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'OLED TVs Will Finally Take Off in 2017' (engadget.com)
From a feature article on Engadget: After years of taunting consumers with incredible picture quality, but insanely high prices, OLED TVs are finally coming down to Earth. Prices are falling, there will be even more models to choose from and, at least based on what we've seen from CES this year, LCD TVs aren't getting many upgrades. If you've been holding out on a 4K TV upgrade, but haven't had the budget to consider OLED up until now, expect things to change this year. Even before CES began, it was clear the OLED market was beginning to change. Throughout 2016, LG steadily lowered the prices of its lineup -- its cheapest model, the B6, launched at $4,000, but eventually made its way down to $2,000 by October. Come Black Friday, LG also offered another $200 discount to sweeten the pot. A 55-inch 4K OLED for $1,800! It was such a compelling deal I ended up buying one myself. Since then, the B6's price has jumped back up to $2,500, but I wouldn't be surprised to see its price come back down again. So why the big discounts? LG reportedly increased the production of its large OLED panels by 70 percent last year, likely in anticipation of more demand. That could have led to a slight oversupply, which retailers wanted to clear out before this year's sets.
I mean this literally... other than TV salespeople, who cares? Every decade or two, when it's time to get a new TV, I go to the TV store, and I buy something that they have in stock, within my budget. I couldn't care if it was OLED, LED, or FairyDust powered. A TV is a TV is a TV.
I don't respond to AC's.
I will install it in my fusion energy powered level 5 autonomous flying car so I can watch a movie on my way to the Spaceport.
I'm not going to be replacing it for a few years.
Let's hope the new features in 2020 are really enticing.
I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
That's still a bit much for an impulse buy. I can see if you're in the market for a new TV, and have the disposable income, where it would be enticing. I don't think it would seem that great a deal to most uninformed consumers standing in their local big box store trying to figure out the difference between these and a standard LCD TV, not understanding, and making the decision based on price.
Also, has LG kicked in some money for advertising here lately? First their threatening to include wifi on everything, now a point by point presentation about their OLED sets.
How is $1800 for a 55" 4k TV a good deal?
"When life gives you lemons, don't make lemonade. Make life take the lemons back!" -- Cave Johnson
QLED for me. More power efficient, longer lasting color vibrance (won't yellow or fade), cheaper.
Twinstiq, game news
I'm not in the market for a new TV myself. But isn't burn in still a major concern with current OLED? Also, don't the colors wear unevenly with what's being sold at the moment?
I still prefer to watch movies and television on a large display, but it seems to me that a lot of people don't. My wife uses her tablet for almost all of the video she watches. My daughter prefers her phone. It's going to be interesting to see how this affects television in the future as well.
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Laptop in my household. 4 chairs, 4 people, 4 laptops. At least we are in the same room.
I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
LCD panels are already very cheap to produce and are virtually as thin as OLED panels. In fact OLED panels are so similar to LCDs that some manufacturers have come up with the stupid idea of curving them so that they're easier to market to consumers because we can barely tell the difference. (Completely distorts the image)
My major concern with OLED is burn-in which apparently is possible in OLEDs, I haven't seen that in my Samsung phone but it's still a concern compared to LCDs. If I'm going to pay several grand for a TV it better be almost bulletproof. And 4K TV's are just silly, it's very hard to find 1080p content (most commercial TV is only 1080i at best) nevermind 4K.
The new 2017 LG OLED TV's have dropped 3D support.
A Nexus 6p, a 55" 1080p OLED LG, and the new Alienware 13" OLED gaming laptop. I did comparisons to the best LED laptops and monitors. The OLEDs cream them all, even for plain text. As for screen size vs color vs black level, I find black level and color far more important. I do most of my watching on the 13" laptop. The kids watch on the big OLED. My wife watches mostly on her LED laptop, but that's because she watches in bed, and there's no longer a TV in the bedroom. She also insists on watching without glasses, so there you go.
I am not going to bother getting a TV until 2018 or so when ATSC 3.0 tuners are included. No way I want to spend money on a new 4K TV and then be stuck in a couple of years having to have some lame external ATSC tuner and/or sell it and get a newer TV just a few years later.
-- Given enough time and money, Microsoft will eventualy invent UNIX.
BTW for those with the "more resolution is better" obsession, I suggest you consider the frame-rate issue, in terms of quality perception. There have been many studies that suggest that extra bandwidth is better utilised in increasing frame-rate than absolute resolution.
Early ones anyway... Hopefully it will get better. If not, the next one will.
like in 55' size and in the 5 thousand dollar range.
i dont want a TV that big and i am not willing to spend more than a 2 or 3 hundred on a tv and i dont need a tv bigger than 24' to 36' max in size.
i dont watch much TV anyway, i use a 24' LCD for a computer monitor, and get 6 stations over the air on an antenna.
I would buy a OLED when they get in the size range and price range that i want
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
Finally I'll be able to watch TV again after my smartphone spoiled me.
will also finally be the year of Linux on the desktop.
sigh...
...with the soon-to-be-ubiquitous Linux desktop
This is an LG TV. Didn't we just get told all LG devices are "smart"? Ransomwear is already a thing on "smart" TVs. Why aren't the display and the driver separated out and connected by a dumb cord?
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I actively avoid OLED when purchasing anything with displays in them. IPS looks fine to me and is significantly more reliable.
They also ignored technical progress. Supply-and-demand is a far-downstream economics behavior that everyone somehow got to thinking is a core economic tenant.
Technical progress is core. If you have an assembly line with 100 people making 10 things per hour, that's 10 hours of work per thing--ignoring the cost of tools on the line, organization (management), shipping, materials (which are produced by labor--how do you have stone when it's in a giant chunk 500 meters below the ground?), etc. That's a limiting factor on price.
How is it limiting?
Let's say you make $20/hr, and those line workers make $10/hr. Well, their 100 hours of work make 10 things; 10 hours of their work makes 1 thing; and you can buy that 1 thing with 5 hours of your work. Put another way: you can work 1 hour and induce those people to work 2. That's wage-inequality--it sucks, and it's also kind of required for a functional economy (it's the interaction between the microeconomy and the macroeconomy: humans economize by expending the least of their effort for the most benefit, and society economizes by expending the least of all its resources for the most benefit--which means inefficient businesses fail while better ones make the same products cheaper).
So to make a thing, you need 10 hours of labor at $10/hr, or $100. Ouch. That thing can't be priced for under $100 if you want to keep paying your laborers. Laborers need to eat, so they need enough money to pay the farmers, shippers, and super market retailers to get them food, too, so that $10/hr wage can be lowered... some; it can't be lowered indefinitely.
So there's a lower bound on price. That bound I just gave doesn't include the cost of payroll taxes, benefits, administration, risk, tools, supply chain, materials themselves, and so forth; and my explanation of the wage gap correctly displays your take-home wage of $20/hr after all taxes and the $10/hr supposed wage of the workers (failing to account for the things I just mentioned), but fails to point out that you had a wage of more than $20/hr and only have to pay to cover the pre-income-tax wage of $10/hr.
In the macroeconomy, those taxes end up spent on other government services, or pay debts that were accrued earlier to spend on other services, so cycle through the economy--not necessarily efficiently or inefficiently, depending on whether a private-market supplier is more-efficient than a government supplier, which is itself dependent on economic situation (e.g. various types of welfare reduce the general economic costs of things like unemployment or healthcare, but reflect a larger chunk of the total production of an economy for lower levels of technical progress and thus become more-efficient as technical progress increases--or, to show by example, unemployment and public healthcare are efficient for wealthy economies and inefficient for poor ones).
For our purposes, however, this all means that you have to pay the workers, That is, you have to pay the workers. You're buying the product of their labor; you supply the pay for that time.
Technical progress means we get those 100 workers to assemble 20 things per hour, and now it's $50 instead of $100.
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Just one concern: How do I lobotomize the "Smart" that seems to be infecting all TVs these days? Stories concerning massive security and privacy issues with Smart TVs are all too easy to find, so you'd think it would be just as easy to find TVs that are "dumb", or at least articles on how to rip the "Smart" out of any given smart TV.
I know Vizio has a (small) line of tuner-free displays, but then they foul it up by bolting on a Chromecast and including an Android tablet as a remote (!).
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Until you factor in real-world over-compression. High-bitrate 4k downsampled to 2k still looks better than native-2k at today's reduced bitrates, even if it's ultimately viewed on a 2k-native display. 4k just gives us back the detail DirecTV, Comcast, and Uverse took away from us over the past 10 years as bitrates have gotten squeezed more & more.
Now QLED is coming, manufacturers need to quickly cash out OLED R&D investments before the technology is obsoleted. This is why they will aggressively push it.
Better not hold your breath too long my friend. ATSC 2.0 never even made it out the door and 3.0 will go the same way or be obsolete the moment it hits the market. ATSC is scrambling furiously to keep up with Netflix & co, and the internet tubes are only going to get faster and fatter every year.
Yeah, people say the same about LCD over Plasma. Yet my 720p plasma has had multiple people ask me if I had 4k. Bright, crisp and clear, people assume it has to be better than the "old" and "bad" plasma and 720. And the OLED phones weren't rated more highly than the LED phones.
I'd rather have 4k than OLED, unless the OLED comes with some more tangible benefits, like weight and power savings with that "better" screen. But for now, the cost penalty for OLED for a screen that's substantially similar to an LED or plasma isn't worth it (for most people, as evidenced by the sales numbers).
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is tomorrows old news.
I don't pay ungodly prices for brand new tech anymore. Been burned too many times on that one. ( Bought one of the first HDTV's that didn't have HDMI :| )
When the prices of the tech I want comes down to something reasonable, and I actually need it, then I'll buy it.
Until then, I don't care if Angels Sing and lightrays from God himself powers the damn thing, it will sit on the shelf at the store.
...to be usurped by QLED in 2018!
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The only thing I care about is input lag. If they aren't better than the best of the older technology, not buying it.