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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."
I'm not surprised if its been withdrawn.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.
Don't forget the main problem, that the 11" TV cost like $2000. It was the first commercially available OLED TV, a limited production tech demo basically. As you say, 11" is really small, that's about the size of my laptops's screen and I can't imagine many scenarios where watching it from further than say a meter away is a good idea.
OLED seems to be making good progress for in smaller devices, it was only recently that only a few Kodak cameras and and tiny MP3 players had OLED screens, but now they're many of the new phones as well. It seems that we're moving up in size, so hopefully we'll see further increases in screen dimensions. The article even mentions the upcoming 15" LG TV, and although at around two grand it's still too expensive, at least we're getting there size wise. In any case, screw TVs - I want OLED computer monitors, which are luckily very usable even once you get to around 20".
In any case, screw TVs - I want OLED computer monitors, which are luckily very usable even once you get to around 20".
You won't get those.
Unless something drastically changes, which I highly doubt, OLED monitors just won't happen. OLED is extremely susceptible to burn-in, thus unsuitable for computer displays.
I would rather have dial gauges in my flying car, because any display capable of showing advertising eventually will.