Sony's OEL Thinner And Better Than Today's LCDs?

Matrium writes: "MSNBC is running an article about Sony's new Slim TV is thinner, brighter, and has a better picture then current LCD screens. The organic electroluminescent (OEL) display is a little thicker then a credit card was showed Wednesday. These screens offer a faster responce then LCD becuase the are self-luminous (no back-lighting required) and allow a wider viewing angle. Sony hopes to have these screens in mass production by 2003." Someday we'll lose our laptops in between pages of books just like we lose plane tickets/notes/phone numbers today.

Comments

Re:OEL or OLED?

[SubtleNuance]

However, I don't think Sony should be changing the acronymn to sound like their own technology. It is exactly the same thing.

OH MY GOD! sony is trying to confuse the marketplace in order to foster the appearance of them having significant technology when none exist! This is so *NOT* like sony at all!

Ever heard of Beta, MemoryStick, SuperDisk or MiniDisk? sony is the most notorious anti-comeptitive technology hording whore in the tech world. Doesnt anyone remember that a$$hole loudmouth VP "we'll block them at their HD, we'll block them at the monitor, we'll block them at the ISP" nonsense?

Remeber: sony is a member of the RIAA and MPAA and is leading the pack in fighting for the control of our general artistic culture. They dont even like CDRs for god sakes because they can be used to copy audio CDs.

I NEVER BUY ANYTHING MADE BY SONY! I tell people (because I am often asked about such things) to NEVER BUY ANYTHING MADE BY SONY! I dont care how 'cool' sonys products are (frankly I find them rather low quality and crappy for the most part (on the individual electronics end)) I will never buy a piece of sony kit. Ever. I suggest *YOU ALL* do the same.

Wow, TV's get thinner

[typical geek]

and Americans get wider!

Re:What about power consumption?

[American AC in Paris]

Some info:

from an article at dpreview.com (examining a different OEL being produced by Sanyo and Kodak:)

The new 5.5-inch panel has a quarter-VGA resolution (240 x 320 pixels) with a brightness of 200 candela per square meter. It consumes 2 watts running at 10 volts. Yoneda claimed that the power consumption is lower than comparably-sized LCDs, which eat 2.5 W on average. The pixel transistors are optimized to maintain uniform brightness over the surface of the panel. The aperture ratio is about 50 percent, an improvement over the 30 percent ratio of the earlier 2.4-inch panel.

and this, from the University of Arizona's Optical Sciences Center (discussing Organic LEDs, full authors' credits on page:)

Recently, organic light emitting diodes (OLEDs) have attracted a lot of attention, mainly due to their simplicity of fabrication, low operating voltage and power consumption, large view angle, high brightness and efficiency, ultra-thin structure, mechanical flexibility, and light weight.1 Their potential use in display applications, such as ultra-thin flat panel, roll-up, and head-mounted displays is being seriously considered by numerous companies.

So to answer your question, it looks like the technology as it currently stands performs roughly as well as backlit LCDs, with perhaps even a slight advantage. This technology takes the middleman of backlighting out of the equation by using electroluminescent materials in the first place. Thus, the above claims make some sense, as you are only pumping power to the pixels themselves, and not the pixels and the backlight.

On a bit of a tangent, this looks to be similar to the LEP technology Slashdot reported about some time ago (see Cambridge Display's homepage for more info.)

First they ignore you.
Then they laugh at you.

What about power consumption?

[jandrese]

The article states that these displays will be self luminious, but it never mentions how much power they will draw. They aren't going to be very useful for laptops if they draw even more power than todays color LCD displays, which are already power hogs. Sometimes I wish I could buy a monocrome passive matrix laptop (they'd be *cheap* in comparision) that let you turn off the backlite (remember when this was possible) and could be used in bright(er) lighting conditions than todays laptops. Who needs 24bit color to read email, compose a letter or a book, read a book, or even surf the web (if you can surf in Lynx, missing color support in Galeon is a small problem). The biggest feature of all would be the increased battery life. Imagine a Transmeta laptop with a low power LCD (passive matrix monochrome backlit optional) laptop with the same batteries as todays power hogs? It'd run for hours on end.

Down that path lies madness. On the other hand, the road to hell is paved with melting snowballs.

OEL or OLED?

[malachid69]

They just changed the acronymn. Do a search for OLED and you will find lots of other places doing the same thing -- examples:

• EInk
• Ritek
• RollTronics
• Universal Display
• Cambridge Display
• Kodak
• and check out this page at Stanford Research

This technology has a lot of potential. In my previous post about designing VR hardware, I was thinking the OLEDs would be a good way to do the screens. However, I don't think Sony should be changing the acronymn to sound like their own technology. It is exactly the same thing.