Are OLED TVs a reasonable prospect?
By Steven Kim 
posted Oct 12th 2007 7:17PM
posted Oct 12th 2007 7:17PM
With all the great things we hear about OLED TVs, it's understandable to think that the next display technology is here. Ultra-thin dimensions, eye-popping contrast ratio and low power consumption, what's not to like? The technology does have some big uncertainties, however. According to the link, the most significant isn't display lifetime, but market potential. DisplaySearch projects huge growth for OLED TVs, with a market of $37 million in 2008 to $884 million in 2011. That would outpace the predicted 15% growth in LCD TV demand over the same period. Rosy for OLED, right? Not so fast -- the total market for LCD in 2011 is expected to be $92 billion (with a "b"). When considering these projections, it's easy to see why the president of Samsung SDI says OLEDs are "ideal for portable displays," but holds off on making any TV display commitments. The fact that Sony is committed to producing a set makes OLED more promising than some other next-gen technologies, but we're not throwing out our plasmas and LCDs yet.
Of course Mr Samsung is going to say something like "Maybe for portable displays but not for big screen sets like the ones we produce now, no fickle customer you have nothing to worry about, buy our current range of TV's, you have no need to worry about a better tech coming along and making your new $2000 purchase look stupid"
Watch them change their tune as soon OLED becomes mass market.
Sony for all their faults are at least coming straight out and saying they think its the future.
As for the tech it self, I cant wait, I have recently moved back to a CRT for graphics work and I now have problems watching movies on a LCD/Plasma, I cant get past the poor blacks! Hell even calling them blacks is a bit of a stretch, they are gray at best.
Take a look at the 81 series Samsungs. The deepest blacks I have seen on an LCD...period.
you see, I believe the problems with the picture are part of greater resolutions and more fidelity. These TVs look great, but poor mastering of films and compression ratios (especially on cableTV and satellite TV) are making the HDTVs give a bad impression.
nothing like seeing a big, homogeneous, black patch of pixels substitute what used to be a fairly graded, shadowed door, or black, shadowy part.
is there a typo in this article re $92BN total market - that should be total market for "LCD" (not OLED), correct?
that $92 billion figure is for LCD, not OLED
@craig, @KevinG - Argh! Thanks for catching that, guys.
The future can hold many surprises. If it's OLED for flat panels, then I welcome the OLED overlords if I want a flat panel. But SED was supposed to replace plasma & LCD, but that didn't happen. OLED is the next thing, but probably has an actual chance this time. Now, they need to get their pricing down and panel size up quickly or else LCD and plasma will be so entrenched just because they still are maturing and still goig down in price and still gradually increasing in size too. 11" is a far cry from 65", by about a factor of 350 on area. Granted, maybe 65" will still be above average when OLED comes of age, OLED will have to fight the "good enough' syndrome.
Can it be a 120inch wall unit? I want one!!!
Why do people always care so much about the tecnology when buying a tv, you should just go to the store and choose the model that best suits your needs. It doesn't have to be a fight to the deat between lcd/plasma/oled.