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Samsung Announces Largest-Ever OLED Display

Posted by timothy on from the eventually-eventually dept.

kaos.geo writes "Samsung announces a 17" OLED display. The article specifies that they are using a laser to 'print' the display instead of the previous 'spraying' methods." 400 lumens isn't shabby. Update: 05/18 23:49 GMT by T : jhealy writes "Seiko Epson, on the heels and light years ahead of Samsungs announcement earlier today, have announced a 40" OLED monitor. Eat that Samsung!"

17 of 243 comments (clear)

  1. A 17" display, huh? Intriguing. by Tuxedo+Jack · · Score: 4, Interesting

    400 lumens isn't half bad at all.

    What I'd like to know is how good the contrast is? The monitor's not worth crap if the color isn't decent.

    --

    Striking fear in the authors of godawful fanfiction, I am here, appearing in darkness, Tuxedo Jack!
  2. Decay problems.. by VMaN · · Score: 5, Interesting

    But are the problems of decaying OLEDs fixed now? the first ones only lasted a couple of years if I remember correctly.

    1. Re:Decay problems.. by MoonBuggy · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Samsung already use them in their phones (E700, E710, E715 and maybe others) so I would hope that they've fixed it - my brother isn't going to be happy if the outer screen on his phone fades away in a year or two.

    2. Re:Decay problems.. by Mr.+Roadkill · · Score: 3, Interesting
      I care, because I'd rather pay a little more for something that lasts longer. Maybe I'm a fool. Or maybe I just find a small amount of pleasure in stability.
      Stability is wonderful, and in some applications highly desirable.
      Yes, I buy flourescent bulbs instead of incandescents where possible :)
      As do I. They're more expensive than incandescents, but they last much longer. Sure, you have reduced maintenance requirements with fluorescents (and perhaps reduced costs associated with that, even though they cost more initially) but their killer benefit is their power consumption. What if they consumed near enough to the same power as incandescents, and what if they lasted four times as long as incandescents, but also cost eight times as much? What if this was because your fluorescent light was integrated with its fixture and you needed to replace the whole fixture every 5 years, but you just put a new incandescent bulb in the incandescent fixture every two years until the fixture finally broke (maybe 10 years, if you're lucky). That's probably a fair comparison to an LCD display vs. OLED with Replaceable Panel

      With current display devices, once the parts that actually produce the image die it is generally not economical to repair the device. If the optical part was replaceable, and the costs worked out to be less over time than the cost of competing technologies with non-replaceable parts, it's a winner. And that's the kicker - the production costs for OLED panels are likely to fall much further than the production costs for LCD panels, so unless there are environmental costs that make recycling OLED panels uneconomical a replaceable-panel OLED display device could be a very compelling option in many applications and for many users.

      And I'm considering LCD over DLP (replaceable bulb) or Plasma (trash in five years or after accidentally leaving the nintendo on).
      I have no idea what the current state-of-play is in the LCD or DLP product ranges, but even though one has consumables involved (DLP) what are the overall expected lifespans of the devices? If DLP cost significantly less than LCD, then DLP would be the winner in applications where occasional globe replacement and the physical differences between the two technologies aren't an issue - I imagine this would be most loungerooms. Like I imagine the occasional replacement of an OLED insert once you can no longer adjust out the loss of green performance would not be an issue for most laptop or even desktop users if the technology cost significantly less than LCD panels .

      But then, who am I fooling about costs over a product lifetime - the initial cost would have to be lower too, because we're probably talking about the same people who buy low-end inkjet printers. Lets just hope that if replaceable-panel displays appear they don't follow that consumables pricing strategy.

  3. How good is this? by coupland · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Can anyone shed some light on exactly how noteworthy this is? What is a rough figure for expected brightness (in lumens) from an LCD? How big a deal is 400 lumens for a first-generation consumer product? Are the advantages of OLED primarily brightness and power consumption, or are there image quality advantages as well?

    Thanks in advance to any OLED gurus who feel like sharing their knowledge. This is an exciting field but a lot of us are still trying to get up to speed on it...

  4. 400 Lumens? by ackthpt · · Score: 3, Interesting
    I've got a Samsung Syncmaster 172t (250cd/m2) and it's more than bright enough on the lowest setting. Maybe if you like to watch video with the sun hitting the screen this would be fine.

    For a computer monitor it's serious overkill. I can't seem to turn the brightness down enough so have to work with a light on to avoid headaches.

    --

    A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
  5. Re:That might be nice... by rokzy · · Score: 3, Interesting

    >for laptops

    being only 1/3 the thickness of LCDs is handy too

  6. Inconsistent Color Lifetimes by MBoffin · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Nice as it would be to have one of these, it will be a few years before they are worth buying. One major drawback is that the green component of these screens have a shorter lifetime than the red and blue, not to mention an overall shorter lifetime than LCD's. The early LCD's were not so bad, even with a shorter lifetime, because all three colors decayed at relatively the same rate. With OLED's having a shorter lifetime for green, the color drift will be much more dramatic.

    1. Re:Inconsistent Color Lifetimes by MrBlue+VT · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Can't this simply be corrected via software? Just decay the other colors as well to keep the color calibration the same.

  7. Missing poins? by Zinic · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I think that people are missing the relevance of new OLED advancements. Although maybe not suited to desktop and laptop environments OLED remains an extremely elegant solution to a whole slew of other devices. MP3...PDA...etc... Think of having a pen that could double as a PDA with a nice hi res, low power, display that doesn't strain the eyes.

    --

    It's was never designed to do that...
  8. Finally a decent resolution... by httpamphibio.us · · Score: 4, Interesting

    1600x1200 on a 17" is more like it.

    I've always wondered why I could buy an entire laptop for less than what it would cost to buy a standalone LCD. For example, my laptop has a 1920x1200 15.4" widescreen display and I paid $950 for it. If you could find a standalone display with those specs (which you can't... or at least not the last time I checked) it would cost a couple grand.

    Let's hope this is the beginning of high quality displays with high resolutions, and keep our fingers crossed about the price. :)

    --
    sig.
  9. which laptop is this? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    with that spec display, for 950?

  10. Why not use a printing press? by Ungrounded+Lightning · · Score: 4, Interesting

    So Samsung is using a laser to print them one-by-one, and Seiko Epson is using ink jet printers ditto.

    An OLED screen is just a sheet of substrate with various inks on it.

    Why don't they just use a rotary printing press?

    Think "newspaper".

    Print screens as much as, say, 40 feet tall, by as long as you like, with the connectors for the modular electronics occurring periodically.

    At, say, 50 MPH. Until that enormous roll of substrate is exhausted - then thread in another.

    On their way out of the press just slit them into strips (i.e. five 8-foot strips for wallpaper), chop them into convenient lengths, and stack them up into bales.

    Print the LEDs right up to the cut lines so you can tile a large surface if you want. Or leave a margin for making connections to a one-sided screen print job. (You might even be able to fold the edge over to get the connector onto the back and thus get even one-sided screens to butt together for tiling.)

    (Of course you'd have to use different masters for some screen sizes, so the cut lines would occur at convenient places.)

    Drop a sheet into a "monitor" picture-frame, with the electronics connecting via contact fingers. Or mount driver chips on the back (to the printed power and signal wiring) if you want to paste 'em up on a wall - and apply power and signal under the baseboard.

    You should be able to manufacture replacable sheets for a monitor for a couple bucks. The drive electronics is nothing special. Maybe $25 manufacturing cost for a wall-mount high-res HDTV monitor.

    Sell it for a hundred or two, and replacement screens for twenty, and I'd buy several (and a stack of spare screens) even if I'd have to replace the screen a couple times a year. B-)

    --
    Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
  11. Display with no edge trim? by j1m+5n0w · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I'd be interested in panel displays with no trim on the side so they could be placed adjacent to each other for a larger screen. Does anyone know if that's possible with current technology, or if anyone makes that now? (Okay, okay, what I really want is something I can roll up like a poster, but I don't expect that to happen any time soon.)

    -jim

  12. It's the pixel alignment you have to watch out for by lingqi · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Since I saw the announcement on TV last night, being in japan and all, i figure i can add some comments from the footage of the actual thing.

    the 40" screen is damn thin. i mean, it must have been maybe 2cm. it was amazingly sexy in that regard.

    however, upon closer inspection of the screen (the camera-crew took the pains to zoom in onto the screen), there are alignment issues between pixel blocks of the screen and there are dead pixels. What i am guessing is that to get the 40" they created blocks of pixels at a time, and at the edges there are visible chasms maybe 30% pixel width.

    I am not sure about the dead pixel.

    anyway it's impressive but the immaturity of the technology really shows.

    --

    My life in the land of the rising sun.

  13. Using OLED display now by ctrif · · Score: 5, Interesting
    I'm using an OLED display now on my Kodak LS633 camera

    The display is amazing. The camera turns heads as people ask about the large bright screen and the vibrant colours. I can hold it at virtually any angle or up high over a crowd and still see what I'm shooting.

    I don't understand why Kodak doesn't release more cameras with the same display. I think the LS633 was only available in Australia?

    Can't wait for TV size screens :)

  14. Re:3M by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    It's called: research departments are given 15% of their budget and time to spend AS THEY PLEASE. So the researchers play around with all kinds of stuff. The 3M mantra is also (something like) 60% of sales will be from products launched in the last 4 years... it leads to a lot of new ideas and a lot of product launches.

    Also, 3M is involved because LCD screens are FLAT. And 3M executives love products that are flat. (I challenge you to name a major 3M product that isn't flat or sprays on as a (flat) coating)