Samsung Unveils 82 Inch LCD

karvind writes "Physorg is reporting that Samsung Electronics has developed the world's largest liquid crystal display panel. This 82-inch TFT-LCD is 17 inches larger than LCD flat panel previously developed by Sharp. This development challenges plasma display panels in this market area. This full HD image quality (1,920 x 1,080 pixels) TFT-LCD panel was developed at the company's new production complex in Tangjeong, Korea. The soon-to-be operational 7th-generation production facility uses glass substrates that measure 1.87m x 2.20m."

Comments

size/resolution

[Boeboe]

1,920 x 1,080 pixels. It could be me, but it does look quite low for a screen that big.

Re:size/resolution

[BigDogCH]

That was once my gripe against big screen TV in general. But combine the higher Res of HDTV, and the fact that you dont sit 12 inches from the screen, and it should be fine.

Actually, I think I would rather have a projector. Mmmmm, Battlefield 1942 on the entire wall of my living room.

Re:size/resolution

[Silwenae]

1920x1080 is the MPEG HDTV standard. The TV does exactly what it should do.

Now granted, if you wanted to use it as a computer monitor, it would be different, but 99% of folks are going to use this as a TV, so that resolution is right on.

Re:size/resolution

[dfn5]

It could be me, but it does look quite low for a screen that big.

This display is mainly intended for portable MP3 players, so they really didn't need a high resolution.

Re:size/resolution

[eno2001]

99% of folks

Hehehehe... "99%" of the 2% who can afford to plunk down a few thousand dollars for a TV this size. Wake me when I can get an 42" OLED display for $500. That's when I'll move to HD. Doesn't anyone here think it's a little unrealistic to pay over $500 for a TV set? Hello? (Speaking as a non-gadget guy of course. I prefer building my own to buying pre-made crap)

Re:size/resolution

[EulerX07]

My beef is that since it's the same resolution, you could probably go with a 40-60" one, sit a few feet closer to the tv, and buy yourself a small car with the money you save.

Re:size/resolution

[uradu]

Your beef?! Do go buy yourself a 40-60" one, along with that small car. This particular model is for those who already have a fleet of small (and large) cars, and need a large central TV to frame with all the other 40-60" ones they already have. IOW, you're NOT the target market for this model, so don't take it personally that it doesn't come bundled with a small car.

rejects

[solarlux]

I wonder how many get tossed to make that one 82-incher....

Re:rejects

[Jagen]

Probably not anymore than when they make an apple 23inch dislay, the number of transistors is the same in both (same res).
In fact given that the size of each transistor is larger in this screen it probably has a lower reject rate than the apple displays.

Re:rejects

[Vihai]

Probably it's the opposite; when the surface gets bigger, the probability of finding impurites (and thus bad pixels) gets higher.

Re:rejects

[fallendragon]

I'm not sure that makes sense. If it was that easy then surely they'd have made an 82" display a lot sooner and the bigger displays would be cheaper to produce. Or if not cheaper at least a similar cost since you'd have more material but less rejects and that would balance the cost. There must be more to it than that.
Of course market forces in TVs means a bigger set => we can charge more for it, even if it costs the same or even less to produce. etc. Opposite applies to other things like cell phones where slim/smaller = higher cost so really manufacturing cost probably has little to do with pricing here.

Re:rejects

[jackstack]

There's got to be other factors other than transistors per unit area. These displays are made up of many different layers. Getting 5-10 micron features to line up perfectly from layer to layer over 2 meters can be nontrivial. Also, I've heard that the glass sheets used to make the active matrix of transistors can begin to behave like paper when they get that large (i.e. they can bend quite easily).

Also - the transistors are still photolithographically defined... which means they have to spin coat a photoresist. The wafers used to make your pentium chips are about a 1ft (.3m) in diameter. These are nearly 7 times larger and are not circular. So... imagine a rectangular piece of glass 2m in one dimension spinning at 3000 revolutions per minute. How does this effect yield? I don't know. But one thing I'm pretty sure about is that larger is not easier.

Re:rejects

[Zeinfeld]

So... imagine a rectangular piece of glass 2m in one dimension spinning at 3000 revolutions

Actually probably not, the article said that they make two screens at a time. So we can assume that what they would do is to get a sheet of glass that is roughly square, 2m on each side. The large sheet does not need to be spun as fast as a small one, its the linear velocity, not the angular that matters.

What makes larger screens hard is getting the scalled up equipment. And getting the necessary throughput. Larger screens means each step of the process takes longer.

From a yield point of view the transistors are going to be so large that crystal defects are not relevant so you win on that one. On the other hand you have a really big problem getting the mask in registration over such a large area.

As for use, the first ones will be used for computer monitors at trade shows. There is no other use that is going to justify a $30K monitor which is what the first ones off the line are likely to cost. For that use the resolution is perfectly adequate.

The key breakthrough here though is that 82" is large enough for a meetingroom/classroom monitor. Projection displays are very unsatisfactory, the room has to be so dark that people go to sleep. Once the price is $5K or less this becomes an interesting choice.

Re:rejects

[jcr]

That's true, but another factor is the feature size. The bigger the pixels, the less likely it is that any impurity on the surface will result in a bad pixel.

There's a Xerox spin-off company that's been making 200+ DPI color LCDs for quite some time, but they have yield problems, since at that feature size, it's much easier to have a flaw that takes out a whole row or column of pixels.

-jcr

So...

[Anonymous Coward]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but does that mean that
I'm eventually going to see a naked woman in 1:1 scale?

Re:So...

[R.Caley]

They keep making these bigger screens to keep up with the need to fit in the male stars who have taken advantage of all of the amazing products and services they get email about.

Re:So...

[Dogtanian]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but does that mean that I'm eventually going to see a naked woman in 1:1 scale?

Don't know about that; but I'm overjoyed personally, as it's the first time my 82-inch penis will be able to be seen in 1:1 scale on an LCD.

Bleh.... seriously, would anyone *really* want an 82-inch penis? Truth is, I'm not that big, but I'm perfectly happy with my 82cm.

What was that at the back? "82mm more like"? Yeah, well maybe so, but it's what you do with it that counts. I hope... *sob*

Re:So...

[Tony Hoyle]

If you can afford that screen try going into the big blue room.. you can buy some real 3d women for a lot less (often the cost of a couple of drinks).

Re:So...

[gstoddart]

I'm eventually going to see a naked woman in 1:1 scale?

In your case, no. If you haven't by now, you may never. :-P

Great

[Anonymous Coward]

You'll need to take out two loans; one to buy the thing and the other to afford power it

Re:Great

[imsabbel]

its no plasma, so it shouldnt need much more power than your CRT TV.

But one thing is to be considered: if it is as bright as a small tv, a white picture should be seriously blinding... 2 or 3000 lumen are headlight quality...

Damn

[CastrTroy]

Damn, and I just got a 19 Inch. Guess my stuff is obsolete as always.

82 inches

[Anonymous Coward]

Aren't these the same guys who yesterday said 10,000,000 bytes was 10 gigs?

Press release from Samsung + pic!

[binaryDigit]

Here is the press release striaght from Samsung along with a picture of the beast. Wonder how much power this thing soaks up and how much heat it puts out?

Nice but...

[Ironsides]

82" is nice and all, but I'd rather have their 102" Plasma"

Re:Nice but...

[klui]

There are problems with plasma displays that make me veer towards LCD.

1. Plasmas suck up power like there's no tomorrow. I hear 300-500 watts is nominal. That 102" would definitely be on the high end of the scale.
2. Plasma burn in.
3. Limited lifetime.

Until these disadvantages are taken care of, I will pass. LCDs have none of these problems and with the new 7G Samsung, it looks like they may have taken care of the viewing angle and brightness problems.

Re:Nice but...

[Ironsides]

That distance would be ~200" (4 times the screen height). That's a bit over 16.5' or 5 meters.

how big are the pixels?

[Matey-O]

They've gotta be, what, a quarter inch square? based on it being 1.87m by 2.2m, that's about .57 cm x 1.1 cm or friggin' HUGE (Feel free to correct my math) That seems like you'd need to stand 30 feet away to make it look like a 19" monitor at 2 feet.

Re:how big are the pixels?

[ed_g2s]

The substrate is much bigger than the screen.

The screen is 82" on the diagonal =~ 2.08m
The aspect ratio is 16:9 so
(16x)^2 + (9x)^2 =~ 2.08^2
337x^2 =~ 4.34
x =~ 0.113m

So it measures about 1.815m x 1.02m. I imagine it has more than 1920x1080 pixels and has image enhancing to scale the image up, but if it were 1920x1080 then the pixels would be 0.094cm square which is about 1/25th of an inch.

Re:how big are the pixels?

[TommyW]

From the article:
Full HD 1,920 x 1,080 pixels 16:9 aspect ratio
Resolution 1,920 x RGB x 1,080 (Full HD)

Which makes the pixels 1mm square. Or, 0.04 inches square.

I'm still waiting

[WormholeFiend]

for a printer that will print currency so that I can buy the current "largest" computer monitor and/or TV.

Big pixels

[LordOfYourPants]

1920x1080 at 82"... Those are some big dots. I wouldn't call it "liquid crystal" but more like "vacuum tubes with plastic filters on them."

Re:Big pixels

[Jeff DeMaagd]

By my estimate, it is still about 25 dpi. It would beat my projector hands down, I think I have about 4 dpi on the final screen, though I am projecting XGA onto about a 180" diagonal.

I wouldn't use it as a personal screen unless I were five meters back, but that's part of the idea for some people, a convergence display.

Lifesized

[saskboy]

Now I can finally display a lifesized woman with a 41" chest, front, sides, and back, on my computer screen. 'Bout darn time.

Oh, not that I would...

Blue pixels?

[dereklam]

Looking at that picture, it seems to me they are avoiding demoing blue pixels. Does anyone know if LCDs of this size have issues showing blue?

Re:Blue pixels?

[iainl]

No, my LCD runs Windows just fine ;-)

Being sensible for a moment, it's OLED that has the "blue pixel death" problem, not LCD, so you should be fine. LCDs don't have the short half-life of plasma and OLED (they just look like crap to start with).

Larger Than....

[goneutt]

So now we have an 82 inch TV. And 60 inch waistlines.

Priorities People.

Correcting your math, as requested

[Animaether]

Without pulling up the actual specs...
2.2m = 220cm
220cm / 1920pixels = 0.114583cm/pixel
Or, in other terms, about 1.15mm/pixel

1.86m = 187cm
187 / 1080pixels = 0.173148cm/pixel
Or, in other terms, about 1.73mm/pixel

Slightly non-square, I'd imagine if I'd pull up the actual specs of the display panel itself (not the entire casing) I'd get square, and smaller, pixels yet.

Re:Correcting your math, as requested

[OblongPlatypus]

The 2.20m by 1.87m measure is of the glass substrate they use in production. This is enough for a 110" screen, but for whatever reason they cut it down to 82" for this one.

So the pixels are probably around a square millimeter each, not too bad.

What a waste

[Perl-Pusher]

High Resolution 82 inch monitor, low resolution internet porn. Is that a fuzzy breast or a sand dune?

What advantages over a DLP projector?

[ites]

Why would anyone buy such a piece of equipment in preference over a good DLP projector?

A projector is light and can be easily moved. It gives you a huge display, with comparable resolution and brightness. It is cheaper. It can double up for business use, and can be carried in one hand. And when it's switched off, you get your living room back.

The only disadvantage of a projector is that it can be a little noisy - DLP chips get very hot and need a lot of cooling.

And perhaps there are no projectors with built-in TV decoding, which I don't care about personally since I don't have TV, and only watch DVDs.

Re:What advantages over a DLP projector?

[Steve525]

The only disadvantage of a projector is that it can be a little noisy

Actually, the biggest disadvantage of a front projector is that they are only good in dim to dark rooms. The white screen necessary to reflect the projected light also reflects all the other light in the room. Perhaps if Sony's ChromaVue screen becomes readily available, this will change.

Re:What advantages over a DLP projector?

[Valdrax]

I'll list my reasons for going with Sharp's 45" AQUOS instead of a front projector:

1. Projectors are noisy and hot as you mentioned.
2. Cable routing is a problem. I live in an apartment and can't route through my ceiling to hide cables.
3. Bulb replacements can be expensive and are needed far more frequently than for an LCD.
4. 1080p DLP (and LCoS) projectors are even more expensive than current LCDs (but probably not this monstrosity). A good high-contrast screen is even more money.
5. Ambient lighting (such as sunlight) can mess with a projector's image quality, and I don't live in a cave.

Re:What advantages over a DLP projector?

[Locke2005]

Uh, projectors have bulbs in them that cost about $500 each and need to be replaced every 1000 hours or so. LCDs don't. Depending on the projector, this LCD might also be brighter. Also, you can't make shadow puppets by holding your hands up in front of an LCD.

Re:What advantages over a DLP projector?

[mamer-retrogamer]

Why would anyone buy such a piece of equipment in preference over a good DLP projector?

I'll give you my number 1 reason: rainbows and the resulting headaches.

-Mike

Awesome!

[iolaus]

Now all I need is a 40 ft. long room to watch it in!

Megapixels?

[imroy]

From TFA:

Pixels: 6.22 million (number of RGB sub-pixels)

Yes, that's 1920 x 1080 x 3 = 6220800. I can't wait until the camera manufacturers catch onto this new method to inflate the number of "megapixels" in their cameras. Fifteen megapixels here we come!

(Just don't mention the bayer pattern used on CCD's)

Options

[lbmouse]

Does it come with the two Asian women to help hold it up?

Re:Eventually?

[TGK]

Clearly you and I are interested in different kinds of pr0n...

The Lamps get Hot

[TimeTraveler1884]

The only disadvantage of a projector is that it can be a little noisy - DLP chips get very hot and need a lot of cooling.

The lamps get hot, not the DLP chips. The lamp temp depends on the manufacturer just like the noise level of the fan used.

I agree about a good (even moderately good) DLP projector. I have a BenQ PB6200, does 1024x768. With my permenately tensioned DALITE screen, I paid less than $2000 for everything brand new even with cables.

It does HD too (granted slightly lower res than 720p) but it still looks better than SD. All in all, not a bad for a 105" TV than one can actually afford. I have a HD DVR from Time Warner that performs the tuning function for me.

In my opinion, it's not the noise, TV tuning, or even "rainbow effect" of projectors that is the problem. The problem is it is a lot of work to get something going that looks decent. Mounting, for the project, mounting the screen. Mounting curtains or something because the screen gets a bit washed out during the day. These are problems to me. But with a little effort and thought, they can be solved.

The attraction with LCD, is you just nail it up to the wall and call it done.

Re:When will it replace plywood?

[UWC]

Bah, now you're scaring me. Wasn't a big part of that scenario that the broadcasts were passed through a customization box/filter of sorts to tailor the experience to the viewer? I read a short-ish and none-too-in-depth article on Wired the other day about the incredible personalization/customization of information delivery possible today that allows many people to pretty much just see what they want to with little fear of being presented with views that would challenge preconceptions. Obviously it's not nearly so complete or pervasive or all-encompassing as what Bradbury depicted, but I realized that I hadn't even given it much thought until I read that article. Obviously information delivery isn't at the point yet where one can be completely subsumed by comforting and reassuring sameness, but it's closer for a lot of people than one would initially think. Along with the wonderful ability of one to connect with a group of people of a similar mindset over the Internet comes a potentially decreased interaction with people who see things differently.

An interesting thing I've noticed is that larger community sites tend to present more conflict than the social networking type environments. For example, there's almost always someone ready to strike back with a counter argument on Slashdot, and even if it's just to be contrary, it still offers an opposing or at least different view of a subject. While Slashdot still obviously caters to a relatively thin slice of overall events, the discussion of those tends to reveal different frames of reference in which to view them. On the other hand, through my traversals of places like LiveJournal, where the users choose both the topic and the viewpoint, and everyone hosts their own reference frame's home, I notice an interesting tendency for vast networks of nearly identical views to be interconnected and to some degree isolated except for a few tenuous links from other reference frames.

Bah, crazy insane tangent. Now I'm interested in this social dynamic divide. But I'll probably explore it no further. Lousy lack of motivation...

That's already how it's expressed

[Sycraft-fu]

They give the rating of the CCD, not the effective number of colour points you get. For example my SD (720x480) DV cam has over a megapixel CCD. Do the math you find out that it only takes around 350,000 pixels to do SD. The reason it has a larger CCD is because of the mask on it. If you go a setp up, to real pro gear, you discover the numbers drop back down to below a MP, since they split the light with prisms and go to 3 seperate CCDs.