Toshiba and Matsushita have announced that, within three years, they plan to introduce organic light-emitting diode (OLED) panels for use in televisions.



http://news.digitaltrends.com/article12666.html

If you do a search for oled on this forum, you'll find the first post on the subject almost 5 years ago.

Here's another from "only" 3 years ago. They even had a 40" panel.

http://www.digitalhome.ca/forum/showthread.php?t=13982

OLED has aging issues that, I assume, they're working on.

Well .....my link was an update on the whole thing, and if you care to check the date in the link, you might just notice that it say 11th of April.

I CAN read. My point (which I obviously didn't make well enough) was that this technology, along with SED, has been "promising" for a long time, so take their 3 year announcement with a large helping of salt.

You will notice that they don't mention what size of TV they will produce. Here are some comments from Toshiba's President from 4 months ago. I doubt much has changed with OLED.

http://techon.nikkeibp.co.jp/englis...0061225/125850/

"He cited the active matrix organic EL (electroluminescence) display as a potential successor to the SED. That is why Toshiba invests in the polycrystalline Si (p-Si) TFT line (at Toshiba Matsushita Display Technology Co., Ltd.), he added. However, "The technology has only become applicable to a 3- or 4-inch display and it is impossible to create a 40-inch organic EL display in 2 to 3 years. It is even difficult to achieve it in 2015 to 2016. We will pursue the SED until then, but management requires to consider about 10, 20 years ahead," Nishida said."

I'd be surprised if we don't see led lcd panels this fall.

Would solve some black issues with lcd and provide much better colour.

Maybe even get close to plasma in picture quality.

For very large screens, the real activity is in the RPTVs that are using LED and LASERS for their light source instead of the traditional bulb.

Not only will it mean fewer, if any, changes of a bulb, but far better uniformity of light and trueness of color.

According to this report on CBC (http://www.cbc.ca/technology/story/2007/04/12/tech-sony.html), Sony announced it's plans to produce and sell an OEL (organic electroluminescent) display by the year's end. It will only be 11 inches big, but the screen thickness is impressive: only 3mm. It will be interesting to see if this plays out as a viable technology. I'm not holding my breath though; watching the development of SED has made me a skeptic.

Also, I'm not sure how different the technology is from OLED, but if anyone has more information, I'd like to hear.

SED is from the CRT family.

OLED is from the LED family and LEDs, traditionally, are a semiconductor device. The D in LED is Diode, a very common electrical component.

OLED stands for Organic Light Emitting Diode. The primary thing of note is that they use an organic material at the "business end". The primary benefit is that they are self lighting and in a vs. LCD situation, that is why they get so crazy thin.

Forgot to point out the BIG issue with OLED...

Lifetime.

Blue OLEDS only have a 5000 hour life expectancy. Some experimental work is showing up to 20,000 hours, but compared to LCD or Plasma, that is nothing. And compared to DLP or LCD RPTV or Front Projection, there is no contest at all (Short of bulb life).

Here's a similar link to the CBC one earlier, but with more details.

http://news.teamxbox.com/xbox/13241/Sony-to-Start-Selling-OLED-TV-This-Year/

Funny... Sony also has a spin-off company in the news recently with a 19" FED television coming to market.

LCD, OLED, FED. Sony seems to have trouble committing to one tech (Are they back into plasma again?).

Competitively priced 40"+ OLED TV are still many years away.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070412/tc_nm/sony_oel_tv_dc_3

The Nikkei business daily reported earlier that Sony would begin by mass-producing about 1,000 of the 11-inch OLED sets a month -- a fraction of its LCD TV business -- and would aim to keep their price within a few times that of existing flat TVs.

"OLED sets are very expensive, and we mean to begin first by marketing the TVs as a status symbol," said Sony's Kazuhiro Imai, a senior manager of the company's TV and Video business group. "We will see where the business goes from there."

Plasma and Lcd started off like that, and now some people even have them in their toilets :eek:

The difference is that Plasma and LCD didn't have to compete with any flat panel TVs when they came out. Any new technology needs to be cost competitive before it can be taken seriously. But LCD/Plasma prices continue to drop. This is why OLED and SED won't be seen in most living rooms for at least another 5 years.

We are still 5 years away from 30"+ OLED TVs and even then only in limited quantities and still twice the price of LCD.

http://www.digitimes.com/displays/a20070525PR202.html