Samsung Announces Largest-Ever OLED Display

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!"

Comments

Prices?

[Kid Zero]

Man... we're just getting prices on LCD's down. Now this? Egads.

Also: Can you game with it? :)

A 17" display, huh? Intriguing.

[Tuxedo Jack]

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.

Re:A 17" display, huh? Intriguing.

[pbox]

According to OLED rumors, it is excellent (ie. better than anything we have currently) out-of-the-box. However after a year you will notice fading, and in two years it will be worse than LCD.

Re:A 17" display, huh? Intriguing.

[OrthodonticJake]

Tech support will have a field day with that fading thing, I bet.
Consumer: "Why can't I see it?"
Tech Support: "Do we have your money?"
Consumer: "Yes."
Tech Support: "Run awaaaaayyyyyy!"

Expected delivery at a resonable price.

[LPrime]

I am still waiting for the prices of LCD monitors to drop to make it worth the switch from my trusted CRT. Based on what I have seen with the progression of LCDs into the mainstream it will take at least 5 years for something like this to become affordable. By then we will have 3D displays slowly hitting the market.

Decay problems..

[VMaN]

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

How good is this?

[coupland]

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...

Re:How good is this?

[Anonymous Coward]

LCDs are now starting to get crazily, blindingly bright--in an attempt to jack contrast ratios up over 500:1. Contrast ratio is important, but since backlit LCDs can't display black, the darkest black isn't that dark and that's static. So the only thing left to do is crank up the bright end.

OLEDs on the other hand can actually display black, therefore they can have a higher contrast ratio without being so bright. The net effect is that they are nicer to look at.

Also, some would say that it's easier to make bigger OLED displays than LCD displays. I don't know about that. 1600x1200 isn't very common for desktop LCDs, but I've seen it available in laptops for years now.

Frankly for most people it's a minor change. It's definitely a _potential_ improvement though.

Re:How good is this?

[tunabomber]

One big advantage that I would expect OLED's to have over LCD's that no one has been talking about is refresh rate.
Unlike LCD's, OLED's don't rely on a structural transformation of the molecules in the display to shift a pixel from one state to the next.
This should mean that the pixels can switch from "on" to "off" much faster, hopefully fast enough for the screen to be used for gaming.

Re:How good is this?

[aggiefalcon01]

Here's another advantage of OLED's: flexibility. The displacy surface can easily be bent, flexed, and straightened. Or, it can be attached to a round surface.

Think of a device which you pull apart while the display surface unrolls out of the larger half as you're pulling it out (like older window shades). Hollywood showed us this device in the movie Red Planet. True, just the possibility of this is a long way off, but OLED's are a step in this direction.

GearBits has a cool animation of a pen using this technology.

Re:How good is this?

[anethema]

What do you mean no one talks about it? That's one of the main advantages of OLED over LCD that everyone mentions when the OLED topic comes up is its ability to change state from on to off MUCH faster.

Yes it will be useful for gaming. OLED delays are measured in microseconds, not milliseconds.

Also, the contrast ratio of OLED displays are MUCH better than LCD, which are still piss-poor at best.

LCD almost has the display angle problems licked, usually on the more expensive monitors. What's good about OLED is this isn't even an issue. Like CRT, you can turn it however you want.

While LCD power consumption IS low...OLED is even lower than backlit LCD.

And then there is cost. OLED screens are just printed on. With inkjet tech usually, although it's laser in this case. There is no high voltage circuitry necessary for fluorescent backlighting, no tubes, no expensive-to-produce LCD panel. Sure the initial costs of OLED might be high to justify the r&d, but the cost to produce an OLED screen is a fraction of that of LCD.

But wait...

[bobhagopian]

The article says "To date, however, problems with device lifetime, chemistry and production have limited their use to mobile devices and backlights." But it does not say that these problems have been completely eliminated. I'd be wary of buying a $2000 display with a lifetime of seventeen minutes.

Re:But wait...

[falzer]

I told you a million times not to use hyperbole to get your point across!

Re:But wait...

[maxbang]

I'd be wary of buying a $2000 display with a lifetime of seventeen minutes.

Tell me about it. I spent $2000 for seventeen minutes of bliss. I wish I was wary before my purchase. Or was it a rental?

Re:But wait...

[nhavar]

Sha! Your lucky it was a rental. I got talked into the purchase and didn't read the fine print about how I'd only get 17 minutes of bliss once a year and have to keep paying a "re-up" fee. If I chose not to pay the re-up fee and terminate the contract or look for an alternate bliss carrier I'd be charged an early termination fee which could legally be up to half of what I own PLUS continuing annual fees.

Inconsistent Color Lifetimes

[MBoffin]

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.

Re:Inconsistent Color Lifetimes

[stryck9]

Actually, it is the blue that decays the fastest. Red and green are about the same.

pffft

[fresh27]

400 lumens is nothing. i have a raid array of lightbulbs thatll beat this amateur in any benchmark.

Re:pffft

[Anonymous Coward]

i have a raid array of lightbulbs

I think that would be a RAIL. :-P

But, seriously, you bring up a good point, although inadvertently.

Organic LED displays essentially have a little lightbulb (LED, actually) for each subpixel, so it is an "AIL" (Array of Inexpensive LEDs). But there is no redundancy. If one dies, you lose that pixel forever. LEDs have a limited lifetime, but it's far longer than the regular lightbulb that you joke about. A normal LED has a lifetime of around 100,000 hours for monochromatic chips (a bit over ten years of continuous use), but there is a Gaussian distribution around that. When you are talking about a 1600x1200 display, with 5,760,000 individiual subpixels, you're going to see some failures within a few years, guaranteed. And once they flake out, there's no realistic way to repair them.

LCDs, by contrast, are illuminated by one or two cold-cathode tubes with a shiny surface behind the display to distribute the light evenly, which goes through the LCD panel and out to your eyes. The LCD subpixels do not die over time, but sometimes are defective originally in the LCD matrix (thus giving you dead or stuck pixels). The best cold cathode tubes used LCDs have lifetimes of around 30,000 hours of continuous use (about 3.5 years), although they can theoretically be replaced when they fail. However, this is not typically done (except under warranty) because they are not of standard designs. (You can't just go to CompUSA and pick up a replacement cold cathode tube for your LCD.)

The real upshot of all of this is that no matter which fancy flat-panel display you get, turn it off when you aren't using it. :-)

Missing poins?

[Zinic]

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.

contrast is almost moot

[SuperBanana]

What I'd like to know is how good the contrast is?

Contrast isn't an issue, because unlike LCD panels which backlight the whole panel and rely on "hiding" the backlight for "black"(but plenty escapes anyway if the backlight is too bright). On an OLED panel, if a pixel is off, it generates absolutely no light. Theoretical contrast is then essentially infinite; zero:something is infinite. The only remaining issue is how bright "on" is, and that's been specified as 400 lumens.

What is even better is the resolution. The specified 1600x1200; in a 17" panel, that's quite nice, as previously it was 1280x1024 tops.

Re:contrast is almost moot

[magefile]

1600x1200 15" panel perched on my lap right now.

Is it an OLED? Didn't think so. And if it is, WTF are you doing reading /.? Shouldn't you be off doing something only rich people do?

Re:contrast is almost moot

[njh]

The contrast can't be infinite unless the off LEDs reflect no light either. Otherwise the contrast of printed paper would be 0 (no light emitted for either black or white).

Not quite the largest...

[Samah]

Don't know if anyone noticed the "feedback" bit at the bottom, but there's a link to another review on the Seiko Epson 40" OLED display.

http://www.forbes.com/business/businesstech/newswi re/2004/05/18/rtr1374939.html

no surprise

[moviepig.com]

[The organic units] problems with device lifetime, chemistry and production have limited their use...

Indeed, those are long-standing problems with us organic units, too.

(Well, production hasn't been such a problem, I guess...)

Finally a decent resolution...

[httpamphibio.us]

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. :)

Luminant Green

[Digitus1337]

Active matrix organic light emitting diode displays... ARE MADE OF PEOPLE!

Solution to "lifetime" problem

[blair1q]

Now that these things can be printed, make the screen area itself modular, and sell the modules for cheap, way less than $100. Sell the rest of the monitor (body, power supply, connectors, DVI electronics, etc) for a normal monitor price.

Then, every 2-3 years, when most people upgrade anyway, they can pop out the now-funky-colored screen module, pop in a replacement, and get back to fragging little OLED-sharpened nazis.

Organic PORN!

[niko9]

Oh wait, most of the geeks here already have organic material sprayd on their monitors. Never mind, false alarm!

nice document on OLED displays

[Doppler00]

Doing a quick search on google I found this

Shows a lot of useful information regarding OLED screens.

Re:Epson 40"

[RedWizzard]

Epson wins again...

Seiko Epson's 40" is a prototype, with commercialization (ie production) expected in 2007. Seiko have not said what the actual production size or resolution will be. Samsung's 17" is also a prototype, but is much closer to production. Size, resolution, and other specifications are already determined and you will be able to buy it next year. the Seiko product is much more vapourous so I give this round to Samsung.

Eat what Samsung?

[Traa]

The Samsung OLED is a working prototype of a 17" computer display running at 1600x1200. Product launch will be next year.

The Seiko Epson is only an anouncment about a 40" TV display that will be productized for 2007 (marketing speak for..."our engineers just laughed at us so we made up some numbers").

Why not use a printing press?

[Ungrounded Lightning]

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-)

Re:Why not use a printing press?

[Ateryx]

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

Unfortunately I believe its a touch more complicated. PC Mag notes because of the sensitivity of the materials in the process "this calls for a more complex fabrication process. Also, any exposure to air or moisture destroys OLEDs, so the materials must be perfectly sealed."

Applied Films I think explains the problem best:

The deposition of the organic layers itself is critical too, because of the sensitivity of the material (e.g., high temperature, incorporation of dust and dirt). The high price of the coating material also makes high material utilization a priority.

Not that it matters but IAMICE (majoring in chemical engineering)

laptop market yes, desktop market no

[SuperBanana]

That's funny, because there's a 1600x1200 15" panel perched on my lap right now.

And there's a 1440x960 17" on mine. Aside from the laptop market, it is extremely difficult to find anything other than the following size/resolution combos:

• 15 inch 1024x768
• 17 inch 1280x1024
• 19 inch 1600x1200

LCD panels have been out for years but this has remained a near constant, while the laptop industry has seen pixel densities skyrocket, with zero crossover to the desktop market.

It's the pixel alignment you have to watch out for

[lingqi]

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.

Using OLED display now

[ctrif]

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 :)