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LG roadmap predicts 'OLED panels will cost less than LCD panels in 2016'

by Thomas Ricker posted Oct 30th 2009 at 6:31AM

Speaking at the FPD show in Japan, Won Kim, VP of LG Display's OLED sales and marketing group laid bare its OLED plans for the future. Pretty significant as LG is one of only two players currently manufacturing production OLED TVs; though unlike Sony, LG has yet to ship anything -- that bit of consumer magic begins in November. So here's the deal: LG will release 20-inch and larger OLED panels in 2010, 30-inch and larger in 2011, and 40-inch and larger OLED panels in 2012. While 40-inch OLEDs will still be "fairly expensive" in 2012, Kim predicts that "OLED panels will cost less than LCD panels in 2016." We'd love to believe that but it sounds overly aggressive to us considering the enormous investment panel manufacturers have made in LCDs (they'll be milking profits just as long as they can) and new push towards 3D televisions. Besides, LG's been all over the map with its OLED dates so let's not go carving anything in low-temperature polycrystal silicon just yet.

[Via OLED-Display.net]

Samsung's 30-inch 3D AMOLED TV won't make you dizzy, will leave you poor and silly

by Thomas Ricker posted Oct 28th 2009 at 4:34AM

Feeling that 3D craze yet? No? Well what if we told you that Samsung was bringing stereoscopic 3D to its magnificent AMOLED panels touting a million-to-1 contrast? Today in Japan it's showing off its 30-inch AMOLED 3D television with Full HD panel measuring just 2.5-mm thick. Although much is lost in the Korean language press release, Sammy is claiming that itd panel plus shutter-glasses technology helps to reduce the dizziness felt by some 3D viewers. The set's just a prototype at the moment but its price will certainly invoke financial vertigo whenever it might hit the manufacturing lines. One more very serious picture after the break.

Continue reading Samsung's 30-inch 3D AMOLED TV won't make you dizzy, will leave you poor and silly

AUO previews lots of fancy displays, clownfish-approved 1080p 14-inch OLED monitor

by Tim Stevens posted Oct 27th 2009 at 9:09AM

AUO previews lots of fancy displays, including clownfish-approved 1080p 14-inch OLED monitorFPD International 2009 is nearly upon us, and as we've seen in years past it's a time of wondrous innovation and gratuitous side-shots of impossibly thin displays. Leading off the pack this year is AUO, teasing a number of new panels and technologies that may or may not rock your living rooms sometime in the next two to four years. Chief among them is a 14-inch, 1080p OLED display with a 100,000:1 contrast ratio and 16 million colors. There will also be a range of switchable and glasses-free 2D/3D displays ranging from 8- to 65-inches, a ridiculously wide 58-inch 2.35:1 TV with a 2560 x 1080 resolution, and, naturally, a skinny LCD -- in this case the 65-inch beauty pictured below that's just 7.9mm on the Z plane despite pumping out a claimed 2,000,000:1 contrast ratio. Good stuff? Yes. The craziest displays we'll see this week? Not a chance.

[Via OLED-Display.net]

Continue reading AUO previews lots of fancy displays, clownfish-approved 1080p 14-inch OLED monitor

Video: OLED technology explained using a pickle and an Igor

by Darren Murph posted Oct 2nd 2009 at 9:53AM

Say bub, do you care to know what all that OLED jazz is about? We'll bet you do, but you don't wanna read some dry polysyllabic academic paper written by five guys during their time away from the lab. What you want is a sharp demonstration, preferably by an MIT professor, that goes straight to the point of what an Organic Light Emitting Diode is. Igor, roll in the pickle, please. Okay, he's not an Igor, his name is Vladimir Bulovic and he does a terrific job of explaining how the passing of electric current excites organic molecules into creating those luscious ultra-bright colors we lust after inside ridiculously small spaces. Slide past the break to see the vid in full, and yes, it's just as weird as you think it'll be.

[Via OLED Display]

Continue reading Video: OLED technology explained using a pickle and an Igor

Eyes-on LG's 15-inch OLED TV makes us want to punch an LCD

by Thomas Ricker posted Sep 3rd 2009 at 11:33AM

What can we say -- it's a near final build of LG's 15-inch OLED TV that's set to go production in Korea before the baby New Year can suckle at the big one-oh. We could say it's beautiful, that even motion looked good pushing genuine blacks on this razor thin panel. But we wouldn't want to rub your noses in the fact that we're at IFA and you're not. Perhaps this will make you feel better: by the time it makes it Stateside in February or March it'll be carrying a price tag right around $2,500. Really, but it's Wireless TV-capable and that's gotta be worth something.

Oh, and LG tells us that its 32- and 42-inch OLED panels are on schedule and due to be released sometime in 2010. Yes, 2010 contradicting what we've heard earlier. No word on price but it's going to be tres, tres expensive.

Researchers developing OLEDs as cheap as newspapers?

by Joseph L. Flatley posted Aug 31st 2009 at 1:26PM

Sure, it'll probably be a good while before you get your hands on an OLED TV, but don't lose heart, young gadget-head! Techno-wizards at the RIKEN center in Japan have concocted a new way to fashion OLEDs that eschews the standard spin-coated films for something called electrospray-deposited polymer films, incorporating "a novel dual-solvent concept" that makes the 'em "smoother than before, thereby enabling [...] superior devices." We'll skip a few details that don't mean anything to those of us who aren't Advanced Materials subscribers (hit the read link for more info) and get to the good stuff: Yutaka Yamagata, the guy who developed this technique, says it will lead to displays "manufactured as inexpensively as printing newspapers." Is that a promise, Yutaka? If so, we're holding you to it.

[Via OLED-Info]

LG's 15-inch OLED TV on sale in Korea this November, overseas in 2010

by Ross Miller posted Aug 30th 2009 at 3:57PM

LG bared the fruits of its OLED labor last week with a new set of photos of its gorgeous 15-inch screen, and now comes word from Reuters that it's gearing up to become consumer reality. The company will be showing off the model at next week's IFA trade show, and then expects to start selling it in Korea this November, followed by overseas sometime next year. Excited? You bet. Affordable? Price unknown, with Sony's two-year old 11-inch XEL-1 still retailing for $2,500 in the US -- and worse elsewhere -- you can expect to be sacrificing a pretty penny for small-screen bliss. LG also plans to show off a 40-inch OLED in the "not too distant future," but don't expect to be seeing that hit retail shelves for a good long time to come.

[Via OLED-Info]

LG's 15-inch OLED screen is still drop dead gorgeous, likely priced to kill

by Richard Lawler posted Aug 29th 2009 at 11:21AM


Whooo. (Not Wooo.) Amazing how a few well framed PR shots can reignite gadget lust, just when it seems extinguished. Sure, LG's 15-inch OLED HDTV will probably follow the path of Sony's $2,500 11-inch XEL-1 to the land of ridiculously overpriced trinkets that few can or will purchase and eventually falls by the wayside when larger, cheaper options become available. Still, checking out that ultra bright screen in these photos has us checking our bank account for an extra few grand, refreshing the feeling last experienced when we checked it out in person at CES. The appearance of these on LG's Flickr stream would appear to support the summer mass production-December launch we've been promised, who else is wishing the 30-inch version wasn't delayed until 2012?

Gallery: LG 15 inch OLED

Sony's big plans for OLED HDTVs may slip to next year

by Richard Lawler posted Aug 17th 2009 at 6:04PM


Hope you weren't too attached to the idea of "medium to large" sized OLED HDTVs coming from Sony this year, according to the Wall Street Journal's sources, the company's slipping share of TV sales mean profitability takes precedence over sweet, super slim new displays. Surprised by its inability to sell truckloads of $2,500 11-inch versions CEO Howard Stringer decided to put the project on the back burner, apparently more focused on things like competing in Wal-Mart and implementing cheaper LED technology for its LCDs. With LG also on a timetable that puts us a year or more away from seeing one of these on store shelves in decent sizes, things are up to Samsung to bring it home -- we're waiting.

LG slips 30-inch OLED panel production into 2012

by Thomas Ricker posted Jul 17th 2009 at 1:52AM


With LG's 15-inch OLED TV coming to stores in December it can't be long until LG's mid-sized TV's start showing up for retail right? After all, Samsung and Sony are on record with claims of producing mid-sized OLEDs as early as this year and no later than mid-2010. Not so fast, literally. Although LG had previously targetted 2011 for the mass production of its 32-inch OLED TV, CEO Kwon Young Soo now says that LG plans on producing 30-inch OLED panels for TVs in 2012. Of course, all those earlier OLED projections were made before the global economic collapse so delays have to be expected, however upsetting it may be.

[Via OLED-Display]

Flux capacitors sidelined as surface plasmons called upon to increase OLED efficiency

by Steven Kim posted Jul 16th 2009 at 11:34AM

Samsung OLED TV
The surface science geeks out there already know that surface plasmons have enjoyed use in spectroscopic fluorescence measurements, but that's about as exciting as chamomile tea at a narcolepsy convention. However, those same surface plasmons have been used by Korean researchers to increase OLED efficiency by 75-percent while also increasing intensity twofold -- and that gets our attention. Note we said "researchers," though; the results were obtained with silver nanoparticles under high vacuum conditions -- in other words, a surface science lab. Although the word is that this technique can be used for flexible OLEDs, we won't be holding our breaths. Heck, at this point, we'd settle for relatively inefficient, inflexible, affordable OLEDs somewhere north of 20-inches.

Seiko Epson envisions large inkjet-printed OLED TVs, unicorns for all in 2012

by Darren Murph posted Jun 24th 2009 at 1:51PM


As much as we'd like to put stock in Satoru Miyashita's forecast, we're still hesitant to believe that we're just two Consumer Electronic Shows away from seeing big-screen OLED TVs for sale. After Sony's polarizing XEL-1 hit the scene around two years ago, we've seen an anemic amount of action in the commercial OLED TV space. Sure, we've heard promise after promise, but we've still got no solid evidence that a large-screen set is anywhere near a Sam's Club shelf. In a recent interview with the general manager of Seiko Epson's Core Technology Development Center, OLED-Info managed to get this out of the exec: "We see 2012 as being the year that 37"+ OLED TVs will be launched by various makers, and 2015 as the year that sales will really take off for this market." He's referring to the year in which OEMs will begin to use its new inkjet-printing approach to making OLED TVs, which will hopefully allow for easier development of larger panels. 'Til then, we suppose we'll just have to be content with using the Zune HD as our primary television.

LG 15-inch OLED TV on sale in December

by Thomas Ricker posted Jun 17th 2009 at 6:07AM Breaking News


We knew that LG's 15-inch OLED TV was entering into production this summer, now we've got a ship date: December. This according to an interview with Won Kim, LG's VP of OLED sales and marketing. While 15-inches is small, it easily trumps the world's first production OLED TV, Sony's $2,500 11-inch XEL-1, and is a reasonable size for the bedroom (if you must) or kitchen counter. No word on specs but we expect the production set to offer the same million:1 contrast, 1,366 x 768 pixel resolution, and 30,000-hour shelf life as the prototype unveiled in January. The TV will launch first in Korea for an undisclosed price that is bound to be punishingly expensive.

Researchers ditch DLP, develop OLED panel-based mini projector

by Ross Miller posted Jun 11th 2009 at 2:32AM

Looking for a way to differentiate among the ever-expanding niche of pocket projectors, researchers at the Fraunhofer Institute for Applied Optics and Precision Engineering (IOF) of Germany are working on an OLED panel-based mini projector, using static optical systems and not the usual reflective system à la DLP. Currently being shown at SID Display Week 2009, the decidedly green picture (seems to be the norm with OLED prototypes these days) forms via a 6-inch VGA screen from 30 to 50 centimeters away, and the machine itself takes up just about ten cubic centimeters of space. Despite all the faith, there's still the rather nasty problem of luminance, which the scientists estimate needs to be about four or five times as bright as current levels -- but hey, you gotta start somewhere, right?

New mass-production technique for flexible OLEDs could make them cheap

by Tim Stevens posted Jun 8th 2009 at 7:48AM

New mass-production technique for flexible OLED could make them cheap
Getting tired of flexible OLED prototypes that are about as ready for retail as that cold fusion reactor your uncle Harry is building in his garage? Yeah, we are too, but it seems the industry is getting a little closer to reality, the latest step coming courtesy of Arizona State University's Flexible Display Center and Universal Display. Researchers at the pair have managed to produce flexible OLED displays using the same production techniques used to create standard, rather less bendy LCD displays, enabling the transistors that control the pixels to be applied to plastic, rather than the glass they typically find themselves embedded within. They glue a piece of plastic onto glass, feed it through the LCD manufacturing process, then peel the two apart like a high-tech Fruit Roll-Up. That technique was used to create the 4.1-inch monochrome display shown above -- which is for now just another prototype that won't be showing up in any devices any time soon. [Warning: PDF read link]

[Via Technology Review]




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