In the second of our series of blogs on new-fangled TV technologies, we look at the hesitant arrival of OLED TVs.
Organic light-emitting diode (OLED) displays use pixels made of plastics that glow when you apply a voltage to them. They’re a type of semiconductor, just like LEDs, but offer a number of benefits such as higher efficiency and cheaper manufacture. Since it’s just plastics that produce the light, for example, screens can be printed using a process similar to inkjet printing. The screens also deliver a number of improvements in picture quality – more accurate colours, deeper blacks, sharper motion depiction, and even potentially much higher resolutions. If, therefore, OLED matures into a practical technology for large TV screens, it has the potential to surpass both plasma and LCD.
Sony's XEL-1 is available commercially in the UK but with a huge price tag of 2,799 GBP.
So what have we seen of OLED so far? The most widely known commercial example is Sony’s XEL-1, an 11-inch OLED TV on the market since spring last year. This model’s miniscule resolution of just 960 x 540 pixels, however, happens to come at an absolutely huge price – Amazon UK, for example, lists the XEL-1 for 2,799 GBP.
At this year’s CES, LG showed off a 15-inch OLED TV that’s currently on sale in South Korea for about 2,300 USD (1,400 GBP) – much cheaper than the smaller Sony, for example – according to a report on the eco-news website TreeHugger. LG’s new model is beautifully slim, but we won’t be able to comment on the picture quality until we get hold of one ourselves.
Sadly, there are no concrete indications of OLED TVs in the works for 2010. Reports in early 2009, however, suggested that both Philips and LG would start larger-scale OLED production this year – and it’s early in the year yet, so watch this space. Some even expected Panasonic to debut a 40-inch OLED TV by the end of 2009 – a dream that clearly hasn’t materialised. The problem may well be that much of the initial optimism surrounding OLED predated the bitterest throes of the global recession, which has put ambitious and costly developments at least temporarily on hold.