The FlatHDTV Blog

One of the big questions most HDTV buyers have these days is: which of the three most popular technologies (LCD, Plasma, DLP) should I choose? Or, should I wait for the next big thing I’ve been hearing about, OLED (Organic Light Emitting Diode)?

The answer is no- unless you’re willing to wait several years. Buy your favorite HDTV that’s on the market now, and when that one wears out, you will probably be seriously considering an OLED. Here’s why:

• OLED screens are made with a synthetic organic substance, which is similar to the chemical that lights up fireflies and deep-sea fish. This substance shines bright and cool, doesn’t need a backlight like LCD sets, and so consumes very little energy.
• The construction process allows OLED screens to be extremely thin- an 80-inch HDTV might be as thin as a quarter inch.
• The OLED screen will be more durable, will handle greater temperature ranges, will change images quicker, and will even be flexible.
• They will eventually be produced in much larger sizes then current HDTV sets, and should be cheaper when production gets up to a certain level.

There are still a few bugs to work out, though. Here’s an example: the OLED screen is made of several layers of the organic substance, each of which is responsible for displaying a different color. The red and green layers have proven to last up to 40,000 hours in some laboratories, but researchers are having trouble getting the blue layers to last more than 4,000 hours in prototype screens.

The bugs aren’t preventing the big HDTV companies from spreading the word, though. Here are some recent updates and press releases on OLED:

http://techblog.dallasnews.com/archives/2008/05/sony-previews-03mm-or-is-that.html

http://www.current.com.au/2008/05/29/article/RXKLVDONVA.html

http://gizmodo.com/393734/giz-explains-oled-the-future-of-tv

http://blog.wired.com/gadgets/2008/05/sony-to-acceler.html