Sony prototype LED set w/1,000,000 CR

[Eric H]

Yes, a 1,000,000:1 contrast ratio.

If they can bring this to market at an affordable price it should make everything else obsolete!

http://www.engadget.com/2007/01/08/s...nch-oled-hdtv/

[Sandy G]

Sony does it again. 'Bout time.

[andy]

I wonder if this will go anywhere. I've heard they look very good. Even those 1" cell phone OLED displays are eye catching from across the room.

It's been years since Sony has made an innovative product. I was just in a Sony store and everything I saw was a "me too" commodity product. They had poor ipod imitations, boring projection and LCD TVs, run of the mill DVD players, and uninspiring laptops. Most of their products don't even use any Sony invented technology. Even their flag ship Blu-Ray is basically the same as HD-DVD.

[Sandy G]

Yeah, since Morita died, it just hasn't been the same...Maybe this is the next Trinitron, though...Who knows ? I remember going to the Sony distributor in Knoxville when I was a kid, all outta breath, dyin' to see What Sony's Got Out Now...I was rarely disappointed. Hell, it was about as good as New-Car Time....(grin)

[ChrisW6ATV]

I see one problem with this new (OLED) technology. The "O" stands for organic, and from what I have read, these displays have a finite life, similar to EL (electroluminescent) display panels. The last thing we need in the 21st century is another video display type that gradually gets dimmer or weak, especially when they certainly will not be rebuildable as CRTs were (and still are).

The display I would keep your eyes on is LCD with LED backlighting. This also has the potential for a near-unlimited contrast ratio, and could potentially last for decades of use.

[andy]

Originally Posted by ChrisW6ATV

The display I would keep your eyes on is LCD with LED backlighting. This also has the potential for a near-unlimited contrast ratio, and could potentially last for decades of use.

I still haven't seen an LCD that I like. They're great for computer monitors, but they just don't look right for video. They tend to look flat and lifeless to me, particularly on moving images. I can spot the difference between an LCD and a plasma from 10 feet away. Plasma and CRT both look more film like to me.

[freakaftr8]

I agree with Chris, these Plasmas that this one bar has up here are now 3 years old, Phillips models, and are looking really bad! The white backgrounds are full of burned images and the white is sepia in color. Losing contrast and colors are totally washy. Kinda like an old crt tv used 24/7 after 10 years...

[matt_s78mn]

Originally Posted by freakaftr8

I agree with Chris, these Plasmas that this one bar has up here are now 3 years old, Phillips models, and are looking really bad! The white backgrounds are full of burned images and the white is sepia in color. Losing contrast and colors are totally washy. Kinda like an old crt tv used 24/7 after 10 years...

That might just be from 3 years worth of cigarette tar on the screen!

[Duane]

Originally Posted by andy

I still haven't seen an LCD that I like. They're great for computer monitors, but they just don't look right for video. They tend to look flat and lifeless to me, particularly on moving images. I can spot the difference between an LCD and a plasma from 10 feet away. Plasma and CRT both look more film like to me.

I find LCD images to look artificial.Plasma's are getting closer to CRT quality, but they seem to lack the 3 dimensional look of a CRT. I just saw one of Pioneer's new Elite Kuro set and I was not that impressed with it.

[Duane]

Originally Posted by Eric H

Yes, a 1,000,000:1 contrast ratio.

If they can bring this to market at an affordable price it should make everything else obsolete!

http://www.engadget.com/2007/01/08/s...nch-oled-hdtv/

Any technology that ups the ante over the picture quality of the good old CRTwill be welcome in my book. Have been quietly watching the progress (or lack) of the other emerging entries namely SED,FED and OLED. Sony looks to be involved in a couple of them.

http://www.fed-tv-reviews.com/field-...ed/2007/10/16/

[freakaftr8]

Yeah normially I would think that, but you cannot smoke in doors in California...

Originally Posted by matt_s78mn

That might just be from 3 years worth of cigarette tar on the screen!

[ChrisW6ATV]

Originally Posted by andy

I still haven't seen an LCD that I like...

It is all a matter of taste, then. In February 2003, I was in a store in Akihabara in Tokyo, Japan full of TV sets. I remember thinking "flat panel, yeah, another flat panel, yeah, oh my goodness what is THIS one?". It was Sharp's first 37" LCD, in a group of 37" and 42" plasma displays. All the plasmas just looked like a bunch of pixels, but that LCD was like looking through a window by comparison.

I also much prefer the non-glare finish of most LCD panels versus the shiny glass surface of plasma displays. 1960's roundie color CRTs got that right; I don't know when or why the glare-inducing smooth screens came back.

[MRX37]

I'm rooting for OLED myself. "100% NTSC color reproduction" sounds very nice to me.

If a standard LED can last for decades, I'm sure OLED's will last for at least a decade before the quality declines noticably. We'll have to wait and see I guess.

[jhalphen]

Hello to All,

I am a member of the SID (Society for Information Display)

http://www.sid.org

This is a technical community quite akin to what the SMPTE is for film & Pro-video.

I joined basically to stay informed about display technologies with true scientific information and no BS marketing hype.

The monthly journal has been covering OLED technology since its discovery by Cambridge University (UK) in the early 90s.

OLEDs are fundamentally different from LCDs because it's a photo-emissive process, like excited CRT phosphors, and NOT a light modulator like LCD. OLEDs offer the tantalizing perspective of being simply printed by a pretty fancy multimillion $ printer, therefore offering screens of any size at a very low cost instead of the 18-24 steps minimum to produce a LCD-TFT screen.

However, the technology is still in its early infancy. One of the problems is the differential loss of emissive power over time of the 3 primary colors. The Blue phosphor has a life expectancy 2 or 3 times shorter than R & G so much research money is being poured into solving this. From memory, last june quotes were for 20.000 hours in R/G and 5000-8000 for Blue.
End of useful life is measured as half the original emission, but as the eye has a Logarithmic response, this is barely noticeable (like a 3dB drop in audio level).

Some of you might remember a Kodak "Easyshare" dockable digital camera a couple of years ago, and it was the first consumer product to boast a full color OLED viewfinder. Well, buyers found that the VF displayed increasing color unbalance as the product aged, because the RGB phosphors did not "track" in emission intensity over time. Kodak quietly removed the product from shelves & remarketed the Easyshare with a traditional LCD VF.

So, its always exciting to watch a new technology come on line, but be ready for some uncharted territory if being a Early Adopter is your game.

Just my 2 cents...

Best Regards

jhalphen