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40" OLED Television Revealed at SID

Posted by CowboyNeal on from the screens-of-things-to-come dept.

deglr6328 writes "Seiko Epson has unveiled a massive 40 inch OLED display prototype at this years Society for Information Display (SID) symposium in Seattle. The display was printed on to a backplane containing the drive electronics with a specialized inkjet process using Phillip's PolyLED technology. Samsung and Phillips also showed large scale OLEDs they say can also be scaled up to 'television sizes.'"

14 of 196 comments (clear)

  1. And only 3 to 5 years before I can buy one... by jilbert · · Score: 5, Interesting

    They've still got development to do. 260,000 colours aren't enough!

    1. Re:And only 3 to 5 years before I can buy one... by lupin_sansei · · Score: 1, Interesting

      So how many colours would be enough for a TV? How many colours are you really able to distinguish?

      --
      http://www.perthonline.net
    2. Re:And only 3 to 5 years before I can buy one... by Short+Circuit · · Score: 3, Interesting

      A little OT, but here goes:

      My dad was telling me about some of his work on old custom computer equipment back in the 70s or 80s. Basically, people were saying you couldn't do regular text along with graphics on the video equipment used, but he showed that you could; he switched video modes in the middle of screen refreshes.

      Talk to an old timer who's past jobs combined electrical engineering and software engineering. You'll hear some fascinating stories about overcoming assumed limitations in resources. ( I suppose that applies to other professions as well, but you'll have to try your luck. )

      --
      tasks(723) drafts(105) languages(484) examples(29106)
    3. Re:And only 3 to 5 years before I can buy one... by thogard · · Score: 2, Interesting

      A decade ago when I got to play with a real 24 bit 1024x768 display on a sun 4/110, I wrote a program to display most of the colors 1/16 of them at a time. It turns out that out of the 16,777,216 colors you could tell the thing to display but to the human eye 8 million or so of them were brown and most of of the rest were grey.

    4. Re:And only 3 to 5 years before I can buy one... by cluckshot · · Score: 4, Interesting

      There are a lot of myths about the resolution and reception of the human eye.

      The optical sensor array in the eye is neither dense or accurate. It really is a pretty lousy sensor array by the standards of a modern digital camera. There are processing kludges and some curious process tricks that make the output fantastic though.

      For example the resolution of any single sensor in the eye on Luminance is about 5 powers of 10 bright to dark. This is fairly consistent to our modern films and digital sensors. However the eye by some curious tricks adjusts its sensativity so that it produces nearly 14 powers of ten bright dark. For you guys "Grand Challange Types etc." who are building automatic robots take a hint.

      In addition to the great range done by process tricks, the sensor is also curiously a "rate of change" sensor not producing any fixed value data like a modern camera. As such it allows a calculus by subtraction (Slide Rule stuff for you guys old enough to remember) to provide motor control in a linear process.

      But for the less detailed analysis the sensor here has very lousy resolution and very bad quality output compared to modern cameras. It isn't a very good sensor at all. It is the processing that brings out the great detail and such.

      --
      Never Politically Correct ~ I prefer the facts If you don't like what I say, get a life, or comment yourself.
    5. Re:And only 3 to 5 years before I can buy one... by Cyclopedian · · Score: 2, Interesting
      Computerized touch screens can be built into desks for schools, revolutionizing learning yet again.

      [RANT ON]
      Except, in the U.S., it will be just another toy for politicians to pour money into rather than for actual education.

      How many teachers are really going to maximize the deskscreens for learning? Does it require more training or can they just jump into it? Is it going to be cheap enough for cash-strapped school districts to use? And on and on.

      There's just too many questions. I'd rather they answer the first question: having kids actually learn something.

      [RANT OFF]
      -Cyc

      --
      /.'s 10 Millionth
  2. Making use of higher resolution? by NKJensen · · Score: 4, Interesting

    The particular display mentioned has size, not resolution as its main quality; some of the other displays mentioned have high resolutions.

    Which kinds of UI will benefit from such displays?

    Can we expect something useful from e.g. virtual 3D viewing (remember those books with embedded 3D-items hidden in 2D pictures)?

    --
    -- From Denmark
    1. Re:Making use of higher resolution? by Xrikcus · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Initially small UIs most likely, they already use very small OLED displays on devices afterall, it's just progress to start scaling that up.

      Another advantage is that you should be able to make transparent displays with OLEDs, mounted on a sheet of glass, say.

      Not quite sure what you mean about 3d though, from that point of view I can't see it being any different from an LCD, unless the display-on-glass concept somehow helps.

  3. inkjet is one thing, but what about on a press by emorphien · · Score: 5, Interesting

    This is pretty cool, and it's actually one thing my research is tied to. I dunno how long it's gonna take but we're hoping to be able to print these things on a variety of press types, at much faster speeds than inkjet allowing the product to be a lot less expensive.

    Right now though it's too costly and inkjet is definitely not ideal for large scale production, but we're definitely headed in the right direction. The biggest issue is finding materials that will work in the product that can be printed. It's a big PITA.

    That and how long with the OLED display they've built last? OLEDs don't like oxygen and the damn things will basically decompose. For large expensive displays like that there's still concerns in that area.

    Either way, awesome approach, using the different colored nozzles is pretty clever, a lot of the current systems require separate coatings to be applied through various means. It'll still be a lot faster and cheaper down the road when large presses can be used.

    Someone here made a calculation, and if we could print at 2000fpm on our Sunday 2000 Heidelberg press, all the displays in the world could be printed in a couple hours. Not like that would be practical or even likely.

    --


    Presently here, but not there.
  4. I call BS by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    http://optics.org/articles/news/10/6/4/1/samsung

    This is photoshopped. The image on the screen is more clear that the detail of the stand it is framed in. The detail of the image on the screen and the fram should be on a par. But they are not.

    That is BS. Credit of the photo is samsung themselves, so nobody outside of samsung saw it for real.

    I am not saying samsung doesn't have an OLED display, I am just saying that that picture is a crock of PR shit if ever I saw one.

    I am hoping I am wrong and we get awesome screens in the future.... but I just can't believe that photo.

    You must also be suspicious of me being a samsung astroturfer "I can't believe it".

    tinfoil hats abound

  5. expiration date? by DiniZuli · · Score: 5, Interesting

    As allways in these OLED dicussions the question is:
    How long before the display starts to degrade?
    In other words: Have they solved the problem with OLEDs that they start degrading after a record holding short time?
    When /. brings a story about that, ThEn OLEDs gets really really interesting (as opposed to now: they are 'just' really interesting;)

  6. A question by ThinWhiteDuke · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Can any knowledgable slashdotter answer a simple question: Why is it difficult to produce large OLED display? I understand that it more or less amounts to printing the pixels onto a substrate. If one can make 17" OLED display, where is the engineering complexity in making a 40" display?

    --

    It would be nice to be sure of anything the way some people are of everything.
  7. Durability? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I thought OLED's still had issues with durability.
    Red & green lasting for 20.000 hrs, but blue for only about 2.000 hrs. They probably solved that problem, but I can't find any info on it.

  8. Re:Wow, I now I understand the implications of OLE by RandoMBU · · Score: 2, Interesting

    As a consumer option, this technology has a long way to go. As it stands now, with their 1000 hour life, uneven color decay, and the potential for waste buildup... no company would ever try to market this as a viable consumer product. The point of this demonstration is proof of concept. To that end I think they have done an incredible job. This is a brand new technology with some admitted faults, but they have sucessfully demonstrated that it has the potential to be commercially viable in the future. No one claims that it is a finished technology right now, so evaluating it as such doesn't make much sense.