OLED TVs: Technology Advancements Thread - Page 157

Yes, you're certainly right. Even with a bunch of light bulbs together, I can imagine if they're not carefully partitioned the light will bounce around off the bulbs to the sides.

But there's another thing I'm trying to remember. Is it possible that at least a small part of what you saw wasn't the display? The eye itself isn't perfect in this regard. Look at any light source in a very high-contrast area----you'll get something you're accustomed to and probably discount. A sort of glare effect. Our eye has a set of coping strategies for dealing with this (moving around, iris dilation), so we become used to "not" seeing it. Sitting in a dark room and looking at the wall next to a bright window will show a kind of fuzzy bleed in. Sorry for thinking out loud...I'll have to see an OLED in person.

Yeah, the 4K reference confused me. In any case, all the online specs I can find on the 55EM9600 show it to be 2K, so you're right.

Hmmmmm......curious---Are they using RGBW to mean WOLED now, or just all versions of having a white light help out the RGB triad? In computer graphics / imaging, traditionally RGBW is used outside of any particular display vehicle to mean a particular color model. It's the additive-light version of the subtractive CMYK.

That could have been another cause for what was detected, IF that bleed extended beyond the 4.8" OLED screen to the phone bezel or beyond, but it was exclusive to the screen itself.

LG has actually started using the acronym WRGB but, yes, WRGB, RGBW, and WOLED refer to the same architecture.


It's being reported that LG is currently getting about 50% yields on the 55" TV in their pilot line. It's not yet at LCD yields but it is a pilot line. This is using an IGZO backplane. They are also reportedly shipping the first TVs to a department store in Korea.

There is a lot of excitement about 4K here and TVs will certainly adopt them. Is it really possible for most people's eyes to actually see that resolution on a 55" TV sitting 10 feet away in their house? I can see the case if its 3D. How much programming is there actually in 3D and 4K yet?

Cool! This should calm a few naysayers down a small notch at least. {chuckle}.

No one is complaining about this, but as far as the current 55" limitation, I'd recommend the LG JSC technological triumph. (Just Sit Closer).

I would like to see these reports. Do you have a link?

For those of us in the US, we can't buy LG's OLED set yet, but we can buy a wall mount for it here. Wonder how many of them they are selling.

That's just a plain old mounting bracket with a product specific title. In fact, the cut-n-paster who made this thing was a little careless. In the product description is the following:
I used to see crap like this all the time for memory cards. Things like "SD card for Canon Cameras" and similar hooey.

I should sell a microfiber cloth for the 55EM9600 screens. Hmmmm......
Edited by tgm1024 - 12/12/12 at 11:26am

Yep.
That yield report is nonsense. They might be up to 50% yield on the backplanes, but they are almost certainly not getting it on the TVs overall.

Also, this "department stores in Korea" stuff is drivel. Without a press release and photographs of the stuff in stores, it didn't happen.

As for the resolution, I don't believe it's needed on a 55" TV for most people. I believe it's about marketing. And yes, you raise a good point about 3D. The 3D on the LG OLED is incredible in terms of its depth. Really, truly amazing. Best I've seen. But it's resolution starved because it's passive. It would probably be unreal in 4K.

I guess I haven't posted enough here to be allowed to post a link (fear or spammers). There's an article from ZDNet Korea, all in Korean, that you can find from Google with the search term "꿈의 OLED TV 출시 초읽기…LG 선공" and use the translate feature. In English, it's "OLED TV launch countdown of dreams ... LG strike first". It doesn't mean the TVs will be at your local Best Buy soon but it is a start. Like I said, this is still a pilot line and while the yields are getting better there's still room for improvement and LG is ahead of Samsung. For LG it's mostly to do with the IGZO backplane. Deposition of the WRGB frontplane is not all that complicated. Here's part of the article (pardon the translation).

According to industry sources, willingness to look when elected OLED TV is the LG camp. Up to 500 levels of 55-inch OLED TV to launch later this month, at least 100, LG Electronics, the industry expects.
 
"LG Display is still, but rely on product releases, showing that large OLED panel mass production yields show the difficulties in securing the state," said one industry official later this month, LG Electronics OLED TV to be released in the market of 400-500 level seems to be, "he said.
 
Another official, "said LG Electronics planned to be released later this month, 100 single OLED TV is distributed through the Lotte Department Store" LG launched 55-inch OLED TV prices expected to be around 10 million won, "he said.

So LG remains "committed" to some completely bogus "2012" release by pushing 100 units into one store in Korea.

Time to smash the rolleyes emoticon again....

As for the whole yield thing:

(a) Yields are not 100% on the other parts of the process, even though those are fairly straightforward

(b) It's too bad they didn't partner with Sharp, who is farther along on IGZO

(c) It's funny that IGZO was going to be "cheaper" than a-Si backplanes, which have yields of like 99% and use cheaper materials.

(d) It's good that's the yield bottleneck, because it will be solved

(e) It's telling they are not pricing these at $5K, because you'd think that was doable if "everything else was really easy" as suggested

(f) Everything else is not so easy, even if it straightforward

That's about $10K US.

I think they made a few critical mistakes with this product. One was thinking the could find a way to get above 40% yield during the year it took bring the production line to operation. Another problem was with going with 2K vs 4K. Regardless of how much harder it would have been to implement, the fact is they will have to go 4K within the next 3-5 years anyway to avoid "marketing inferiority". Why buy a display with half the resolution of a lowered priced 4K set? Also, I think the size is problematic, especially at this price point. If you use previous sales statistics, the 55" size is right in the sweet spot, but that is more a function of pricing the actual demand. When I brought my first 50" plasma ten years ago, I really wanted the 70" Qualia 007, but could not justify the $13K price tag. 4K prices should drop fairly fast and and 80" 4K sets will be cheaper than this 55" OLED within a year. Even at launch, Hisense will have a 65" 4K for around $3500. If you are going to lay out 10 grand you want it to make an impact. Finally, I think LCD tech has made some recent advances that are going to make OLED incredible black levels and contrast less of a impact. Will LCD ever be as good or better than OLED, probably not, but close enough especially for the price/performance ratio. I would love to see LG or Samsung figure out a way to fix the production problems. I am sure those 80" 4K OLED prototypes at CES are going to look amazing, but until they find a solution will just remain demo units.
Edited by sytech - 12/13/12 at 8:10am

After their 2012 OLED TV public relations disaster, and their failure to inform the public why they have not delivered on their release promises, LG has put itself in the terrible position that few potential customers will believe anything they say at the upcoming CES event. I understand that production problems can arise, that tends to cause delays; but LG launched an extensive promotional campaign, in which they were selling the wonders of their soon to be shipped product, including a big PR event at Monti Carlo, and they have not issued any forthright explanation to the public as to why they have not shipped the promised product. They owed the public such an explanation, and their failure to do so has established the situation where most people will not longer believe anything they promise for 2013. Fool us once............

.....which will have absolutely no impact on them whatsoever. Not their stock price, not their sales, nothing. People will be oo'd and ah'd by the technology in front of them. They will not pass over LG if the technology shows up out of some grudge. Nor will any such bad PR hurt them now. This isn't presidential politics.

Perhaps, and you make a fairly reasoned argument. In my opinion though, it's not a matter of how black you can get, but how you can maintain a super dark black without squashing all the grays to black as well. There is effectively a kind of per-pixel dimming (clumsy way to put it)....and each pixel will have phenomenal control, dark, light, etc., except for the sideways bleed that I was recently educated on here.

I do believe how OLED looks (complete with it's physical presentation), will save the day for it in the next year and a half or so. Besides, 2K at only 55" (at 16:9, about 48" x 27"), you have 40 DPI. 4K at 80" (roughly 69" x 39") yields roughly 55 DPI. Not enormously different in smoothness. So that's part of the equation if you were deciding on one vs. the other. Sort of.

But to not have a backlight: It's SUCH a wake-up call after seeing one LED-LCD set after another to walk into the plasma section.....
Edited by tgm1024 - 12/13/12 at 9:24am

I think MOST folks will not see any value in the price delta between 2K & 4K. For many years, if ever. Especially since all they can see is a scaled image, NEXT TO NOTHING native at that res. And at average sizes and distances? Really? The inflated marketing numbers game? Most people ain't gonna buy it. Especially in the economy we can look at the next few years, So all this "4K is necessary for OLED" is nonsense, IMHO.

Plasmas? Great. If you're happy buying something with less than 10% market share that is declining rapidly, with a roughly 2014 final production date. And you watch in the dark, enjoy the warmth and don't have CA authorities on you for excessive energy use. Yes, a lot over-hyped, but some kernals of truth.

Plasmas are dead, their death certificate has already been signed. Accept it, enjoy what you have while you have it. OLED will make it, long term, I believe. But there are other contenders. What about field-induced polymer electroluminescent (Fipel) technology? What if this gets the WOLED treatment and color filters produce yet another TV technology? Possibly cheaper than OLED? If there are moves in that direction, there's going to be some quaking in Korea.

I suspect if my JVC RPTV based on LCoS technology dies in the next 4-5 years, I'll likely be buying LCD, despite how interested in OLED I am. Simple- LCD will be mature, with a longer lifespan, and already has more than good enough PQ. And price will be a major factor, especially as I, like many other folks, may have less disposable income by then.

There are not, realistically, any other contenders navy. The display industry has invented dozens of ways to put an image on screen. In direct-view TV, exactly three have ever reached the market: CRT, PDP and LCD. The first is basically dead, the second had a brief run and almost became a hit (it was a success, but not truly a "hit" in terms of numbers), the third owns more than 90% of the market. Billions have been spent pursuing the others and nothing has ever come of it.

The only reason we can be reasonably assured OLED will be a television technology is that we've seen it work in small scale and seen the large prototypes shown by big, wealthy (in one case) companies. It takes billions of dollars and more than a decade to successfully commercialize a new flat-panel technology. It did for PDP, it did for LCD. It has for OLED. Until you see someone putting billions on the table, you can rest easy knowing you'll never see a TV based on that technology.

Oh, and as for LCD, it's not going to go quietly into the good night. All the IGZO magic that OLED needs will benefit LCD -- including whatever theoretical cost edge it provides (I remain very, very skeptical). LCD also benefits from continued scale economics on LEDs. LG's OLED design incidentally is about 2/3 of an LCD TV with 1/3 changed out to make it an OLED. It's a really critical 1/3 and the design remains the most promising, but even that has proved itself very very hard to bring to market.

You might be misunderstanding me. The reason I brought up plasma is to illustrate just how wonderful it is to have an emissive display with such finely tuned reactive elements. Enough so that a mass market priced OLED with just 2K at a mere 55" would nevertheless certainly be a smash hit. That's the only reason I bring it up at all. On it's own, plasmas just can't seem to fully kill that 800 pound gorilla of IR.

I don't want to rehash whether or not plasmas have killed image retention. I will say three things however:

1) I never experience it on my new plasma and never did on my old one.
2) It's most certainly not an 800-pound gorilla
3) I find it amusing that everyone "knows" OLED won't have any problems with image retention or burn in, given how many have been sold

Eh, you may be right. But the market for them is nearly gone and it isn't because of weight, cost of manufacture, nor energy consumption, and not that potential buzzing nor do I think image brightness. Even if the image retention were technically defeated (which is isn't), the *perception* of it is an 800 pound gorilla. Whenever people who don't know anything about TV's at all ask me what to buy, they *always* come armed with words to the effect of "we don't want a plasma....the images burn into them." Or they had it happen, or their friends did, etc.


It's not how many of them sold that determines this so much as it is for how long even a few of them have been running. You're right in not making this assumption though: even CRT's can have IR.

Japanese scientists develop OLED material free of rare metals

"Without the use of rare metals, the costs for materials in OLEDs can be reduced to about one-10th, the scientists said."

http://ajw.asahi.com/article/economy/technology/AJ201212130054

"Japanese researchers said they have developed a new material for organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs) that is free of rare metals and can slash the costs to produce smartphone displays and other appliances.

The team led by Chihaya Adachi, director of Kyushu University's Center for Organic Photonics and Electronics Research, said they created a dicyanobenzene derivative, an organic chemical compound that emits light at high efficiencies, without the use of rare metals.

The material is as cheap as fluorescent substances and is as efficient in electroluminescence, or the use of electrons to induce light emission, as phosphorous substances, they said.

The team named the new material's light-emitting features "hyperfluorescence."

"We wish to tie up with Japanese manufacturers and strive to commercialize our Japan-born technology at an early date," Adachi said.............................

......................................................................................................................................................

Since this new material is not a phosphorous substance, I wonder if it might greatly reduce or eliminate image retention or burn-in damage?

Assuming that the other techniques had IR? Good question. It has everything to do with how the material itself holds up under multiple uses, and at what intensities. Even an incandescent bulb behaves differently when it ages. Heck, so does my son's glow in the dark Frisbee.

Something I've off and on wondered about for years was if the electrical characteristics of a worn plasma cell could be detected and electrically compensated for. So the pixels that had variations of a "burn" would have their signal altered to compensate.

I believe something like this is exactly what some of Panasonic plasmas do (or at least did). Voltage was adjusted over time, which had the side effect of the infamous "black level doubling overnight" fiasco. I am not sure why they did this (maybe to keep brightness levels consistant as the panel ages?).

More informed posters can correct if I am mis-speaking.


I am very interested in OLED displays but not for many years. I currently use RP displays (67" Samsung LED DLP and maybe the only green blob free 60" Sony XBR2 in existance) and prefer large sizes. My next display must be around 80" at a reasonable cost. I will probably get either get a Sharp 80" LCD or a closeout priced 82" Mits DLP to use for the next few years. It's a shame that consumer PDP displays have maxed out at 64-65" size.

this is good news, however:
1. how long it'll take to get mass product? 3-5 years?
2. 1/10th cost? 55" OLED for $800-$1k - so good to be true
3. what China will do as rare metals main producer?

Sorry, I don't buy this. While I believe plasma was hurt several years ago by threats of "burn in", it lost in the market to LCD for four reasons:

1) Cost
2) Availability in a wide array of sizes
3) Brightness
4) Gigantic array of manufacturers of panels and TV

AVSers think that regular people know all the junk that is obsessed about here; but they don't.

First, you mean "phosphor" not "phosphorous", which is an element.

Second, this article is gigantically misleading and irrelevant.

Why? Because they are talking about the material for the OLED itself, not the display. The display will still require a TFT backplane and that will still use IGZO going forward, which means indium, gallium and zinc. See below...


So there is a lot of confusion about "rare metals".

First, there are so-called "rare earth" elements. None of them are rare, as in scarce. China produces most of them for cost reasons, but they exist elsewhere and an old U.S. mine owned by Molycorp is being reopened, for example, with all sorts of nifty technology, environmental safeguards, etc. because these metals are now very expensive. The list of rare earths is here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rare_earth_element

Then, there are "rare metals", for example gold, that are actually rare.

Indium, which comes as a byproduct of zinc mining, is not especially rare, but is fairly unique in that it produces (with tin) the world's only known practical transparent electrodes. As a result, LCDs (and plasmas) need indium and consumption of it has soared in the flat-panel era. Indium is 4x to 10x as expensive as it was a decade ago (depending on the fluctuations in the market and whether China is being obnoxious about producing it). Indium can be recovered from recycling and the technology is getting better to do that (nearly all is recycled at this point). It's not rare in the sense of being scarce at all. There is a 100+ year known supply and there is more indium in the earth than silver (while more silver is used by far).

Gallium is also a byproduct of zinc mining and is less rare than indium. It's also less needed, since indium-tin oxide (the transparent electrodes) don't use it. It will be used in IGZO, but there is no particular shortage to worry about.

Neither Indium nor Gallium are "rare earths" nor are they "rare".

As to the technology in question that greenland linked to, a "better, cheaper" OLED material would likely take 3-10 years to reach the market. If it cut the price of making the OLED layer by 90%, it would probably mean the price of a display would fall by about 10%. No, really that's what it would mean. If you figure the display is composed of the following parts:

* Power supply and electronics
* TFT backplane
* Front glass (and color filters in the case of LG)
* OLED layer

... the only part affected by this is the OLED layer. You pay about 2.5x the manufacturing cost of your TV (that's very rough by the way, but bear with me). If we take the example of the OLED material falling in price 90%, the OLED layer doesn't fall 90% in price, the material for the layer does. Let's say that the OLED layer costs you 40% of your manufacturing cost (sounds high, but whatever). The masking / patterning (Samsung) or the vapor deposition (LG) is most of the work, the material is a portion. So let's call the material 30% of the cost of that layer. Now we drop that by 90%. So we had 30% (the OLED material) of a layer that cost you 40% (the OLED layer). We've made that layer cost about 27% less (1 - (.9 * .3) = .27). So our build cost has now fallen by about 11% overall (.27 * .40 = 10.8). However, our retail price is still going to be about 2.5x our build cost.

If our build cost before was "100", and retail was 250. We can now recalibrate at 89 and 222.5. The difference between the old price, 250, and the new price 222.5 is about 11%.

(Incidentally, LG is already using at least some fluorescent OLED materials, suggesting that in TVs, they are trading power efficiency for cost already. So I'm not sure this even has significant implications for them at all.)

As usual, your arguments are founded from your long history of such things, so they're often a good exercise.

I'm sorry Rogo, I really don't understand this. Plasmas have been a bargain! And to get an LCD at even similar picture quality places plasma at an UBER-bargain.

Perhaps. Larger than 65" as a common place purchase is a recent phenomenon though, no? Or are you referring to under-42" crowd?

OK. But compared to the fear of burn-in (my claimed 800 pound gorilla), this isn't even on the map. I've been in the technical world forever, imaging for most of it, and even I knew of the fear of plasma burn-in/IR long before any brightness issue. And I can guarantee the non-techie mom&pop&grandmothers out there know of IR as well, but for the vast majority of them, nothing about brightness. Outside of the AV crowd, or those that have invested homework, it's just not even on the radar at first.

I'll make a classic economics argument here. Manufacturers follow demand. Demand isn't somehow pushed by manufacturers. You don't suddenly have people wanting more mousetraps because a ton of mousetrap factories showed up pushing their price ever lower. It's not like the sudden supply of natural gas which is plentiful as a weird welcome by-product of fracking. You have to put money into manufacturing because of a perceived demand first.

A lot of demand has been originally jump started by the manufacturer; especially when ever they introduced a revolutionary new product. That is what Apple did with their Pods, Phones, and Pads.

I still much prefer Plasma over LCD for Blu-ray and TV viewing, but would never use a Plasma display as a computer monitor. People have purchased a huge amount of LCD TV displays in sizes smaller than are available in Plasma displays; so that accounts for a significant amount of the higher LCD sales numbers.

I hadn't thought of that. The computer monitor specific LCD's were always excluded from the TV numbers (right?), but not when the TV's are bought for computing purposes.

Me neither (not understanding his point), but I'm sure he'll explain.

Totally and completely disagree with you there. Since many of the retail environments showcase plasmas and lcds in relatively bright settings, the LCDs often look much more robust, appealing, vibrantly bright, etc.,. to the general consumer.

Yeah, first of all, quality wasn't my argument. LCDs were available in much smaller sizes for a long time when that mattered. I realize that seems irrelevant now; it wasn't for the first half of the decade. And those scale economics eventually allowed LCD pricing to catch plasma pricing in the 40s and up, too.
Yes, sorry.
Sorry, I don't buy this. People at Best Buy go in and see the bright images, they go home with them. Best Buy even has a decent number of knowledgeable people (decent number) who tell people not to worry about burn in, but they can't be bothered to convince them the "dimmer" image is better.
The classical argument is wrong. LCD fab building ramped up for 5 years well ahead of demand. It led to years of industry overcapacity, which led to panels everywhere and lower pricing. Manufacturers of TVs followed the unlimited availability of panels. (and yes it was unlimited).

They put the money in confident there would be demand and then had to price to create the demand because they had invested in a factory.

By the way, the sudden supply of natural gas is actually a weird and welcome by-product of fracking. Fracking isn't a new idea. It's an old idea. It wasn't popular because it didn't seem worth it. Then in North Dakota, people started using fracking-type methods to get oil, not gas because oil prices had remained so high for so long people went looking for "tight oil". When the methods proved viable for oil, it became more realistic to use them just for gas, which was also pricey -- and "running out" in North America. Then ruinous amounts of investment went into fracking (sounds a lot like the LCD build of the early 2000s actually). Natural gas is now actually priced too low, which has some intriguing short-term oddball benefits but isn't actually optimal. But that's another matter.