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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!"
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.
But are the problems of decaying OLEDs fixed now? the first ones only lasted a couple of years if I remember correctly.
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.
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.
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...
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.
Please help metamoderate.
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.
i re/2004/05/18/rtr1374939.html
http://www.forbes.com/business/businesstech/newsw
Homonyms are fun!
You're driving your car, but they're riding their bikes there.
I regularly report MSN spam to the Hotmail admins.
i have a raid array of lightbulbs
:-P
:-)
I think that would be a RAIL.
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.
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.
Active matrix organic light emitting diode displays... ARE MADE OF PEOPLE!
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.
pi = 3.141592653589793helpimtrappedinauniversefactory7
Doing a quick search on google I found this
Shows a lot of useful information regarding OLED screens.
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.
Global warming is neither science, nor politics. It is a religion.
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.
It's easier to fight for one's principles than to live up to them.
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 :)