OLED HDTV

LG Electronics announced today that they will release their EL9500 15" OLED TV in May in Europe. It will cost 1999 euro ($2700) - similar to the cost in Korea. The 15" panel has 1366x768 resolution and is only 1.7mm thick.

Via LGE Austria

SonyInsider has interviewed Stan Glasgow, Sony Electronics' USA president and COO. He said that while Sony are working on all sorts of OLED TV prototypes (for example the 24.5" 3D OLED TV shown at CES), he doesn't think there's gonna be a new product in 2010. Because the prices will be too high. Here's the relevant interview bit:

Can we expect any new OLED televisions from Sony in 2010?

We’re working on all sorts of prototypes, but I don’t see production of product in 2010. There’s a wonderful 3D OLED prototype here at CES; that’s the real way to do 3D and TV – because you’ve got direct transmission, rather than back lighting and all the other reflective ways of doing it. But getting it to be commercially reasonable in price, we’ve got a long way to go. That’s the whole problem in OLED, great technology, great feature set, but it’s really hard to get the costs down. Smaller form-factors are easy to do.

There are rumors (coming from a leaked internal Sony document) that Sony's new OLED TV will be called the Sony KDL-ZX. No more information is available - although interestingly they say it's the KDL-ZX series, so maybe Sony will introduce several new OLEDs?

Sony 27-inch OLED prototype

Sony were planning a 27" OLED TV, and later on showed new 21" prototypes, so it could be either, or both.

Via HDTVLounge

LG Display has revealed their OLED TV roadmap: 15" displays in 2009, 20" in 2010, 30" in 2011 and 40" or larger panels in 2012. The 40" panels in 2012 will be "fairly expensive", but they will be available in the market. These details were given by Won Kim, LG Display's OLED sales and marketing VP.

Kim says that the technical challenges for large-size OLED panels are:

• driver elements (Kim says that LG Display will probably use a TFT based on low-temperature polycrystal silicon, or an oxide-semiconductor such as IGZO).
• Organic materials and film forming process (LG will use fluorescent materials until 2011 and phosphorescent materials afterwards. LG are considering using printing technologies).
• Sealing process  (LG believes that solid sealing is desirable for TV panels).

With those measures, LG Display aims to get OLEDs at about 50% higher cost than LCD, with 30% lower yield in 2012. In 2016, OLEDs will be 20%-30% cheaper than LCD, with an equivalent yield.

Via Tech-On

Samsung is showing a new 30" 3D AMOLED panel. It's got Full-HD resolution, and a 1,000,000:1 contrast ratio. The width is 2.5mm. It uses Samsung's SEAV (Simultaneous Emission with Active Voltage) 3D technology. To view the 3D image, one must use special glasses.

Via Samsung

UPDATE: DisplaySearch says that the display is not stable, and SMD only showed it for a few hours and then moved it to another location.

IGNIS Innovation, in partnership with Kodak and Prime View International (PVI), has developed a 5" segment of a 32" OLED HDTV AMOLED display, using industry standard amorphous silicon thin film transistors (TFT). The prototype uses IGNIS' MaxLIfe solution, which compensates separately for both the TFT and LED degradation using only an electrical feedback - an industry first. This technology does not use any optical sensors which are unreliable.

IGNIS reports 20 years lifetime (when watching 12 hours a day), there is no burn-in images (the MaxLife technology keeps differential aging to 3% or less). The prototype was built using an amorphous silicon backplane from PVI using their standard a-Si LCD mass production process while the frontplane uses Kodak's long life and low power RGBW technology that delivers a vivid and outstanding viewing experience. They say that this combination provides the first reliable, low ost and scalable architecture.

AU Optronics are showing a new 14" OLED panel, with full HD resolution at 157 ppi. The brightness on an all-white image is 200cd/m2, the contrast is 100,000:1, the frequency is 120Hz and they say it's shows 72% NTSC color gamut. 

AUO claims that this panel are ready for mass production. They are using an evaporation method with a metal stencil mask.

Via TechOn