got to be kidding. Do you understand what is meant by words to the effect of "it's not the bottom line"?
Edited by tgm1024 - 12/19/12 at 5:19pm

Yes, "wow" is right, but this seems to be lost on him, and I'm losing my ability to remain non-inflammatory myself.

Is there physically a longevity issue with the really large panels (regardless of resolution)? Are the substrates stable enough for long term?

There is no longevity issue.

And I agree with sytech that within a few years, you will not be able to buy a 2K LCD of any meaningful size, except on the low end of the market. In other words, the $600 "beater" model will still exist. But even the mainstream family sedan will be a 4K.

Pixel-level detail is not important on modern cameras. For the same image, the higher resolution camera is almost always better. (assuming they are of similar age)
At 20-30" or so, 4K is a good fit for computer monitors. Above that size, say 40-46" and up, it's a great fit for televisions. Just like pretty much all displays are now 1080p from 20" and up, we will see the same thing happen with 4K in a few years.
As I have already demonstrated, today's DSLR optics are capable of resolving at a level equivalent to a 1500 MP sensor, and that was a 7D which uses a 1.5x Canon APS-C sized sensor.

We have seen the same thing happen with Nokia's 41MP Pureview camera outperforming everything else in the camera phone market. In good light, images from that camera are stunning, considering they're coming from a phone-sized sensor, and in low light, they have the lowest noise of any current camera phone.
You are changing your argument - initially it was that higher resolution sensors are automatically worse than lower resolution ones.

If you read the DXOmark site again, you will see that Full-Frame sensors with a 4.84µm pixel pitch are actually outperforming Medium-Format backs with a 5.17µm pixel pitch.
If sensor size (therefore photosite size) was all that mattered, Canon's 1Ds with a 12MP Full-Frame sensor and a massive 8.77µm pixel pitch would be right near the top of the list.
As I have illustrated, modern optics can far outresolve today's sensors by a significant margin.

Advancements in RAW image processing can also significantly reduce or even eliminate chromatic aberrations from lenses. Just look at what Adobe is able to accomplish with the latest version of Camera RAW. (Lightroom 4/Photoshop CS6)
http://blogs.adobe.com/lightroomjournal/2012/04/new-color-fringe-correction-controls.html

And wait until they add adding deconvolution-based sharpening, we haven't seen anything yet.
And that is largely mitigated on camera phones through the use of the sensors built into them, taking the photo when the camera is stable, even when being hand-held.
Anything larger usually has optical or in-body image stabilisation.

But poor technique will result in blurry photos regardless of the sensor in the camera. I'm not sure of its relevance to the question of whether or not higher resolution sensors are better/worse than lower resolution ones.
Is your argument that high resolution sensors or bad, or that cheap cameras are bad? This is just like the 4K argument, and the 1080p argument before that. The technology is somehow bad or unnecessary until it's affordable, then it's magically great.

720p was "more than enough" up to 65" until smaller panels with a 1080p resolution were affordable. Then it suddenly mattered at all sizes.
Five years ago was another story. I bought into Fuji's SuperCCD with their F30/F31 pocket cameras, rather than buying a 12MP compact sensor with a lot of noise at anything over base ISO.
Those images look crap compared to most high megapixel compacts available today, especially now that many are offering RAW output.
Until we get phone cameras with interchangeable lenses, large sensors and huge apertures, cameras aren't going to die off. We will probably see the death of the low-end P&S market (superzooms will still exist) and probably see the low-end DSLR market die off to Mirrorless interchangeable lens cameras like the NEX and µ4/3 cameras though, with the high-end moving towards cheaper full-frame sensors.