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Is OLED TV Technology In Jeopardy?
MojoKid writes "Sony recently announced it would halt sales of its 11" OLED TV in Japan, where the panel first debuted. For now, the XEL-1 will remain on sale in the US and other markets, but Sony's decision to kill the unit in its home market and reduce the rate at which it's investing in future OLED TV development has been perceived in some corners as a judgment on the long-term feasibility of OLED technology. In the wake of Sony's announcement, far too many pundits have rushed to declare OLED panels dead, dying, moribund, or otherwise abandoned. However, it seems more likely at this juncture that we'll see development focus shift from large panel sizes to smaller ones, particularly since the smartphone/handheld OLED market is growing briskly and larger screens are inherently more prone to defects. Sadly, this means that your chance of traipsing home with a truly cutting-edge display before 2014 or so could be pretty minimal."
Who wants to bet it is overpriced, has lots of restrictions, and Sony wants too much to liscense the technology.
Alas Sony, you have great ideas. Why do you always sabotage yourself?
I'm sick of backlit LCDs.
CNT and Diamond tech seems to have vanished from the news completely.
OLED is/was nice but a thin display without native rez, and CRT colour quality is still my dream, and they were promised what, 7 years ago now?
I don't mind if they want to drop OLED as long as they're going to be ramping up production on something better hard and fast instead of squeezing the life out of LED. LED is ok as it got cheap, but it is not great technology for a lot of uses.
At first I thought this article meant that OLEDs were actually the curved display panels in the Jeopardy TV show.
Stop confusing me, Slashdot.
Blah Blah, Heard the same for plasma a few year ago.
LCD LED and Plasma TVs are (so) good enough for everyone, people currently don't want to spend kilobucks on technology that's not even ready from prime time (OLED TVs some nasty problems)? Be patient, gentlemen.
Sony's decision to kill the unit in its home market and reduce the rate at which it's investing in future OLED TV development has been perceived in some corners as a judgment on the long-term feasibility of OLED technology
No, it was a judgment in how stupid they were to come out with an ultra-premium-price 11" TV.
I understand that the Japanese are space-conscious, but 11" is a ridiculous size, especially in the day of 1080i broadcasts.
Sony came out with the 11" because that was the largest they could reasonably manufacture, but they forgot that it doesn't matter how cool the TV is if you can't see the damn thing. This one was so small, it'd practically have to be on your nightstand to watch it in bed. Maybe on your desk? Who wants to have an 11" TV on their desk when they have a 20" LCD display, or a 15" laptop display?
If they come out with an OLED set at a price that AV enthusiasts can afford at a size at least some people can use, they'll sell.
Please help metamoderate.
I'm not surprised if its been withdrawn. It's yesterday's news as far as early adopters might be concerned and they would be the people most inclined to buy it. Besides, the state of the art has moved on and we already know LG are delivering larger, HD capable sets this year and its likely other manufacturers would have similar plans.
Exactly who the hell would want a 11" TV to begin with? The only people that'd need something like this probably couldn't give less of a shit whether it's OLED or not. I don't see any practical applications for such a TV that'd make it sell like hotcakes.
Let me get this straight : I hear that OLED is the "perfect" display tech.
+ Low energy consumption since all the light from the phosphers shines through
+ ultra high refresh rates possible
+ flicker free
+ full 180 degree viewing angle
+ perfect black levels with absolutely no light emmitting from pixels that are off
+ no ghosting at all
+ cheaper to manufacture than LCDs
+ flexible
+ ultra thin
Basically, a perfect display with no drawbacks other than the fact it isn't 3d like the holodeck.
Oh, and the blue pigments fade fast, so the display dims over time and the color balance gets messed up.
Oh, and it isn't being made in large enough quantities to be affordable.
So what's the deal? Why is Sony throwing in the towel now?
Seriously, who said this? I'm genuinely curious. Are there any reliable sources to back this up, or is it just another sensationalist piece?
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools The way to dusty death. --Will
I do not take SONY serious these days. They were the leaders but are a shadow of their former self. SAMSUNG matters to me and the world now.
Heck, from 2005, there was a business lesson for SONY at Samsung. For SONY, they had their time and that was decades ago.
but a thin display without native rez, and CRT colour quality is still my dream
The variable resolution of CRT was a technological artifact, resulting from the NEED to scan across the display. We no longer have that need.
Going forward all consumer displays(in foreseeable future) will have a set, native resolution.
You get a sharper display, and you get perfect geometry. I will take that over blurry/variable geometry CRT any day.
If I recall correctly, it looks like any new TVs in Japan need to have parental controls since not many weeks ago. Sony does not want to recall the XELs for any firmware upgrade (if it is feasible), so it is just saying that is good enough. Time to rest. You know, two years is already a long time for TV manufacturers. This is the story by engadget: http://www.engadget.com/2010/02/16/sony-kills-xel-1-oled-tv-production-in-japan-cites-sluggish-de/
I got pretty excited about OLED TV when I first heard of it. Almost bought into it. Then I learned how short of a life expectancy OLEDs have, enough that one can expect failing pixels in just a few thousand hours of operation, and rapidly declining after that.
When I put the money asked for into a large screen TV, I want it to last, not be expected to fail in a few thousand hours of operation. This is a technology currently suited to phones and other devices that have a known, limited, expected life of service. It is not well suited for home appliances that are costly and one might hope will last for well over a decade, maybe longer.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
the problem is that the rare earth metals on which the nice bright colours rely are migrating to the edges of their cells, on panel sizes of greater than 10cm x 10cm (hence why they can be successfully used in small products like cellphones, where the lifetime of the product is expected to be short).
i've heard of this kind of problem before (a 10cm x 10cm limit) on an unrelated product so it is quite likely that there is a quantum phase transition effect which has not been a) understood b) scientifically properly investigated.
the thing is, rare earth metals were picked because they're supposed to be utterly inert! they're not supposed to move! but it looks like somebody was completely wrong on that, and it hints at some extremely interesting scientific quantum mechanics breakthrough, if only someone could actually work out what the hell it all means.
but basically, it means that the core problem which OLED engineers have been trying to work around (and haven't told you about, because they don't understand it themselves, and it's Not Your Problem Anyway) hasn't been solved in several years, and until it is, OLED technology won't be viable, unless you're happy to pay for a product with a lifetime of about 1,000 hours.
Sony's expectation for the XEL-1 was never anything other than establishing brand recognition as the leaders in OLED. The truth is that while the display cost ~2500, the manufacturing costs probably were around ~5K as a function of the very lossy shadow mask technology they use for deposition of the organic material. The project was never sustainable, nor intended to be.
The technologies for manufacturing remain very immature, but the major display manufacturers, material developers and equipment vendors are investing major resources into solutions. A better bellweather for display technologies may be the Koreans (Samsung, LG) and the Taiwanese (AUO, etc). These folks are chasing the rabbit pretty hard.
There is also a Silicon Valley startup that is developing an interesting solution named Kateeva. Spun out of MIT, the company is developing a solution that marries the material advantages of evaporation with the simplified deposition approach of ink-jet. More information (and video!) at this recent article from Technology Review.
Disclosure: I do have an interest in Kateeva...
It's far to expensive, and at present they can get better performance and better size out of liquid crystals. The XEL-1 sells abysmally, it costs more than a substantially larger screen with comparable quality. No amount of early adopters are going to fix that, and it'd likely be crazy for Sony to push it too hard in a much better economy, forget the one we're in today.
The day will come for OLEDs, just like it came for blue lasers in optical drives(I remember hearing about those when CD drives were still around 4x and DVDs were still pretty rare. There will be a tech break through and the cost will drop, or the limits of liquid crystals will finally be reached and companies will be forced to go to new technology, but it hasn't happened yet.
That's way too small, perhaps thats why people don't want it.
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
Sony stopped development on the Betamax and ... home video took off like a rocket. OLED or something better will be developed with or without Sony.
CRTs also had a native rez too, it just wasn't as hard a mark. Any pro CRT, and most consumer ones, would have a recommended resolution. That wasn't for nothing. That was the rez at which is functioned best. You'd get the over all clearest image. Go too much above it, and pixels would get blurry and indistinct. Go too much below it and you'd see scanlines and such.
This is also much less of an issue with today's video cards. They can easily drive high rez displays, usually even cheap ones can handle it. The ability to knock down your resolution was something more useful when graphics memory was at a premium. That is no longer the case.
1. Someone does something. ...
2. The pundits exaggerate it to a end-of-the-world scenario.
3. OMGWTFBBQ
4.
5. PROFIT (for the media)
News at 11.
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
This is being blown out of proportion.
The XEL-1 was discontinued in Japan because new TV sets sold this year will require a "V-chip" parental control, and a $2,000 11" TV doesn't justify a redesign to add that feature. The XEL-1 is still going to be sold in the US and Europe.
http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=ja&tl=en&u=av.watch.impress.co.jp/docs/news/20100216_349284.html
Also, Sony is still going ahead with their 22B yen ($210M) investment in OLED
http://www.trustedreviews.com/tvs/news/2008/05/22/Sony-Boasts-of-22-Billion-OLED-Investment/p1
Moreover, at the 2010 CES Sony just finished showing off a 24.5" OLED set that does 3D.
http://www.engadget.com/2010/01/07/sony-oled-3d-tv-eyes-on/
As Mark Twain said, can be applied to OLED, "rumors of my death are greatly exaggerated"
Both CNT and the kind of similar Diamond tech promised CRT-like no native rez however, and the ease-on-the-eye of LCD, but with CRT colour.
Though yes I am well aware of recommended resolutions of CRT's they still other resolutions far better than scaling on LCD's.
The implication seems to be that Sony is the only one working on this technology for TVs and monitors. Isn't Samsung working on this tech as well, and debuting some stuff this year? I seem to remember seeing other companies doing R&D on OLED on larger displays as well (I wish I had the sources handy). It seems silly to declare a technology dead when a single product is being discontinued.
The sad thing isn't the hard native resolution of LCDs; but the fact that software hasn't caught up to that yet.
It is a real issue, particularly for older users or the visually impaired, that a 21inch CRT driven at 800x600, or some similarly low resolution will look pretty much fine, while a 20inch LCD panel will look like a blocky, badly scaled, mess. This is only because resolution independence isn't really Quite There Yet for most software. Sure, you can change the DPI settings; but that will break a host of legacy crap, and have no effect whatsoever on things like certain games that draw their own entirely custom interfaces.
Once the resolution independent vector-goodness finally filters down to the point of being actually usable in real world software setups, "native resolution" will no longer matter in the slightest, except as defining the upper bound for a given monitor.
My initial reaction was, "So THAT's how they have such narrow borders on the clue displays!"
I think the Sony OLED TV didn't sell was because it was a ridiculous design. Look at the picture:
http://blogs.mirror.co.uk/techno-techno-techno/css/sony-xel-1-oled.jpg
What is the point of having an ultra-thin display when the base required to hold it makes the device have the same footprint as a CRT TV? This might have been a good seller if it had been something you could hang on your wall, but even then, most people have enough space in their homes that they don't really *need* an ultra-thin display (and would not pay a premium for it)
I there is a market for ultra-thin displays, but it is for tablet devices and laptops, not TVs. I believe Sony realized this and is simply moving towards that market.
The thing that bugs the shit out of me right now is stuff like Clear Type and whatever the default font Microsoft uses for Word 2007 now. It seriously looks like it would work better on a CRT moniter - on LCD's it looks like a blurry mess! It's SUPER anti-aliased, when LCD's provide you nothing if not crisp, perfectly aligned geometry - which looks TERRIBAD with this fuzzy font.
Anymore, the first thing I do when I open a new word doc for editing is switch the font to Arial or something other than the Calibri default.
If anyone knows how to fix that, be my guest and enlighten me, but I've tried all the built in calibration tools - you go through them and they look great at the end, but then back to word and just ugh, a fuzzy mess.
sig?
Don't you guys remember when LCD flat panel TVs first came out, they were $10,000. I first saw one in a Popular Mechanics article about 12 years ago. Then like anything else, it gets mass produced, the technology evolves, and prices come down.
If anyone has seen the Sony 11" OLED in person, you know how gorgeous it is. I dream of owning a full size version for the prices we pay for LCD tech today, but like everything else, it just takes time.
Not to mention the exciting possibilities of FOLED and TOLED (flexibility, transparency)...
OLED demos well ... you put a brand new screen in a dark room and with the right content you can blow people away. The thin displays you can make since there is no backlight demo well. The energy consumption demos well with a mostly-black screen. But when you get it home it doesn't work in a bright room, the colors aren't great and worse, change over time. The worst part may be that it's not even more energy efficient than LED-backlit displays when playing video.
On mobiles it's even less appropriate because of the varied lighting conditions you encounter. You would see people struggling with their Nexus One or Zune in daylight if they had sold more than a handful of either device.
The nerd infatuation with this expensive buzzword has been incredible. Some were calling for an OLED iPad, that is crazy. It would cost more than the whole device and have so many drawbacks in practical use. All for a buzzword.
Is it in Jeopardy?
I dunno. Lets ask Alex Trebeck.
My 13" CRT has had a curved screen for years. And the burn-in surpasses OLED too. Sure its heavy and bulky, but at least it keeps my room warm.
No, the problem was that people had a display capable upwards of 1600x1200, but it was only 17" across diagonally, with a 15" viewable area. That's beyond the limits of daily usage for most people > 30 years old. Nowadays 21" ( viewable ) and up is readily common on the desktop. With 1680x1050 you've actually got about 4% fewer pixels on a screen that's arguably 80% larger. That's why people aren't shrinking their resolution down from the "native" resolution of the CRT. You can actually see the damn pixels now.
moox. for a new generation.
The TV is being withdrawn in Japan only because all new TVs sold in Japan must have some kind of parental control built in (starting shortly) and it seems that Sony doesn't want to redesign this model to meet the new law's requirements.
No doubt they'll add that to the next model, and continue to push high end oleds - that's where the money is.
I'd say something is wrong with your display...... ClearType *can't* work on a CRT.. apples and oranges.
What make/model of monitor do you have?
If PC vendors would just stop using crappy Intel embedded graphics, we could finally move on to fully vectorized and virtual textured interfaces.
It completely floors me that vector graphics is still not fully standard throughout the computer industry.
I'm still waiting for SED. It was supposed to arrive for consumers in 2006 or so...
Hi.
While you were out, NeXT called from 20 years ago. They say their Display Postscript might be just the trick.
Kid-proof tablet..
You can actually see the damn pixels now.
I prefer displays where I can't see the damn pixels, it makes it seem like the manufacturer has tried to make viewing a more pleasant experience. I would prefer a 125+dpi display with the same number of pixels over a larger display with fewer pixels.
Ask me about repetitive DNA
There were (or are) a number of technologies that basically work like a CRT but with each pixel having an individual red/green/blue electron gun.
Whatever happened to that?
Why has no-one proceeded with that as a viable technology (I would guess that it has most of the advantages of CRT with very few of the disadvantages like the size)
1995 Called. You can have your CRT back.
moox. for a new generation.
Excuse me? ClearType is a rip-off of Apple's (and many other vendors of the day) technique for anti-aliasing fonts on a CRT screen - otherwise known as Displaced Filtering. MS white papers have some of the same pixel diagrams and even reference SIGGRAPH 80 papers (from when LCD screens didn't even exist). ClearType is a (marginally) incremental improvement, it's definitely not a new technique.
The XEL-1 stopped being sold in Canada a LONG time ago. About 6 months ago, I saw a blow out on the display model (I seriously considered it - $1000 made it tempting), and the Sony Store online only had it as "In store only" - you couldn't buy it online.
The big problem was its resolution, at quarter full-HD (960x540), all you could do was watch SD video scaled up a little bit. Or high-def video scaled down to just-a-little-better-than-SDTV.
The other problem was the videos they displayed on it had horrible flickering. It was worse than a 60Hz CRT monitor.
From what I've heard, the ones who bought it were CEO types who wanted a little nifty TV display. Though these days you can LCD picture frames with higher resolution, and either USB monitor support, or HDMI inputs so you could use it as a TV.
1995 Called. You can have your CRT back.
I still have it, used for adjusting colours in photos at the moment. It's from 1999, but you're close enough.
I prefer my current laptop for resolution though. It's 105dpi, but with sub-pixel rendering in the horizontal direction (effectively tripling the resolution), that's plenty fine for most of the things I do.
Ask me about repetitive DNA