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.

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?

[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.

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.

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.

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?

[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"

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: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.

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?

[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: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: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:The prototype still has issues

[Linux_ho]

Wow, those Illuminati guys are involved in everything.

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.

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.

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!

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

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: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").

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.

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...

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.

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. :-)

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.

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: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: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: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.

Totally changes the meaning of

[The_Shadows]

"My monitor died!"