OLED Background

Well, it is now 2008. This whole OLED tech thing is just starting to come out. Recently, Nikkei, a Japanese newspaper, announced (from unspecified sources) that Toshiba Matsushita Display Technology Co. will being production of a million 2.5" OLED displays starting in Q3 2008. Sony has an 11" XEL-1 OLED TV for sale in North America for $2500. Toshiba had pledged 30" Widescreen OLED Displays in 2009, but then put that on hold. Take a look here at my August 2008 OLED Pricing and Trends Article.

Here's a wiki article on OLED Technology, which is a pretty good (but perhaps overly technical) background on the tech.

OLED is currently expensive, hard to find, and relatively unknown. Sounds an awful lot like a lot of technologies we now have commonplace today. Think of the DVD burner, the CD burner, the PC, the Plasma/LCD TV, High Definition TV and Laptops. These are all examples of technology that once was expensive and little-known, but is now commonplace even amongst the late-adopters.

OLED (Organic Light Emitting Diode) Technology will be the same, and I will be following it.

What is OLED?

The entire idea of OLED Technology is that instead of the whole device emitting light, and selectively blocking it (which is how LCDs work), just light up whichever pixels need to be lit up.

The result is an extremely thin display that uses far less energy.

It is also important to realize that OLED is more of a type of technology, rather than a specific one. There are a lot of ways that it could be done (known and unknown), and I have a feeling that a couple of leaps will need to be done before we end up with big consumer displays that use it.

Advantages of OLED over LCD & Plasma TV

Also, in theory, displays could be made flexible (since no special lenses are required) and they could be one-day manufactured in a "roll" process, like paper is printed. Some companies are even working on inkjet printer-like production. Obviously, it'll be a loooooong time before you have one of these printers in your own home, but if factories could operate like this in a continuous process, production costs could be incredibly low, once they figure how to do it appropriately.

Current LCD technology has a backlight, which can burn out (making the whole device useless), needs to always be on and runs hot. Also, a special lens is required to evenly dissipate the light generated by it. You can probably see on some LCD TVs and Laptops that this isn't an exact science.

Another issue with LCD technology is that if you want a pixel to be black, the device needs to block out all light from the backlight. Again, this isn't perfect, resulting in blacks that aren't completely black, and the end result is a loss of contrast.

Plasma TVs have some of the answers to this, but they exhibit burn-in and use even more energy.

My Predictions of the Future of OLED

One day, OLEDs (in one form or another) will run our cell phone displays (with fewer parts, less energy usage and brighter screens), TVs and computer displays. Even moreso, the tech, being simpler to manufacture (no backlights, lenses or inverters to generate the high voltages required for the backlights) should allow more informative displays to be installed in everything. Think, one under the hood of your car, on your remote control, the side of your fridge and your home's thermostat.