Slashdot Mirror
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."
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.