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Samsung Places A Big Bet on Quantum-Dot TV, Acquires QD Vision (zdnet.com)

Posted by EditorDavid on from the hope-they-don't-catch-on-fire dept.

Quantum-dot televisions promise "better picture quality and are also cheaper to manufacture than organic light-emitting diode sets," ZDNet reports. And now Samsung has confirmed their acquisition of Massachusetts-based QD Vision for $70 million, according to this article shared by Dthief: QD Vision, previously known as Color IQ, is a specialist in quantum dot display technology. Developed for displays including PC monitors and television sets, quantum-dot technology uses semiconductor nanoparticles to change the properties of quantum dots, improving color definition and sharpness... QD Vision will become part of Samsung's research and development unit in the hope of creating quantum-dot LED displays suitable for the consumer market which could, in turn, become a strong competitor against OLED displays... The agreement follows Samsung's pledge earlier this year to launch a total of 14 SUHD television models this year, all of which use quantum dot technology.

46 comments

  1. Not exactly a big bet by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    A big bet for a company Samsung's size would be $1 billion or more. $70 million is more like taking a flyer, maybe one of these small acquisitions will turn into something big.

    1. Re:Not exactly a big bet by theskipper · · Score: 3, Insightful

      What you say is true but no matter the price tag, imo it shows real commitment to the technology. They could have done the same thing with OLED back when Universal Display (the supplier of OLED chemicals) was around $100-200m market cap but didn't. So perhaps this shows that Samsung really is making real progress toward true emissive QLED displays, with QD enhanced LCD as the stepping stone.

      Btw, various articles I've seen speculated that emissive QLED TV would be released in the 2019-2020 range but of course every estimate turns out to be way optimistic. However, this purchase does make one think that's it's more than a PR maneuver against the chinese and LG. Unlike OLED where there were so many manufacturing problems along the way, they're hitting the ground running with QD enhanced which will actually be a revenue driver. Then QLED TVs, monitors and general displays being the ultimate displacement of LCD. Jmho.

  2. Money in your pocket! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Cheaper to manufacture means the price I pay for a TV/monitor is going to drop right? Right? *crickets*

    1. Re:Money in your pocket! by Kjella · · Score: 5, Informative

      Cheaper to manufacture means the price I pay for a TV/monitor is going to drop right? Right? *crickets*

      I don't think anyone has said QLED TVs will be cheaper, only better. Like OLEDs, there's one light source per pixel so you don't have all the backlight and uniformity issues of LCDs - not even the latest full-array local dimming ones with 600+ zones come close to per-pixel dimming. Unlike OLEDs, the colors are produced by a quantum dot layer so you don't have the intensity and lifespan issues of OLED. So the sum should be a TV with insanely high contrast (0-4000 nits?), extremely wide colors (90%+ of Rec. 2020) and excellent edge-to-edge performance with no halos or bleeding backlight but the cost would probably be beyond OLED because you need 3840x2160 = 8 million LEDs with an additional, expensive QD layer on top. Except for extreme brightness - but then you don't want to wear sunglasses to watch TV either - it should be damn close to looking out the window.

      --
      Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
    2. Re:Money in your pocket! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      If you're in the US, you'll soon have your choice - Samsung manufactured in S. Korea with an add-on 35% tariff, or the same set manufactured in the US for twice the price. Remember to support your local boys when you go to the electronics store!

    3. Re: Money in your pocket! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      TVs are now the cheapest they have ever been. The inflation adjusted cost of TVs has plummeted over the last couple decades.

    4. Re:Money in your pocket! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      screw them and whole monitor/screen industry and their priorities.

      Almost 2017 and they still have to resort to software base motion compensation and backlight strobe tricks to keep ghosting from color transition at barely tolerable levels and both tricks have their drawbacks.

      To me they're all still "placing their bets" on gimmicks that should come last. At least the 3D garbage is mostly gone.

    5. Re:Money in your pocket! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yes. It does.

    6. Re: Money in your pocket! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      And there's *STILL* nothing worth watching...

  3. With explosive results no doubt by OneHundredAndTen · · Score: 0

    It's a company on fire. Glowing, fiery, its customers are burning to learn what hot products it will come up with next.

    1. Re:With explosive results no doubt by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I hear there's ointment for that.... I hope there's some for their investors, because pouring money into physical technology vaporwares tends to leave investors with a chance for excitement that usually takes searching the craigslistgirls.com ads for "open minded" ads.

    2. Re:With explosive results no doubt by slickwillie · · Score: 1

      So it's an explosive technology?

  4. Cadmium based LEDs by ChrisMaple · · Score: 3, Funny

    Organic LEDs age badly. Cadmium based semiconductors age badly. So they'll be combining 2 technologies to enhance the disadvantages of each.

    --
    Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
    1. Re:Cadmium based LEDs by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Huh? Where does it say that this is enhancing OLED? It doesn't because they're not, there is no organic component.

      Reading is fundamental.

    2. Re:Cadmium based LEDs by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Cadmium is also toxic

    3. Re:Cadmium based LEDs by pushing-robot · · Score: 2

      Perhaps, but it's used in terribly small amounts; you could coat a thousand or more big screen TVs with the cadmium in one NiCad AA battery.

      Like mercury in CFLs, the increased efficiency of QD also means less cadmium gets spewed from coal plants worldwide.

      Finally, there are cadmium-free QDs—not quite as efficient as cadmium QDs yet, but still an option.

      --
      How can I believe you when you tell me what I don't want to hear?
    4. Re:Cadmium based LEDs by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

      OLEDs are crap. I have an MP3 player that used an OLED display and after about 3 years, all of the blue subpixels had faded such that the screen had a yellow tint. Because of that, I stopped using it and bought a new player (making sure it had an LCD) but non-use apparently doesn't stop the degradation as when I power it on now, the screen is almost impossible to see at all.

      For contrast, I had a Sony Trinitron TV that was manufactured some time in the mid 70s. It still worked fine 30 years later. Modern day electronics fucking suck.

    5. Re:Cadmium based LEDs by MobyDisk · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Your experience with OLED seems to match the theory. Blue degrades fastest. Some causes of degredation are proportional to usage, while some are not. As a counterexample however, I have a 2.5-year-old Samsung Galaxy S5, which uses "Super AMOLED", with no noticeable degradation so far. Unsurprisingly, the OLED association claims that OLED lifespan is as good or better than LCD. Wikipedia implies that too, but it sounds like it depends on exactly how it is constructed.

    6. Re:Cadmium based LEDs by thegarbz · · Score: 1

      Um no they're not coming these two. The two technologies are competitors against each other.

    7. Re:Cadmium based LEDs by thegarbz · · Score: 1

      Well I'm glad you're basing your entire technological experience of a shitty display in an MP3 player. I have an LCD screen on my MP3 player and quite frankly the technology isn't ready for prime time yet. Everyone should stick to CRTs for at least another 20 years.

      In the mean time in the real world when you spend more than $0.85 on a display panel the quality goes up. LG's OLED TVs are frigging amazing. OLED displays on phones have effectively fixed the burn-in issue.

      I'm glad your Trinitron TV works 30 years later. I'm sure it displays UHD content quite well without using a lot of power in the process. You should hang onto it longer. /sarcasm

    8. Re: Cadmium based LEDs by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      If you let your Trinitron show a static image for a long time, it too would be ruined forever. And it is not pixel accurate and requires a lot of compensating circuits to coax the image into a square. Plus, it weighs a ton and uses a ton of power. And attracts dust by being electrostatically charged. And gets weird near magnetic fields.
      All display technologies have their advantages and disadvantages. CRTs have great brightness, suck at 60 hz but are quite pleasant at 85 and above, and Trinitron was the best of that era.

    9. Re:Cadmium based LEDs by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You're right about the shitty display part. After all, it was OLED. The MP3 player (Cowon J3), on the other hand, was one of the best ever made...except they used an OLED display in it.

      Anyhow, sorry to ruin your post-purchased rationalization but no OLED display can last as long as LCD or CRT. I also bet my 1970s Trinitron had more accurate colour and a wider gamut than your LG OLED TV, despite being so old.

    10. Re: Cadmium based LEDs by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      What does displaying a static image have to do with anything? I said the OLED display wore out, not that it had burn-in.

      CRTs have more accurate colour than those hideously oversaturated OLED displays. That's why graphics pros still use them. There's also that longevity bit, but OLED fanbois like to gloss over that part.

    11. Re: Cadmium based LEDs by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I second this, my 5? year old Nexus S Amoled still looks as good as new. Only been dropped on the floor once or twice, not that it should matter with the colors...

  5. Most of us just want to know when to jump in. by rbrander · · Score: 1

    It's cool to read about this stuff, but as I lack the multiple PhDs to really follow the physics, I'm afraid my brute need is to know when to buy. Everybody wants to avoid buying the next Betamax or HD-DVD, obviously, but also you want to not buy in just as the price drops below $3000 ...and also shortly before it crashes to $999.

    I managed to hold off buying a large flatscreen until 1080p was standard, at least (remember the nail-biter of choosing between 720p and 1080i ?) and feel very smart to have grabbed one of the last plasma sets before LCDs more-or-less pushed them off the market; everybody comments on the superior colour. That's not near to wearing out yet at 5 years, so I'm in no hurry to jump ship until I get even better colour, resolution, and anything else they're cooking up.

    This may be the Next Big Thing, but it's become a hard call with things like 3D, 4K, high-frame-rate, and HDR zooming in and out of popularity on a yearly basis.

    1. Re:Most of us just want to know when to jump in. by David_Hart · · Score: 1

      It's cool to read about this stuff, but as I lack the multiple PhDs to really follow the physics, I'm afraid my brute need is to know when to buy. Everybody wants to avoid buying the next Betamax or HD-DVD, obviously, but also you want to not buy in just as the price drops below $3000 ...and also shortly before it crashes to $999.

      I managed to hold off buying a large flatscreen until 1080p was standard, at least (remember the nail-biter of choosing between 720p and 1080i ?) and feel very smart to have grabbed one of the last plasma sets before LCDs more-or-less pushed them off the market; everybody comments on the superior colour. That's not near to wearing out yet at 5 years, so I'm in no hurry to jump ship until I get even better colour, resolution, and anything else they're cooking up.

      This may be the Next Big Thing, but it's become a hard call with things like 3D, 4K, high-frame-rate, and HDR zooming in and out of popularity on a yearly basis.

      I wasn't in a hurry to jump either, but my plasma developed the dreaded vertical lines. Bought a Samsung 4K HDR KS8000 with Quantum Dot. Colors look good, whites are brighter than what I am used to, the ideal viewing angle is smaller, the blacks look good, much better than most LED screens that I have seen.

      I have to say that 4K HDR Blu-ray movies look great!!

    2. Re:Most of us just want to know when to jump in. by drinkypoo · · Score: 1

      I managed to hold off buying a large flatscreen until 1080p was standard, at least (remember the nail-biter of choosing between 720p and 1080i ?) and feel very smart to have grabbed one of the last plasma sets before LCDs more-or-less pushed them off the market; everybody comments on the superior colour.

      Have you actually tested your color reproduction? I hooked a laptop up to my TV and used my i1 Display LT to check the color of my Sharp LC52somethingorother old-school LCD TV from Costco and it has 100% of the normal RGB gamut and the color was actually really close to dead-nuts on so I just left it alone. Better than say this Samsung computer monitor I'm sitting at right now, which is a 25.5" 1920x1200 pivot display with flaky pivot detection. Hope it doesn't burst into flames!

      Anyway, some LCD TVs actually have great black levels and color reproduction. For all the crap people have talked about whether they were worth it or not, the LCD sets that consistently come out on top of the pile (and which have objectively good numbers) are the Sharp AQUOS (RIP) and Sony Bravia.

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
  6. Too late? by thegarbz · · Score: 1

    OLED TVs have started hitting the market at high resolutions and panel sizes. Marketing material seems to suggest the blue fade is a solved issue (though time will tell, it certainly is solved on mobile devices but they have a lower duty cycle).

    I wonder how long Samsung will take to get to market with this. It's especially surprising given they are a maker of OLED displays themselves.

    1. Re:Too late? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      High resolutions and panel sizes of OLED TVs are simply due to the cost of the technology. Target market capable and willing to pay the prices want exactly these TVs as well.

      Blue degradation seems to be resolved mostly by simply making blue subpixel larger.

      Technology-wise, it is not that easy to find the definite details on how the technology is used but everything suggests that LG's White-OLED does not actually use OLED subpixels but uses white OLED (bought with/from Kodak) for backlight and still use filters (exactly like LCD) for colors. The main disadvantage is the loss of brightness (mostly the loss is evaluated to be 25-30%). Advantages are lack of uneven degradation and lower cost.

      Samsung has canceled all their OLED production but their approach was RGB-OLED, basically the classical OLED approach with RGB OLED subpixels. The advantages were better color reproduction and brightness. Disadvantages - possibly blue degradation and definitely cost. Samsung's RGB-OLED TVs were 2.5-3 times more expensive than comparable LG's White-OLED.

  7. Name by dohzer · · Score: 1

    So what are we going to call these things once the word "quantum" goes out of fashion?

  8. I call bullshit on Samsungs "QLED" claims by ffkom · · Score: 3, Informative

    Samsung lost a huge gamble when they stopped developing OLED TVs, and left the whole lucrative market of high-end-TVs to LG's OLED displays. Now they keep spinning their story that "Quantum Dots" will be soooo much better - no, they won't. "Quantum Dots" can provide more brilliant colored light from a source of less brilliant light, while sacrificing lumens-per-watt in the process. They solve no other problem, especially not the problem that you first need to be able to put 32 million light emitters on a display that can be controlled to emit precisely the amount of light that you want them to emit, at reasonable cost and efficiency. Samsung has no ace up their sleeves, they have no new light emitting technology at hand that could illuminate their "quantum dots" to compete with OLEDs, they just try to make people wait instead of buying OLED TVs today. Disclosure: I own and operate an OLED TV since early 2015, and haven't experienced any "degradation" or changing colors, yet.

    1. Re:I call bullshit on Samsungs "QLED" claims by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Where did you get the idea that quantum dots are a non-emitting technology? That's flat out wrong.

    2. Re:I call bullshit on Samsungs "QLED" claims by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I got a 4K 55" LG OLED 6 months ago, and it is just amazing.

    3. Re:I call bullshit on Samsungs "QLED" claims by ffkom · · Score: 1

      I actually owned a TV that was advertised utilizing "Quantum Dots" for more brilliant colors - which meant, of course, some conventional backlight lit those quantum dots, causing them to emit that "more brilliant" colorful light. Where did you get the idea that "quantum dots" are stimulated to emit light by anything other than light shining on them?

  9. 14 New Models ... all unuseable by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I bet not a single one of those new models will have a non-super-glare-super-blinding-super-reflective screen of the type that is suitable for use only in a darkroom (as in utter pitch blackness with no light whatsoever)

    Until manufacturers start replacing the super-glare screens with matte screens (or allow them to be ordered pre-sanded to a matte finish) there is absolutely no way I will buy one.

    Or anything with a super-glare screen for that matter.

    Probably why the bottom is falling out of the computer and TV markets.

  10. gilmore girls! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Finally I can watch Gilmore Girls in a resolution god intended!

  11. Quantum TV by fox171171 · · Score: 1

    So can the TV be both on and off at the same time? Can we watch all channels at once?

    1. Re:Quantum TV by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You can't watch all the channels at once. However, if you watch a cat video, the cat can be alive and dead at the same time.

  12. All the channels? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    We already do. It's called twitter. And half of the tweets is true and false at the same time. The other half? Your guess.

  13. We live in the future! by RivenAleem · · Score: 1

    We have the capabilities to manipulate the quantum state of semi-conductor nanoparticles and what do we use it for? A new type of Television. What a time to be alive!

    1. Re:We live in the future! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Well if it doesn't float your boat go ahead and come up with something useful yourself. What's stopping you ?

  14. Re:Why aren't Africans doing this? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    sod off you daft racist prat