Anyone else think OLED may have missed the bus?

[Stuart Kirby]

Just a thought really... with SED getting ever closer, LCD getting better and even Plasma improving so much and so often, do you think OLED may have missed it's chance? Not so much Plasma, or even LCD, but with SED nearing release, where do you think this leaves OLED?

[sbowler]

It all depends on wether the pictures are that much better than LCD. You would have to do a side by side comparison, plus they would also have to compete in the market place by aggresive pricing. I think LCD will eventually take over, its coming down to reasonable pricing levels now, and the screens are getting bigger too.

[NicolasB]

Even if SED lives up to the hype, it won't be perfect: there will still be screen-burn issues, it will be affected by magnetic fields, etc. It's going to be quite some time before it becomes affordable, too.

[Reiner]

Even if SED lives up to the hype, it won't be perfect: there will still be screen-burn issues, it will be affected by magnetic fields, etc. It's going to be quite some time before it becomes affordable, too.
I would disagree with the influence of magnetic fields from a practical point of view: as SED is cell-based the beams are very short it would need a very strong or very close field to "irritate" the electrons.

[Rimmer]

OLED has a big advantage over SED in that existing LCD factories can be refitted to produce OLEDs. Also unlike SED, OLED does not suffer from 50Hz flicker.

One of the most interesting recent developments is the introduction of LED backlighting on LCD displays (CFL-LCD). This removes the need for a colour filter, giving more accurate colours, and greatly improves the contrast because the brightness of the LEDs can be adjusted individually, unlike the old bulb system. It seems likely that in a couple of years all LCDs will be made this way.

Interesting times ahead.

[NicolasB]

I gather european SED screens will run at 100Hz rather than 50, so I doubt 50Hz flicker will be an issue. (And, for progressive input at any rate, there won't be any of the deinterlacing artefacts that plague 100Hz CRT TVs).

The fact that SEDs use scan lines is by no means a bad thing, though - it is precisely the fact that LCDs don't use scanlines that leads to much of the motion-smearing problem. The fact that LCD makers are about to start using scanning LED backlights speaks volumes. (Although this will probably reintroduce CRT-style flicker. :mad: )

[Rimmer]

Interesting; so 100Hz scanning may be needed on LCDs as well in future?

It would be better if they went the whole hog and doubled the 60Hz refresh rate to 120Hz as well. 60Hz may be less flickery than 50Hz, but it is hardly flicker free. One of the key advantages of 120Hz scanning is that you could show 24Hz movies without judder since 120 is an integer multiple of 24.

[davidwatsonok]

It's going to be quite some time before it becomes affordable, too.
I have heard two conflicting arguments on this. Historically, new technology with a marked performance advantage over the competition has come to market at a premium price before eventually dropping to mass market levels. I have heard the boss of Toshiba being quoted as saying that they would rather bring SED to market at competitive price levels to plasma and LCD to maximise profit as soon as possible. Let's face it, if they bump up the price for the first five years and only sell 5000 units a year they're not gonna make a fraction of the profit as if they just sold them at a reasonable price from the start but shipped 200,000 units per year. Like any business, they'll have done a forecast to see how long it will take to recoup R&D and tooling costs before breaking into profit, and the latter solution will always win.

[NicolasB]

Most of the quotes I've heard from Toshiba have been the opposite of that: that SED will be greatly superior to plasma or LCD, and that the price tag will be correspondingly much higher than that of plasma or LCD.

[Decadence]

I read that OLED screens currently only have a lifespan of between 1,000 and 2,000 hours...that doesn't seem to be long enough to compete with LCD's does it?

[NicolasB]

I read that OLED screens currently only have a lifespan of between 1,000 and 2,000 hours...that doesn't seem to be long enough to compete with LCD's does it?Between 10,000 and 20,000 actually, but no, it's still not long enough.

[sandstheman]

The quote of 1-2,000 hours probably refers to the blue component of OLED's, not sure if they have gotten around the short lifetime of that yet

[hamster]

NO, not yet, but they are spending loads on research. I doubt if there will be much before 2010 - that's the analysts view.

SED looks likely to be a dead duck commercially - they won't be able to get to big volumes quickly enough and the LCD boys will squash them. A pricey niche product like Laserdisc was 10 years ago I suspect.