OLED TVs: Technology Advancements Thread - Page 167

??? What is you definition of videophile? How many people do you know who call themselves videophiles who don't have a blu-ray player, or who only watch SD from cable? Or at least did a few years ago. Both cable providers here include HD channels in your package for free, and all OTA, though very few seem to know it still exists, is HD.

I used the term videophile because scottylans seems to be one. Maybe you include a lot of people who switched to HD packages and bought blu-ray players a few years ago who you do not consider videophiles?
Assuming you have to, you'd pay because you ARE a videophile and the quality does matter.

You seem to be arguing with me, or at least disagreeing with me, but you seem to agree with me except over the term videophile?? Or what am i missing?




Edit: added in on last sentence

And many of those are/were watching plasma. Whod'a thunk.

Man, is this getting old. Some just love to live in the past.

Not really, I've seen LCD with my own eyes, it's inferior rubbish, I can not stand it in the slightest.
I need only open a few JPG files on my plasma in the lounge to see it blow away and LCD for colour, black levels. They simply don't compare.

^While I'm not the least bit interested in LCD (the price premium to get something on par with Plasma is not worth it to me), I think you are painting a tad broadly with your subjective brush. For the vast majority of panels, I couldn't agree more, however.

Hope Artwood likes live theatre.

It's post-CES euphoria. We had it last year, too. Once people again come to grips with the fact that Sony and Panasonic didn't announce anything (and they didn't) and that Samsung didn't announce a ship date (and they didn't) and that LG has one model coming out at $12,000, it'll die down.

The thing is -- and this is confusing I know when people read the "news" from OLED hype sites -- LG didn't say anything about investing big money in OLED. LG display announced flat capital spending vs. last year. Last year, they produced essentially zero OLEDs. I know some people think they are moving all the capex over to OLED, but we don't actually know that.

The most correct thing you said there, IMO, navy, is "they aren't showing all their cards".

So by that we mean $4000-5000 for 65" sets.

What's interesting about that is (a) I think that's very doable (b) those volumes are so tiny I don't think it achieves anything for OLED.

People again get confused, "Why can they make an LCD that's so low volume, but not sustain an OLED business like that?" The answer is, the LCD uses the same basic part from a fab making millions of screens annually. The OLED would basically move at most a few hundred thousand at that point. That's not going to actually work economically. You can't both price that low and have volume that low in OLED. It's the Catch-22 we've been discussing from the beginning. At some point you need to price low enough to push volume to push down the learning curve.

The "how" of getting there is why there is still uncertainty this happens, even though a lot of people want it to happen very badly. Again, it's worth remembering that in TV, there was an entire computer ecosystem to leverage off of and they started out TVs in the 32" range using those very same fabs. It took years for larger motherglass and 40" TVs to go from "we have this coming" to actually being for sale. Samsung, I believe, showed it at CES three years running. OLED doesn't get that luxury. At some point, someone just has to go for it.

Once they do, they almost have to blow past the $4000-5000 price level and head straight for $3000-3500 (or, to be accurate, some small premium to the street price of the Samsung x8000 line and whatever the equivalent is from Sony). Even that spot won't hold for very long.

So the question is, what's the prize here? Samsung and LG are currently in the "we play in every sandbox" phase. But that won't last once they come to realize that profits are more interesting than revenues. It seems that day is coming as they spin off their display divisions in whole or in part.

It is, but I think you make the mistake of underselling the competition and overselling OLED.

I'm going to guess that not many who couldn't find a few bucks to buy any flat panel in the past decade are lining up to blow 12 grand on an OLED. Maybe that's me pre-judging, but it's hard not to in this case.
Apple put out a bunch of meaningless stats in their conference call yesterday as well. Something like 4.5 trillion notifications delivered!

I'm on the same plan, although I made the jump from a 2006 50" plasma to 2012 65" plasma and kept the old one in my living room in case I found some use for it. I imagine the Craigslist value is really quite low.
Yes, but there won't be an OLED business around those people. It doesn't work that way, as I explained above. If the market doesn't grow into the millions, it will shrink from the thousands back to zero.

Very evolutionary. We're at the point where sequential contrast, in particular, exceeds useless levels on the "dimming" LCDs -- and I mean that in a good way. (It doesn't on plasmas because of peak-light limitations, but for movie watching it tends to also already "be there".) Intrascene contrast on both techs could use some more headroom and OLED will provide this. Similarly, absolute black levels will reach near perfection. But how much this matter and to how many people remains another matter. Most source material doesn't benefit from either. Yes, there are absolutely exceptions, but do you go out and spend premium dollars to replace your TV for exceptions? No. Now, of course, there is a replacement cycle and there are people who want "the best". People like Ken who spent >$6000 on a 70" Elite for example.

In my mind, however, the unbelievably tepid sales of the Elite speak about equally to price and to the relatively small improvement most people witness. OLED is going to face the same problem, even if somewhat more people see it as better. And without the pre-packaged demo materials of a trade show (i.e. showing the Best Buy loop), I think the number of those people is far smaller than OLED proponents do.
Yep, I've beaten the hell out of that drum for a while now. There is some truth that LCD fails to keep delivering color at lower luminance. So, again, OLED will improve on that. In how much content does that matter? In how many sources have the cameras actually captured the color information for it to be even be reproduced?

You're in the overwhelming majority vis a vis 70" TVs. I'm on record as to a believe that the size won't exceed 10% of the market for years and years. But 55" might be a problem in a world where 60" and 65" are increasingly common. Smaller is worse and OLED has already picked the wrong target based on an expectation it would be out already, not in a mode where it's effectively not out until next year. (Even if you believe Samsung is also shipping this year, total production globally is going to be really, really tiny in 2013.)

And, of course, there is cost. A premium 55" set streets for around $2500-3000 in the U.S. Within 2 years, that set is likely to be IGZO, even better, and similar money. If they OLED is $4000-5000, the market for OLED vs. the premium 55" TV is going to be roughly 1:20. That's really too small.

You mean like Kuro owners? I kid, I kid.

The interesting thing is that those premium LCDs do sell, but they do sell really poorly overall. And plasma sales are falling rapidly too.

Is there a videophile market left? It doesn't really seem like the answer is yes.

actually color accuracy on the TH-XXPX85U is not really good and blacks aren't anyway near Pioneer top Plasma's. I wouldn't be blown away
http://reviews.cnet.com/flat-panel-tvs/panasonic-viera-th-42px80u/4505-6482_7-32887130-2.html

Can someone be polite in their explanation as to why high video performance tech is never made available for entry level panels, and why everyone can't simply charge a premium for size only?

think of your choices when buying a new car as an analogy

Interesting. I guess many of the professional reviewers that felt the Elite was the best display ever must have been smoking crack. I guess if they had known in advance that the tech was 'inferior rubbish', they might have written their reviews differently.

Well since manufacturers are only going to make what the buying public demands, I doubt the LCD Army will be going away anytime soon. But if you don't like LCD, simply don't buy it. It's just a personal preference. Outside of the VT-50 and the Kuro, I haven't seen a plasma I would take for free much less pay for one. For me, watching a plasma is like trying to view the world through a sheet of yellow cellophane. No thanks.

I was also very hopeful of OLED but I just don't see it anymore. Not after the massive amount of money that's already been sunk into R&D and they still have a 90% panel failure rate. 70" OLED's at $3500 (or even $6500) would take a radical new manufacturing process as of yet undiscovered. And that doesn't even address the blue OLED degradation rate problem. There's no indication any of the manufacturers have even come close to solving that part of it.

If I had to put money on it, I would say the next five years will see a flood of 4K sets with a large portion of those being cheap tv's coming from China. The higher end sets will be IGZO from the likes of Sony, samsung, etc. The few OLED panels to hit the market will go the way of the Pioneer Kuro in 5 years and will be more collector items. I hope I'm wrong, but I bet that's a lot closer to the truth than $3500 70" OLED panels

EDIT: I'm probably wrong about there being a "flood" of 4K sets in 5 years. I read that market analysts estimate by 2017 4K sets will be 0.8% of the market. That would mean probably very little 4K content after a 4 year period.
Edited by kdog750 - 1/24/13 at 6:58pm

Problem in the display area is one has to make a plant worth billions in order to make panels. Otherwise it would be like in audio: apart of the mainstream there are lots of specialized companies operating to satisfy any perversive need for perverses willing to pay whatever price . In the display area the general mass consumer dictates and already dictated that PQ is good enough, thus e.g. even locally dimmed LCD sets are dying. General consumer will accept OLED if its price is within the LCD range and that looks rahter unpromising: there were going to be $10K 55" OLED sets last year, they are now scheduled to appear for $12K. Delays and price increase are very bad omen for new tech.

I definitely don't even like 65"ers and 60"ers haven't sold me yet either. What do the trends indicate: Is the expectation that we're close or closing in quickly to what people want for maximum TV size, or that we're going to CES ourselves right to 110" someday?

AVS member Don Landis made a short 4K Sony OLED film at CES2013. He complained about OLED blacks. In one AVS post he refers to it as one of the OLED problems ''Room reflections in blacks. There is non such thing on OLED as flat black, only glossy black''. In his video comment he says that ''the glare and reflections from the room in the blacks in the picture were a distraction. Every OLED screen i saw, wether from LG or Samsung or Toshiba had this black reflection problem i found annoying.''

4K Sony OLED

Actually I have the 60" Elite, Mark. I may decide to get the 70" Elite, but lots more thought will be necessary before I pull the trigger on anything.

So the same problem that every other TV in existence also has? (though things like Motheye and Invisible glass are promising)

I probably am impressed with one aspect of the video that others are not. The overall color quality looks no different than that obtainable from virtually any other tech. Anyone wowed by that video from an OLED color standpoint, has already lost all objectivity. Of course this gets back to what I've said for years, you can't make assessments on PQ from videos like this. But hey, I can't tell you how many years I've seen people ready to write their checks for a given display based on one still pix or short video. Each to his own.

Yes, the reflections are patently obvious and very distracting, but even there I'm not sure I could come to the conclusion that OLED screen reflectivity is worse than others. But I'll take Don's word for it.

What I was impressed with was the 4K aspect of the display where Don zoomed in on the screen to highlight moving traffic below. The detail held up very nicely and mirrored what I saw in the 84" Sony 4K display that I saw.

Not exactly (if I understand this properly). An anti-reflective glass (or coating or whatever you want to call it) attempts to circumvent the specular reflectance by transmitting as much light as possible straight through the glass. This is how museum glass works as well, despite the company's absurd diagram.

Again, if I understand the problem----someone clarify for me, even the best anti reflection glass would still allow the light through to hit the "OLED black" and then bounce back as reflection. The only solution would be for a type of glass that takes light in, but throws it away parallel to the surface, or something else insane.

Do I have that right? And further, is this for real? Why is the OLED black a glossy surface anyway?

Throwing the light back at the panel is not ideal.
Clearly, we need glass that pass the maximum light through and then absorbs it on the way back and converts it into energy that is used to power the panel.

Duck soup.

- Rich

Or a colored e-ink tv.......lol......aye yi yi. How are the fabrication numbers for THAT I wonder....

Oops, Sorry Ken! Your TV is too small for me.

It struck me that whatever the MothEye stuff does, it's a pretty big step forward. All the good TVs out are reflective as hell these days, even with very thin glass fronts.

I hope we get to the point where MothEye-type technologies become standards on high-end TV products. I doubt they will ever be standard on lower-end products.

I also wonder if true plastic-front TVs will become common at some point and whether they will be any good in this regard.

Is there any film that can be applied on top of existing TV panel that can reduce reflections?

Plastic is generally much worse optically than glass, and is easily damaged. I certainly hope that does not happen.

It doesn't help that plastic is around forever as it doesn't decompose, and is very difficult to properly recycle/re-use.


P.S. If you ever need ophthalmic lenses, be sure to get them in CR-39 rather than Polycarbonate or other high index options. Funny that the cheapest option is also the best quality. If only that was the case with anything else.

Which further concretes just how good plasma is then, when my $1000 30" Dell monitor on my PC which is top end - is completely blown away for colours and black level by an apparently poor level plasma! The pictures simply have no comparison.

Who cares about the colors? You didn't get from the video that black is beautiful?

Not as a practical matter no.

Yeah, you are correct Chron. I hope it doesn't happen either and given that decades have gone into trying to make great eyeglasses with only limited success, I doubt great front plastic for TVs will ever happen.

Who doesn't get that?

It's actually too small for me too at our new place, Mark. That's why it will become our bedroom TV. Perfect size there.

I'm leaning toward 4K for my next set. I think I want to future proof my next display and I don't want to spend the money that would be necessary for the kind of 2K display that would make me happy.

At least that's my thinking as of today.

Nope, I don't get that from that video. I've seen 100s of 'videos' from different displays, both plasma and LED/LCD, where blacks looked equally superb. You simply can't discern that from a video with a high degree of accuracy.

I know the blacks of OLED are terrific, I don't need a video shot with a cheap camera to 'prove' that to me. On the other hand I don't know if shadow detail is equally as good. but who cares about shadow detail, right? Who cares about color, right? As long as we achieve absolute black, all is well.

The blacks on my non-OLED Elite are superb and so is the shadow detail. It's not a quantum leap from the black levels of the best displays to the black levels of OLED. But I know some will never be convinced of that.