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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."
At first I thought this article meant that OLEDs were actually the curved display panels in the Jeopardy TV show.
Stop confusing me, Slashdot.
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.
Active matrix OLED displays are actually really hard to manufacture compared to TFT LCDs.
A major issue comes from the fact that the TFT backplane has to supply an appreciable current to each pixel, rather than just a voltage as in LCDs. This means you can't get away with using amorphous silicon, you have to make the backplane out of Polycrystalline silicon which makes the whole production process a lot more complicated and also limits the size of panel that you can make.
Also, you generally you want to run the OLED elements in constant current mode, so you end up needing a current source circuit in each pixel. This increases the number of transistors you need per pixel from 1 or 2 in TFT to between 2 and 6 with OLED. And if any of them has a fault then you've got a dead pixel.