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Sony Launches 3mm Thin XEL-1 OLED TV
i4u writes "Sony introduces their first commercial OLED TV, the XEL-1. The stunning XEL-1 is what Sony teased on Friday on their site in Japan. The XEL-1 is an 11-inch display that is only 3 mm thin. It features a dramatic 1,000,000:1 contrast ratio and the power consumption is a low 45 W. Sony plans to start shipping the XEL-1 OLED TV on December 1 for 200,000 Yen (~$1,740). Here is Sony's OLED TV product page (in Japanese)."
I didn't see any mention of the lifespan of the OLED screen?
Has something changed recently, or is the TV likely to start looking funny in a year when the blue fades?
Did anyone else notice the RJ45 jack on the back? What's that for? Built-in Tivo perhaps?
The game.
into such a slim screen ;-)
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...what about that honking great ugly box at the bottom of it that's way bigger than 3mm deep and obviously has to sit under the TV?
Granted, it's cool that Sony have developed an OLED TV, but sorry I don't see the point of having a wafer thin screen when the base unit looks like a brick. If you could remotely stick the box somewhere else and wallmount the TV that'd be nice, but from what I can tell, you can't.
The thin part is great, but they need to find a way to produce OLEDs TVs that are bigger. Even for hard core geeks like me, I don't want an 11 inch TV. And it's hard to produce a 42" OLED.
Actually, it has.
The display itself may be 3mm thin, but it's connected to a much bigger stand.
I really don't see the point of having a display 3mm thin when it still needs more than a thirtyfold space of that to place it somewhere.
If it could be mounted to a wall and the whole thing was still only 3mm thin, It'd be useful.
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stuff it in a laptop, the thinness, lightness and power consumption is a sure winner there.
ditto mobile multimedia.
for domestic consumer electronics the thinness is irrelevant except for high end concept ware where people are willing to pay through the nose.
the thinness is also irrelevant if it has to be stuck on an ungly base unit (see TFA) for real jawdropping effect it should be displayed by itself with a well hidden cable in the support going to a much better hidden base unit in the wall, furniture or somewhere else.
still on the plus side the contrast and brightness sure looks good. hope it still stays that could and does not get destroyed by direct sunlight a few months after purchase.
"and the power consumption is a low 45 W"
Current laptop 17" LCDs have power consumption around 15W or so.
45W from an 11inch display is not, by a long shot, low-power. If that scales linearily with screen real-estate, then that is equivalent to 600W for a 40 inch (the current top-seller size), which is aproximately 3 times the power used by an average flat-screen TV of that size sold currently.
No it wouldn't. It would be very nice though :)
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Arse
(note: subject is actually a question ... ?)
I'd like to damn well think the blacks are good anyhow.
I'm a die hard CRT lover, I've detested the quality of the picture on LCD's for a long long time, I guess you could say I'm a videophile.
All that being said, I only just recently caved, yes I've caved, even CRT lover dan at dansdata has caved.
I picked up a Dell 2407 WFP HC screen, which apparently does colours quite well.
I purchased this because for 3 years people have been proclaiming how good LCD's are now and how widescreen is the future, how ghosting is a thing of the past, viewing angles aren't a worry, scaling with fixed pixel width is fine and blacks levels are fine on modern LCD's
Well, I'm one person who has purchased a product who has the balls to speak the truth rather than defend my money spent.
Firstly, I love widescreen, it's bloody awesome, period - great stuff.
I LOVE the extra desk space!
Fixed pixel width is certainly not bugging me in games anywhere near as much as I thought it would and I don't change resolution often in Windows anyhow (I guess I used to with my CRT)
Refresh rates and ghosting is right on the limit, it's not ideal but it's certianly nothing to fret about either.
However....
Black levels and viewing angles are ok now? - I think not people, I think not.
In bright games, the picture quality, coupled with the widescreen awesomeness of above, lovely stuff, just lovely.
I tried Oblivion though and in the caves, oh those caves, I felt the 'silverfish' effect - the blacks shimmer and refract light or something die to viewing angle nastyness.
The picture, quite literally reminded me of waking up in the morning with sleep in the corners of my eyes, I found myself rubbing my left eye constantly to try and remove said sleep.
Clearly I couldn't, it wasn't actually there, infact within about 30 minutes of playing, I simply couldn't play anymore.
I was shocked, I am not the headache type or the motion sickness type but this was quite literally making me irritated, not sick but I couldn't play due to the distraction in the corner of the display (both left and right)
The viewing angles are simply too tight for this monitor, the solution of course is to sit futher away, however why would I want to? This is why I purchased a huge 24" monitor, so that the picture is immersive and great, not something I push to the far edge of my desk, otherwise it's just too small again.
I've also tried Half Life 2 - the black scenes in that do the same thing, I honestly do not know how people play any dark games on an LCD at all, it's simply not a pleasant experience.
In some regards I miss my 22" CRT, it was a high end tube, did over 100hz at 1600x1200, some ridiculous figures at 1024 (140+ etc)
So ultimately, my question is or rather my demand is, does OLED solve these issues?
I've heard it does, but does it REALLY? LCD is (according to THOUSANDS of people on the web) apparently "as good or better" than CRT now (I beg to differ)
If I could just solve that issue with the shimmery blacks, I'd be fine but until then, for true videophiles, I just can't recommend an LCD still, hence me having a near 200lb CRT beast in the loungeroom as a television.
Help me OLED, you're my only hope.
1. They will produce only 2000 of those per year.
2. The product for OLED was selected not to be practical but newsworthy. Everyday Joe cares about TV-s, although he won't buy this one, he'll read about it, so newspapers will write about it. Consider: OLED has shorter pixel life and wastes less power than LCD+light. Where is this useful? Laptops (limited energy and no constant use). Where is it harmful? TV-s (constant use and unlimited AC power).
3. The design is made to impress, not be practical. Notice they put the tuner down in an ugly box to show off the very thin OLED display (no backlight). Notice the off-center hinge, designed to stress how light the screen is (puts unneeded stress, however small, on the materials).
Bottom line is, of course, great that someone is pushing OLED for something bigger than a camera preview screen. But it's NOT mass produced product. They make just few units, to make the news.
It's a product straight from the PR department. I suspect Sony Rolly will have similar fate.
Those aren't products made to sell, they're made to rebuild the image of Sony as the cool tech company. However, years ago they were the cool tech company which mass produced goods that are at the same practical, high tech, and luxury.
Those new gadgets don't send the same message. Wish them good luck with this, maybe if they keep producing gadgets like those at this pace, at some point they'll hit a homerun again...
An LCD shows a black pixel by trying (not quite successfully as it turns out) to block out the light from a bright white back-light behind it. An OLED shows a black pixel by just not turning on the pixel - there's no back-light to try to hide because the pixels themselves are the light emitters. You can reasonably expect an 'off' pixel to be as black as the whole display is when it is switched off.
Oh sir... it's only wafer thin!
Bury me in mashed potatoes.
Since there's obviously no use for a gorgeous 11" display anywhere, you're obviously right. All those people installing displays in airplanes, cars, and, um, LAPTOPS must have overlooked something fundamental.
I haven't seen a more moronic post on Slashdot in years. That includes the goatse trolls.
Women? You must be new here.
That's too bad. I was hoping for 2mm thin, but this one is only 3mm thin.
Those marketeers are too smart for their own good.
Now, what makes this irrelevant is of course the fact that because of the very nature of this display, the real issue for contrast is not the contrast ratio in a completely dark room, but the actual brightness related to ambient light. When you factor in the ambient light as the real source of light in the black parts, you'll get a different ratio, but this is the only technology where the ambient light, even in a really dark room, is close to the only source of light in the black parts of the picture.
There are in fact two relevant contrast ratios to consider. One is the ratio between the brightest white it can display in a full screen and the darkest black it can display full screen. The other is the ratio between the white and black when both are displayed simultaneously.
What people don't realize (because CRTs typically don't include contrast specs) is that while a CRT can achieve ~15,000:1 dynamic contrast (i.e. the ratio between an all white and an all black screen), the reality is when you put both black and white together, one washes the other one out. CRTs, in actuality, can't do much more than about 500:1 contrast.
The key point is that dynamic contrast is not a bullshit marketing term. The reason CRTs have apparently great black levels is because their dynamic contrast is much higher than that of LCD screens. An LCD with a panel contrast of 1000:1 and no other backlight tricks will have a dynamic contrast of 1000:1. Thats why in bright-overall scenes, it looks GREAT, but in dark scenes it washes out. In bright scenes on an LCD vs a CRT, you're basically comparing ansi contrast to ansi contrast, and LCD can get ~1000:1 with no washout. A CRT can't. In dark screens, an LCD can't make quite as dark blacks, so you're now comparing dynamic vs dynamic contrast. The CRT could pull in 15,000:1, but the LCD is still stuck at 1,000:1.
Current displays improve this by varying the intensity of the light source, then stretching the brightness of an average-dark image to maintain the full panel contrast. That way, you can get the full ansi contrast over a wider range of actual brightness values. It looks like current LCD monitors vary the black light to increase dynamic contrast from 1000:1 to 3000:1, and LCD projectors can open and close an aperture in the lens to jack dynamic contrast up to 10,000:1.
The point is, there are two types of contrast. LCD beats the crap out of CRT in one type, but CRT beats the crap out of LCD in the other type. Neither specs are marketing BS, and you need to know both to understand how contrasty a screen will look in practice.