15" OLED Display Prototype

crwulff writes "The Rochester Democrat and Chronicle today is carrying a story about Kodak's newest OLED display venture. Unfortunately only a prototype to look at here but at least it is on the way in a couple years." It's worth it just for the photograph. Maybe best to hold off on a plasma TV ...

Comments

color

[Anonymous Coward]

Any screen would look colorful next to that guy.

A coupla years?

[tunabomber]

...at least it is on the way in a couple years.

That's kind of what they said last year.

I wonder how this would work out for TVs

[croftj]

Just think a thin lightwieght large screen T.V.

Re:I wonder how this would work out for TVs

[hitzroth]

Yeah, we've got that already. But how 'bout cheap?

Better pictures, more info

[gengee]

Better pictures, more info

Re:Better pictures, more info

[BESTouff]

There's not that much more info. They just duplicated some paragraph ...

There's not that much more info. They just duplicated some paragraph ...

Re:Better pictures, more info

[kwashiorkor]

An interesting comparison of the current flat-panel display technologies. It's not exhaustive, but it gives you a good 20,000 foot view. Note that this is on the site of an OLED tech competitor, trade named "iFire" which is thick-film transistor based so it's slightly slanted.

The iFire technology is pretty cool too. Seems to be a lot less expensive than OLED, though it's not as bright so less useful for genreal purpose displays. Both techs have been in development for years with very little, commercially, to show.

Apparently TDK and Sanyo are both pursuing potential iFire solutions, though I'm sure all display manufacturers are currently investigating all of the alternatives. Way too soon to throw all one's eggs in one basket.

Re:Better pictures, more info

[ReC]

Note that the answer to the "what about blue lifetime" is at that site: currently, Kodak has materials which hit 40000 hours for red & green, 20000 hours for white, and 10000 hours for blue (this is hours until 1/2 brightness).

2 to 3 years off?

[Powercntrl]

By the time this is for sale, hopefully good "old fashioned" LCD technology will be more affordable. I'm already using a 15" KDS RAD-5 and my friends are like "Wow, a flat panel, those are still too expensive for me." I like my flat panel though... Once you go flat, you never go back. Everything else just looks blurry.

Re:2 to 3 years off?

[larsoncc]

Now, I don't mean to be a CRT bigot, but...

Apparently, you don't switch resolutions much. If you get a LCD out of it's native resolution, it really starts to look blurry.

As a person doing web work (not to mention games, games, games!), I switch resolutions fairly often. IMHO, I've found that my "high-end" CRT, which costs LESS than even a basic LCD, displays much better, and is far more flexible.

Re:2 to 3 years off?

[Powercntrl]

I've found that my "high-end" CRT, which costs LESS than even a basic LCD, displays much better, and is far more flexible.

More flexible, yes... I'll give you that. You can't beat a CRT for quick refresh rates needed for serious gaming and a good picture in any supported resolution.

What a flat panel LCD monitor lacks in resolutions, it makes up for in display consistency. There is no pincushioning, no color seperation problems, the picture fills the entire screen perfectly, a horizontal or vertical line of pixels is perfectly straight and there is absolutely no flicker. Once you get used to looking at an LCD on a regular basis, the flaws in CRTs really start to become more apparant. I'll admit they're not for everyone, but for mostly browsing the web, wordprocessing, cropping and resizing images and the infrequent game or two, you can't beat an LCD.

Re:2 to 3 years off?

[aronc]

Once you get used to looking at an LCD on a regular basis, the flaws in CRTs really start to become more apparant.

I used one at work for a few months, ever did like it all that much. The delay in switching colors on and off lead to nasty ghosting effects on the viewsonic we had. Everytime I used pageup/down on a page of high contrast (like say, text.. particularly white on black text) it would see some blurring for half a second. Not too bad most of the time, but enough to give me a headache if I read pure text for more than an hour or so.

Re:2 to 3 years off?

[topham]

Actually, I do have a dead pixel on my CRT.

It is a crappy monitor though, and several years old.

Re:2 to 3 years off?

[aronc]

The stuff Apple has is great. Also check out the high-end Samsungs. As it is, your opinion is both dated and uninformed.


Dated perhaps, not uniformed as I didn't try to extrapolate my one experience to all LCDs. Just posting my personal experience which is why I was careful to mention the brand, although it was a 17 inch which I should have mentioned.

Re:2 to 3 years off?

[Dun Malg]

Once you go flat, you never go back. Everything else just looks blurry.

That all depends on the kind of tube monitor you had before. If you have a 15" Shamrock, anything is an improvment. If you have a decent monitor (I have a 21" Sun w/ aperture grille) moving to LCD is not an improvement in clarity.

2-3 years

[Shadow Wrought]

Since they are projecting a market in 2-3 years, I guess I should start saving now. I wonder if this will be able to make practical (more or less) the wall screens that were in "Total Recall"?

Organic?

[Tablizer]

Does that mean it will get moldy in humidity?

Re:Organic?

[kfg]

Just as moldy as the other organic compounds around your house, and in your computer, like the case of your existing monitor.

Organic != biodegradable, it means containing carbon, like a diamond, which is about as far from biodegradable as you can get.

OLED's are are made in polymer sheets rather than in individual chips of silicon. Ultimately this will make them cheap, rugged, rollable and producable in almost arbitrary sizes, like wallpaper.

I feel a Ray Bradbury story coming on.

KFG

Re:Organic?

[JohnRlI]

Organic != biodegradable, it means containing carbon, like a diamond

Organic does not mean containing carbon, and diamond and other puter-carbon compounts such as graphite or bucky balls are not organic. Organic means containing a hydrocarbon compount such as those found in oil, ie compounds with Hydrogen and Carbon (and also other elements).

The rest of the comment I agree with ;)

Re:Organic?

[Tablizer]

No problem: just drop in a few goldfish to eat the scum.

If the thing is organic then the fish will eat the monitor too.

Hmmm. I wonder if humans can eat it? Hey, there we go, editable monitor underwear. If you don't like the way your mate looks, then just download a new set of T & A images to replace the real ones. (Except in that case, you then would NOT want to eat it because it would expose the originals again.)

After all, the adult industry is what sparks most consumer product revolutions.

Re:Organic?

[kfg]

Well yes, I worded that badly. I didn't mean to imply that diamonds were organic, merely that they were carbon.

I understand that many (perhaps even the majority) now except the definition of organic that you use, but all definitions of organic have always been controversial and even arbitrary.

In 1846 William Gregory ( Professor of Chemistry at U. Edinburgh) defined it thus:

"Organic chemistry is so called because it treats of the substances which form the structure of organized beings, and of their products, whether animal or vegetable."

This is pretty much what the common conception of the word "organic" still means.

In my day ( as a student, I'm still here actually) it was taken to mean any compound containing carbon in a covalent bond, thus the polymer teflon ( whose monomer is C2F4) was considered organic.

I suppose your definition will prevail universally in time because it makes more practical ( as opposed to historical ) sense in this day and age for both commercial and biochemical purposes.

However, I would like to point out in my defense that the carbon containing compound I specifically mentioned ( the material used to make monitor cases) is, in fact, a hydrocarbon compound.

Oh, and by the way, IANAC, IAAP, so what the hell do I know anyway.

KFG

Will they be able to compete with lcd in 2 years?

[icejai]

Kodak says the 15-inch screen is a prototype and won't be on the market for two or three years.

I wonder how cheap 15 inch lcd screens will be in 2 to 3 years. They're already falling pretty drastically already. And once these OLED monitors come to market, will kodak and sanyo be able to make a profit if these lcd screens continue to drop for 2 years? They could always make them bigger i guess.

Hmm... super-cheap wall-to-wall flat panel displays.

Yum!

More Info on OLED

[PunchMonkey]

The article is pretty sparse about what OLED is... Dupont has a pretty cool page about their displays with some info that reminds me of my science text book back in high school.

Time for a new Tablet

[buttahead]

Looks like this would be great for a new tablet type computer. Reading books on this is easier than on a palm pilot, and since the technology uses little power, perhaps the batteries would last as long as the current palms. Another positive would be the slim size for reading during flights.

The real question is price

[jbarket]

I mean, I'd love to have a plasma TV hanging on my wall, but I sure don't have that kind of money laying around. This looks like great technology, but I just hope it'll be available in an average user sense instead of just for people who have several grand sitting around just for a monitor.

Organic? Can you eat it?

[docbrown42]

Just think...when your monitor becomes obsolete (because, for example, you bought a larger, brighter one), you could just eat it. Imagine that!

Re:Organic? Can you eat it?

[croftj]

Just like you can eat arsenic, ammonia etc.

Re:Organic? Can you eat it?

[miltimj]

I think edible would be the more appropriate word.

Shit is organic -- do you eat that, too?

Re:Organic? Can you eat it?

[PD]

Arsenic is an element, and ammonia is NH3. Neither of them are organic. Organic molecules contain carbon. Better to say eating the screen would be like drinking gasoline or getting your mouth washed out with soap.

Re:Organic? Can you eat it?

[fobbman]

That would be cool. Imagine the brighter, more colorful bowell movements that you would make!

Heck, I'd skip flushing the toilet just to show off my creations to my wife. I'm sure she'd love that!

Yes, the O stands for organic, which in this case

[kfg]

means *plastic.* Polymers are organic compounds, which means containing carbon, as opposed the the silicon of traditional diodes.

I've also got his hot news flash for you, you're covered in bacteria already.

KFG

Lifespan?

[Anonymous Coward]

Have they solved the short lifespan of the organic light emitting compounds, particularly in the blues? I notice that the photo in the article didn't have a lot of rich, deep blue hues. Was that on purpose?

Re:Lifespan?

[Meowing]

Good question. Last I read, these things could last for up to 7000 hours, figure 9 months for the typical Slashdot reader glued to the screen 24/7.

If they can manage semi-affordable, disposable panels that drop into a frame, this could be a scam as good as HP's injket business.

Re:Lifespan?

[gsfprez]

Have they solved the short lifespan of the organic light emitting compounds, particularly in the blues? I notice that the photo in the article didn't have a lot of rich, deep blue hues. Was that on purpose?

probably... they still seem to have a major problem with blue... according to kodak.

http://www.kodak.com/US/en/corp/researchDevelopmen t/technologyFeatures/display.shtml

Picture?

["Zow"]

It's worth it just for the photograph.

Except that I rushed out to buy this fancy LCD flatscreen, so my rendering of the "brighter and more colorful display" is limited by my darker, lower-saturation display.

-"Zow"

Re:Picture?

["Zow"]

A little off-topic, but that just reminds me of a friend who was going nuts on stereo components back in college. One day she calls me up and says, "I just bought a new speakers, don't they sound great!" and proceeded to hold the phone up next to the speakers. I didn't have the heart to tell her that with the frequency response of phones, her new speakers, that she paid way too much for, sounded like crap.

-"Zow"

Where's my video t-shirt?

[HillClimber]

I won't be happy until my 24 fps video t-shirt can go through wash and tumble dry with all the colors as bright as the day it was new. Hurry up guys!

The true geek dream realized

[Papa Legba]

This is the final peice of the puzzle. We have ultra fast 3D graphics pumping machines. We have broadband to the home. And now, finally, I have a picutre that will be truelly life like. Porn will never be the same again!

I predict the de-evolution of the human species in the next one hundered years due to this product as the smart people refuse to leave their homes and breed. The top inteligencia will die off and leave only the sub-humans behind. Repeat and Rinse until we decide to head back into the trees again.

Re:The true geek dream realized

[isaac]

I predict the de-evolution of the human species in the next one hundered years due to this product as the smart people refuse to leave their homes and breed. The top inteligencia will die off and leave only the sub-humans behind. Repeat and Rinse until we decide to head back into the trees again.

<GENERAL BOY>In the past, this information has been surpressed - but now every man, woman, and mutant shall know the truth about de-evolution!</GENERAL BOY>

<BOOJI BOY>Oh, Dad! We're all Devo!</BOOJI BOY>

Re:These things make me nervous

[Kenja]

"There is bacteria in many things, yoghurt for example, but we don't worry about them escaping and making us ill."

Perhaps YOU dont worry about it. But you'll be sorry once the yoghurt gets you.

Re:These things make me nervous

[Teun]

bacterii

Yeah right, have a look at this this site

Organic light emitting diodes (OLEDs) are optoelectronic devices based on small molecules or polymers that emit light when an electrical current flows through them. They are being developed for applications in flat panel displays. A simple OLED consists of a fluorescent organic layer sandwiched between two metal electrodes. Under application of an electric field, electrons and holes are injected from the two electrodes into the organic layer, where they meet and recombine to produce light.

Or have a look here

Polymers by such tongue twisting names as polythiopene (red), polyfluorene (blue) and polyphenylenvinylen (green) consist of aromatic benzene rings which are pearl strung via carbon double bonds. As in conventional light-emitting diodes, the benzene electrons are excited by an exterior voltage of 3 to 5 Volt. In returning to their original state they emit light in a colour specific to their material which is exceptionally brilliant and soft.

Re:The prototype still has issues

[JanneM]

"The prototype still has issues"

I just have to know: what kind of issues, exactly? A drug habit? Separation anxiety from its safe lab environment? Inappropriate attachement to the department head? Inability to form a close interpersonal relationship with its users? Inquiring minds want to know.

3-color or 4-color?

[Smallpond]

The problem with LED displays is the reverse of the
problem for printing. In printing its tough to get
true black by combining cyan, magenta and yellow, so
they do 4-color printing, CMYK (K for black).

With LEDs, they want to do RGBW (W for white) to
get true whites, but the article doesn't say whether
they're doing three or four colors. Here's an
article on organic white LED:

Nature

Re:3-color or 4-color?

[kaphka]

White LEDs are interesting for other reasons, but as far as display technology goes, people seem pretty satisfied with the "white" displayed on RGB CRTs and LCDs. Why would an OLED panel be any different?

Re:3-color or 4-color?

[MyHair]

Do you have any sources for that?

Frankly it sounds like BS to me.

Solid objects (like ink-printed paper) reflect light and therfore have subtractive coloring. The CMY inks don't absorb enough light to make black well, or at least they're hard to combine that way.

Lights, like these OLEDs, are additive color. I can't imagine them not being able to make white.

I've played with colored light bulbs in a darkroom before and you can make it perfectly white pretty easily. Mixing crayons to make black doesn't seem to work, though. Same concepts as far as I can see.

These things sound interesting. There is no constant backlight, so presumably you save a lot of enery buy using just enough to make the right color and brightness instead of powering a constant white and dimming it with LCDs in front.

Re:3-color or 4-color?

[RovingSlug]

OLED Display Materials:

In addition to red, green, and blue OLED materials, Kodak researchers have successfully formulated white-emitting materials. Using a dual emitting layer--each emitting in a complementary color--they have produced white OLEDs that yield not only an excellent white hue, but a good color stability over a wide range of light levels. The white hue is easily adjustable to any shade from pale yellow to light blue. The device life exceeds exceeds 20,000 hr (Figure 2).

Re:3-color or 4-color?

[Ospeovedizer]

OK guys, this might be hard to follow, but try to stick with it:

White light does not exist. What we call "white" is just a color that seems to excite all your eye's receptors just about evenly. The fact that white light doesn't exist is the reason for the color "temperature" and "white points" you may have encountered if you calibrate your monitor.

In your post, you refer to a "true white" and I can assure you that there is no such thing. Our brains will actually filter any prevailing color out of what it sees and just call the result "white." If you've ever worn colored sunglasses you know that after a while, you just don't notice the color. Everything looks normal!

Our eyes, however, don't do the same to black. If light is coming off an object, then it's not black. This is why you need a K in CMYK: the C+M+Y just reflects far too much light to be called black.

This means that there is no need for a W in RGBW, since your eye will just accept any "white-ish" color to be "white" as long as it is present in enough of what you see.

I don't know if I explained myself clearly enough to make any sense, but I spent the past hour trying to get the wording right, and I'm not going to spend any more.

Re:3-color or 4-color?

[Zathrus]

Lights, like these OLEDs, are additive color. I can't imagine them not being able to make white

They probably can make white - but is it efficient?

If they're having lifespan issues with the blue emitters (as they are according to older articles and other posts) then it may be far better to have a fourth element which emits white than to use the 3 separate elements to create white.

Just a SWAG - I'm not up to speed on the technology at all.

two to three years

[gpinzone]

It's worth it just for the photograph. Maybe best to hold off on a plasma TV...

You want to hold off two to three years for a 15 OLED screen when you can get a 60" plasma display now? I don't think so, Timothy.

Re:two to three years

[gpinzone]

Yeah, in two three years when OLED is bleeding edge technology, I'm sure it will be cheaper than plasma sets.

Re:The prototype still has issues

[Breakfast Pants]

Back up your claims. Not much more to say than that, but you've been moderated informative for this.. Looking at your message history you also claim to be a naval officer. Not only that you also claimed to do a lot of the initial work on beowulf clustering. In short MOD PARENT DOWN.

Re:Sad news ... Stephen King dead at 54

[Stephen King]

No, I'm not.

Cambridge Display Technology

[BeowulfSchaeffer]

I am more interested in the LEP products that Cambridge Display Technology is working on with DuPont and Seiko Epson.

Re:The prototype still has issues

[Linux_ho]

Wow, those Illuminati guys are involved in everything.

best application for this tech...

[outsider007]

The screens look better and use less power because they do not need a separate lighting source

imagine a gameboy with a bright screen that doesn't drain batteries *sweet*

Re:Will they be able to compete with lcd in 2 year

[ekephart]

With the costs of energy constantly rising? Yes.

LCDs use about half the power as CRTs (Viewsonic). Sanyo and Kodak already have a 5.5 active matrix OLED that runs on 2 watts at 10 volts. While the 15 inch model would presumably use 9 times this, that's still close to half the power consumption of a similar LCD.

Re:The prototype still has issues

[iplayfast]

You need to shave it every morning?

Read the parent user's posting history

[Chairboy]

Moderators, read some sample messages by the parent user. All signs point to BS, this guy talks about being some Navy R&D guy in other messages, as well as takes credit for a wide variety of things. Perhaps he has fooled some of y'all into moderating him up?

Size and weight....

[Spit_Fire1]

If this technology is as good as they say it is, this will do very well in the presentations and home theater markets if their price comes down(we know this isn't going to cost less than 900$ when it comes out) and they can support the sizes that plasma can. With their smaller size and weight it will be much easier to mount the televison to the wall and so digital picture frames and the like, however their increased price may stop that from happing in the next 15 years.

Size limitations?

[levik]

As you seem to have some knoweledge of the product, perhaps you can answer this:

In the era when 17" displays are standard fare for consimers, and 19" are preffered for proffessionals, is there a reason that the prototype was only a 15" panel? It seems like they would have gone for a 17" were they able to achieve this. Is there anything inherent in the technology used that makes creating larger sized panels exceedingly difficult?

Ambiguous: how thick is it?

[TomRitchford]

The article says "The 15-inch screen is all of 1.4 millimeters thick -- about the size of two quarters back-to-back," but a SINGLE quarter is 1.75mm, so says the U.S. Mint.

Note the lack of blues in the picture

[shoppa]

Note that the picture on display in the article shows a floral scene of browns, oranges, and yellows. No blues. I'm guessing that the short lifetime of blue organic LED's is still a major factor.

That said, the original polaroid and technicolor processes also lacked any blue - they came later. If your goal is to reproduce skin tones, you generall don't need much blue; the eye can do remarkable things in compensating for lack of blue illumination but still making you think you see full-color.

Re:Note the lack of blues in the picture

[bmorris]

Yeah, but no way you're using these on a Windows laptop if it can't accurately display a BSOD!

Re:Note the lack of blues in the picture

[SoupIsGoodFood_42]

Some posted a link near the top that goes to Kodaks site. More flowers, with a blue sky.

Of course, the picture in the artical your talking about shows white and purple. So I'm not sure where you get the idea that this display can't show blues very well.

Re:Note the lack of blues in the picture

[cybermace5]

If your goal is to reproduce skin tones, you generally don't need much blue....

I think these displays will fit the display needs of the Slashdot community quite nicely.

Re:Will they be able to compete with lcd in 2 year

[Steffan]

I don't think they'll have a problem competing with LCD products. LCDs are a relatively difficult product to manufacture, and fab facilities are not cheap either, which means the investment must be recovered through product pricing. Once initial technical hurdles have been overcome, OLEDs should be much less expensive as well as more flexible, literally and figuratively.

I believe Cambridge Display Technologies as well as some other researchers are teaming up with the ink jet people to produce these kinds of displays by "printing" them on a substrate. If they can perfect that kind of technology, you could see a display nearly cheap enough to be disposable.

Animated cereal boxes, anyone?

Why does a 15" LCD TV cost 3x an LCD display?

[swb]

I was flipping through a Crutchfield catalog and noticed that Samsung 15" TVs are like $1200, but a 15" monitor is under $400.

What gives? I can't believe that speakers and a tuner add $800 to the retail cost. Viewsonic sell a box that let you put NTSC on a VGA display for $100, another $20 buys you a set of speakers.

I keep waiting for the price to come way down, but it never seems to. I'm wondering if maybe the whole "flat panel TV" mystique enables them to charge way more for what would sell like hotcakes at $450 or so. I'd put one in my kitchen straightaway.

Re:Why does a 15" LCD TV cost 3x an LCD display?

[LordNimon]

I once saw a 19" CRT monitor on display for $130 right next to a 19" LCD monitor going for for $1300.

Re:Why does a 15" LCD TV cost 3x an LCD display?

[MSBob]

yeah, but as soon as you turn them both on, side by side, it becomes obvious why the prices are the way they are...

Re:Why does a 15" LCD TV cost 3x an LCD display?

[Jace of Fuse!]

That depends on which side you're standing in front of. The viewing angle in even the best of LCDs still leaves much to be desired, even if they have become very impressive in the past couple of years.

As far as image quality is concerned, some of the best CRTs and LCDs side by side are indistinguishable, so after having come to that realization it then boils down to how much space you have, and how much energy do you want to save.

Re:Why does a 15" LCD TV cost 3x an LCD display?

[AJWM]

I can't say I know the reason for the price difference, but possible reasons are related to the different requirements of an NTSC video vs computer VGA (SVGA, etc) display:

• different gamma curves
• different persistence (you don't want ghosting on the TV)
• wider viewing angle (without color change) for the TV
  

Re:Why does a 15" LCD TV cost 3x an LCD display?

[MSBob]

Err.. I beg to differ. Most LCD panels (the stand alone ones, not the laptop crap) have angles of around 170 degrees, horizontal and vertical. This is for all intents and purposes, as good as any CRT. If there is anything that can be complained about with modern LCDs it's the rise/fall time which may cause fast games to look blurred. I'm not a gamer so I don't care.

To me the quality of text on an LCD is so much better than a CRT there is no comparison. For the record I don't shop for low end displays: My old 19" Eizo CRT has just been replaced with a brand new Dell 2000FP and the difference in picture quality is absolutely astounding. The only snag is that for an LCD to shine it must be driven through the DVI input. For any LCD RGB~DVI==NIGHT~DAY

Re:Why does a 15" LCD TV cost 3x an LCD display?

[swb]

$400 worth of stuff? C'mon, Samsung has a generic TV tuner board that handles all the input, output and tuning controls; the actual display adapter is just that, something to provide the specific hardware to drive the display. It's a modular design, it has to be to make any money selling TVs.

Even if its not a physically modular system and is a custom board for that application its like a lot of non-custom components that are re-used from other TVs or designs. Nothing here isn't used on other TVs with the possible exception of the display driver hardware, which is likely to be specific to this flavor of panel.

I'd grant them about $150 for the extra parts to make a good TV -- larger cabinet (includes speakers), the speakers themselves, the remote control, and any extra scan conversion hardware.

I do see the other $500 for just gimmick value.

I browsed Crutchfield's page for laughs and I notice that all the LCD TVs are now just nudging to the $1k levels at the 15" size. When they hit $500 on sale it could make an amusing replacement for a standard display, since most provide a VGA input.

What about LEP displays?

[Kevin Burtch]

-
Is it just me, or doens't it seem like LEP technology
has more promise of ease-of-manufacturability and
longevity?

LEP's have been demonstrated for years... anyone
know why their development is either stalled or kept
secret?

(LEP = Light Emitting Polymer - a similar technology,
with a different, more stable source for the materials)

Use google for more info.

2 quarters thick

[Craig Davison]

Somewhat OT, but are quarters really 0.7 mm thick, i.e. 36 to an inch? I don't think so. You'd be lucky to fit 15 if memory serves.
(I don't have any American change other than pennies handy so I can't check)
According to this, US quarters are pretty thick, at 1.75 mm:
http://mathforum.org/elempow/solutions/solution.eh tml?puzzle=103
Sloppy reporting.

Re:2 quarters thick

[echucker]

Actually, my bet would go on "sloppy marketing literature". The reporter is likely just regurgitating what he was told.

Re:2 quarters thick

[scotch]

I care - my house is very small.

LEP's anyone?

[T-Kir]

OK, change of topic slightly...

What is the current progress on Light Emitting Polymer display tech? Now that will be a big kick up the visual ass when it finally comes out.

Cost, cost, cost

[f97tosc]

The exact performance of this technology is quite insignigicant next to what it will cost to mass-produce - and this we are not being told.

If it looks like shit but is half as expensive as normal flat screens I am sure it will find a significant market. If it looks superb but is ten times as expensive to produce it will never happen.

Tor

How come...

[alexjohns]

... the things that are really cool are always a couple of years away?

I guess that's a rhetorical question. Likely because by the time they finally get here, they're so over-hyped and over-advertised that it would be impossible to still find them cool. Bleh.

Re:Yes!

[Fig, formerly A.C.]

Moderators, how can the first person to express a desire for a product be marked as Redundant?

I think these are a neat product, but I don't see it replacing my CRT anytime soon (even after its release) for various reasons. It is still so long until production and a lot can happen, it might as well be vaporware.

What about the microbes' working conditions?

[theonomist]

Typically, nobody here on Slashdot has the slightest trace of awareness of the ethical implications of the technology they so blithely drool over.

Imagine being pent up in a microscopic prison cell for your life, bombarded incessantly with radiation until you glow in the dark. Imagine thirty thousand chest X-rays every day of your life. That's what these innocent, mindless little creatures are being exposed to. That's the gruesome reality of the brutal and ruthless experimental regime at the Kodak R&D facility.

Live animals are being tortured for their entire lives just to bring you those pretty pictures, and you don't even care. Their microscopic howls of anguish leave you utterly unmoved.

If you ask me, that's just plain sad.

Re:What about the microbes' working conditions?

[AJWM]

Interesting troll (or joke, whatever). But even if the organic LEDs were filled with bacteria (they're not), bacteria aren't animals.

They're not plants, either. Bacteria are a kingdom all their own, neither plant nor animal (nor fungus, nor archaea).

Besides, some bacteria like to be bombarded with radiation (see Deinococcus radiodurans, for example, also known as "Conan the Bacterium").

Re:What about the microbes' working conditions?

[ceejayoz]

Lets start PETIT - People for the Ethical Treatment of Icky Things

Yor concerns were proven unfounded in 1828

[f97tosc]

in that year, the chemist Wohler was the first to make synthetic organic substance from inorganic substances. He thus proved that the 'vital force' theory was incorrect.

Tor

Re:Yor concerns were proven unfounded in 1828

[Tackhead]

> in that year, the chemist Wohler was the first to make synthetic organic substance from inorganic substances. He thus proved that the 'vital force' theory was incorrect.

I was all about to come back with a snappy "Huh? Did Wohler have a fusion reactor to synthesize his own damn carbon?", and then I read this:

What is the difference detween an inorganic and organic compound?.

After eliminating the guidelines I'd typically used, (and two I hadn't though of!), it appears that the best definition is indeed that "An organic compound is whatever an organic chemist says it is; an inorganic compound is whatever an inorganic chemist says it is."

Thus endeth the lesson. I hope.

Whats the deal with blue?

[Cyno01]

whats the deal with blue, why is it so hard to produce blue wavelengths, blue LEDs are relatively new, underpowered and expensive, blue lasers came after red and then green(still not widely avalible), and blue OLEDs are incredibly short lived

Re:Whats the deal with blue?

[DeComposer]

Blue is a harder color to generate.

Here's an article that describes some of the history and challenges of creating a semiconductor that emits blue light.

This guys 6 posts are a total load

[jsimon12]

Check out all the outrageous claims, this guy needs to be massively moderated down all over the place.

I've had the honor of helping out on this prototype

Being a former retail shop owner

Being a Marketing Director

I can assure you that VeriSign not only is 'still in it', but they plan on fighting to regain some control over .org.

What I'd like to know is when he'll give gratitude to those of us that helped him early on.

From a Naval Officer...

My mistake

[Steffan]

Actually...I'm thinking of LEP - Light Emitting Polymers. Not OLEDS. Similar technology, but probably has better implications for the economics.

Re:The prototype still has issues

[Anonymous Coward]

There is also a lot of legal issues.

Dear Kodak Lawyers,

Please be on the lookout for a beowulf cluster of naval officers with grammer deficiencies.

Re:May not be all it's cracked up to be

[Matey-O]

Dude, you had me TOTALLY lost till you got to 'Bottom line -- don't buy one yet!'

Were you talking English?

Re:Will they be able to compete with lcd in 2 year

[irc.goatse.cx troll]

"Hmm... super-cheap wall-to-wall flat panel displays."

That made me think of plenty of cool things you could do...

a roof with moving stars on it

'fake' a window

have your wallpaper follow you through the house(the same way music follows you in the microsoft home of the future demohouse)

and best of all..
make your drunk roommates walls spin even faster!

fill factor issues

[jetkust]

according to this article:

The organic LEDs have kinks to be worked out before they can gain wide acceptance, he said. "Whether it's polymer, large-molecule or small-molecule Fill-factor issues, which involve defects in which the surface area of a pixel is not completely covered with emissive material, can cause problems with display uniformity and crosstalk. Edge growth is a type of fill-factor defect. Single-pixel, and sometimes subpixel, defects are critical factors that determine display quality

wow - they made it?!

[AssFace]

When I lived in Rochester, my dad was good friends with one of the engineers that was leading a project on that at Kodak.
One night over dinner at his house he shook his head and commented that he didn't think they would ever make it.
Wonder if he still is on the project. He seemed kinda jaded at that point (1995 or so).

will OLED replace LCD?

[u19925]

If we had OLEDs in market, people would be inventing LCDs. Both have advantages and disadvantages and it is not clear, if OLEDs would be able to overcome all the disadvantages it has against LCD. Here are few of them:

1. Color accuracy: Each colored dot on the screen will be composite of three LEDs. If their relative light output changes over time, you get color distortion. With LCDs, the transpanrency of each individual pixel controls color. Since this is known to be stabel for a long time (even before color LCDs came, this was known), this is not a problem.

2. Active matrix. OLEDs may be as hard to manufacture or even more than active matrix LCD.

3. Each pixel in OLED takes more current than in LCD. This makes OLED pixels more likely to fail.

It seems, the biggest advantage would only be in power comsumption and hence in portable devices likes laptop, PDA, cell phones etc. For others like home computer LCD screen, LCD TV, home appliances screen and other display, LCD would continue to be used for a long time.

Re:will OLED replace LCD?

[silverhalide]

Theoretically, this technology would be ridiculously easy to produce, since it should be able to be produced through an inkjet-type printhead. Pretty damn cool. If your screen dies, run to your printer, spit out an new one! (Oh I wish...)

Re:will OLED replace LCD?

[merlin_jim]

But, you forget OLED's biggest advantage:

The light-emitting layer is near the surface, with no polarization filters in between it and you... meaning that you can see it from any angle with no distortion!

Take today's LCD screen and look at it, even slightly off center, and you see color distortion.

Hmm...

[Loki_1929]

Is it just me, or did the guy in the picture in that article look like a damn corpse?

Bulky LCD's?!?

[naasking]

Kodak envisions OLED technology as a replacement for bulky desktop computer and laptop liquid-crystal display screens.

Never thought I'd hear LCD's referred to as "bulky". Then again, the 15" screen in the article is only 1.4mm thick. Very cool. :-)

environmental impact

[drunken monkey]

What is the environmental impact of manufacturing and disposing of these OLED panels? Are they safer then the current flatpanels and CRTs?

narbey

Re:environmental impact

[ebcdic]

Flat-screen IMacs have a warning on the box about disposing properly of the mercury backlights in the display, so they're unlikely to be worse than that.

Re:environmental impact

[the eric conspiracy]

My guess is that the impact would be less.

CRT's are made using a very high quality optical glass that is up to 40% lead. This is extremely bad from an environmental point of view. CRT's also consume a LOT of energy.

LCDs are better from an energy point of view than CRTs, however they all use some form of backlighting that may include a mercury vapor lamp. Mercury is very bad news, way worse than lead on a per pound basis, however much less is used in a LCD than lead in a CRT.

OLED's don't require backlighting so they should be the lowest energy consumer of all, and the articles I have read don't list any metals used in their production that are an evironmental problem. So OLEDs look very promising from both a energy and disposal point of view. The only questions would be the toxicity of the organic layer, and the hazards of the manufacturing process. Since manufacturing is likely to be in a pretty high quality environment in a limited number of locations, it is unlikely to be anywhere as significant as disposal. Unfortunately we don't know what the organic layer is going to be if and when these devices reach mass production, however I think that the likelihood is pretty good that it isn't going to be as bad as lead or mercury.

Re:Will they be able to compete with lcd in 2 year

[Transcendent]

I think organic LCDs will take off after they get past the prototype stage. What the article forgot to mention is that this technology can be molded to clear displays in plastic casing that can bend easliy to mold lots of curves... leading the way for HUDs for your car, a TV in your sun glasses, or more likely military applications.

I'd give a link to a nice site and even news interview clip and video demonstrating the flexability and such for these displays.... but I forgot where I found it before :o\

Laptops?

[El]

Any idea what using OLED instead of TFT active matrix will do for the battery life of a Laptop? Sounds like portables, not CRT replacement, is the real market for this technology.

Re:Yes, the O stands for organic, which in this ca

[kfg]

I'd only note that I didn't say LED, I said diode.

You are correct about *most* LED, although you might throw in a touch of phosphorus as well, but not all:

http://www.nature.com/nsu/nsu_pf/010308/010308-1 2. html

KFG

Re:Will they be able to compete with lcd in 2 year

[John Hasler]

> this technology can be molded to clear displays
> in plastic casing that can bend easliy to mold
> lots of curves... leading the way for HUDs

I don't think HUDs work the way you think they do.

Like ninjas wailing on guitars!

[cryptochrome]

Cool, and by cool, I mean TOTALLY SWEET!

OLED in Cell phones much sooner

[tweakt]

This news makes sense, because rumor has it that Sanyo will be releasing a couple cellphones with full-color OLED screens in the next year or so. So I can beleive that Sanyo is heavily involved in the OLED research end of things.

Does anyone know the relative expence of the technology? Is it supposed to eventually be cheaper to produce (after initial early adoption prices go doen)? Cause it seems to me that LCD technology still has yet to drop for reasonable sized screens (read: 17" and up).

I refuse to downsize from 20inches, and I refuse to pay more for my monitor than my entire computer. Dont even get me started on the ridiculous prices of the new crop of LCD/HDTV/Monitors... $1200 for 15" ?? Come on.

Totally changes the meaning of

[The_Shadows]

"My monitor died!"

Re:Ambiguous: how thick is it?

[targo]

The article says "The 15-inch screen is all of 1.4 millimeters thick -- about the size of two quarters back-to-back," but a SINGLE quarter is 1.75mm, so says [usmint.gov] the U.S. Mint.

Which makes it 0.14 inches. Which sounds reasonable to me. I guess someone mixed up metric and imperial here.

Re:Ambiguous: how thick is it?

[SmokeSerpent]

Now they can say "I may not be a rocket scientist, but I do think like one..."

Re:Will they be able to compete with lcd in 2 year

[Transcendent]

...then explain the way HUDs are supposed to work.

Last time I checked, there wasn't any real set way HUDs are made to work.

You're creating a display in your line of sight out of... say a cockpit window of a jet... using a thin, clear plastic lining inside the window... ...how is that not a HUD?

Re:Will they be able to compete with lcd in 2 year

[Dun Malg]

You're creating a display in your line of sight out of... say a cockpit window of a jet... using a thin, clear plastic lining inside the window... ...how is that not a HUD?

The plastic/glass sheet in an aircraft HUD is a reflector. The most critical attribute of this reflector is that it must be completely transparent. OLED screens aren't completely transparent. The reason cars don't have HUDs has nothing to do with the cost. Nissan put a HUD-like projector in late 80's Maximas that displayed your speed on the windshield. They quit doing it, not because of cost, but because nobody liked it. A HUD is distracting. It takes quite a while to become accustomed to looking both at and through your windshield. It's not about price, it's about consumer resistance.

Re:Will they be able to compete with lcd in 2 year

[Transcendent]

the reasons for NOT doing it in consumer cars is totally different than for military aspects.....

Re:Will they be able to compete with lcd in 2 year

[Dun Malg]

the reasons for NOT doing it in consumer cars is totally different than for military aspects.....

Huh? I never said they don't do it in cars because of any "military aspects" (whatever you mean by that). I said that the reason they don't put HUDs in cars is that it takes time and effort to become accustomed to using a HUD and until you're used to it it can be distracting and irritating. Very few people are willing to invest the time necessary (particularly when it's a feature they never needed before), so most simply turned it off and never used it. A feature that 95% of users find annoying doesn't make a good selling point, so there's no point in continuing to include it in the design. Cost was not the issue, so cheap OLED devices (which aren't usefull as HUD screens since they're not completely transparent) are not going to lead to HUDs in cars.

Re:Will they be able to compete with lcd in 2 year

[Transcendent]

which aren't usefull as HUD screens since they're not completely transparent

They're transparent enough.....