OLED TV: Introduction and Industry News - Page 4

Samsung Electronics announced its 2024 OLED TV lineup, with 3 series. The company's flagship OLED TV for 2024, the S95D, offers 55-, 65-, or 77-inch 4K 144hz QD-OLED panels, offering high brightness (up to 3000 nits peak brightness), a new anti-glare coating to minimize reflections, Tizen 8.0 OS, and an external One Connect box for a sleek design. The S95D offers AI-Enhanced color accuracy - validated by Pantone.

Samsung also announced two more series - S90D and S85D. Interestingly, it did not detail whether these TVs use QD-OLED (produced by SDC) or WOLED panels (produced by LGD) - or a mix as it did last year within the same series. 

LG Display announced that it has developed its 2nd generation Multi-Lens Array (MLA) technology, branded as META Technology 2.0.  The company demonstrated a 83" META 2.0 OLED TV panel, during CES 2023. The company will apply this technology to several of its 2024 OLED TVs, ranging in size from 55-inch to 88". 

META 2.0 WOLED panels achieve a peak brightness of 3,000 nits - a 42% improvement over the company's conventional panels. LGD explains that META 2.0 includes a pattern of optimized micrometer-scale lenses with an optimized lens angle, an upgraded "brightness enhancing algorithm" called META Multi Booster, and a full-range brightness detail enhancing algorithm called Detail Enhancer. All of these new technologies, combined, makes for a META 2.0 panel. In a 77-inch 4K panel, there are 42.4 billion micro lenses (!).

LG Electronics formally announced it latest OLED TV, its 2024 range. The company introduced several new features: 144Hz refresh rate on most of the models, a new image processor and Chromecast support. LG did not yet disclose the pricing or shipping dates for the 2024 OLED TVs.

The 2024 OLED TV range starts with the OLED B4 series (no 60Hz A series this year), that offers 48-, 55-, 65-, and 77-inch options, 120Hz 4K resolution, an Alpha 8 image processor, webOS 24 and built-in Chromecast. The OLED C4 improves over the B4 with 144Hz refresh rates an Alpha 9 Gen-7 image processor. The C4 is available in 42-, 48-, 55-, 65-, 77- and 83-inch options.

RTINGS.com posted an interesting article, detailing the results of their long-term (10-months) longevity tests on several OLED and LCD TVs and monitors. The test is simple - display a CNN feed constantly, and checking what happens. Note that CNN changed their logo a bit a few months into the test, but the team did not make any changes to the test itself.

As is expected, OLED monitors and TVs suffer from image retention problems, and the CNN logo is visible in some of these panels, when showing a gray screen. Some TVs suffer more than others. 

In July 2023, Samsung officially launched the 83" 83S90C, the company's first TV to use LG's WOLED panels, following several years of negotiations and hesitation by the Korean rivals.

It was assumed that Samsung's total orders from LGD will be limited (as the 83-inch are expensive and not highly popular), and according to UBI, the total number of panels that LGD actually shipped to Samsung is only 'several thousands'.

DSCC reports that according to its information, OLED panel shipments in Q3 2023 increased 14% from last year (and 18% from the previous quarter) to reach 205 million units. There are positive signs that inventory has started to rebalance for some categories.

OLED smartphone shipments increased 12% over last quarter (and 25% from last year), while OLED TV shipments continue to be soft, and dropped 14% from last quarter and 40% (!) from last year.

LG Display announced that its third-generation WOLED META TV panels have earned UL Solutions' Platinum eye safety rating and the UL Mark for low blue light. LGD's panels earned a score of 36%, the lowest among all existing TV panels (conventional LCDs range from 70-80%, and lower scores are better). 

This year, UL Solutions has implemented more stringent criteria for measuring blue light emissions in an effort to give consumers more reliable information, with program ratings now classified as Platinum, Gold, Silver, and Bronze. The top rating, Platinum, is awarded to display products with blue light wavelength emissions that sit below 40% of the total blue light wavelength emissions.

Omdia says that the large-area FPD TV market (OLED and LCD) suffered from low demand in early 2023, but improved in Q3 2023. LCD TV prices increased, and companies were profitable again. However Omdia estimates that demand will soften again, and the market will suffer from over supply in Q4 2023 and the first half of 2024.

Omdia says that a supply/demand ratio of 10% represents a balanced market. This won't be achieved in the near future. Since the pandemic supply shortages, there's currently enough factory capacity to meet demand, and then some. The growth in demand enabled display makers to increase fab utilization from around 60% in early 2023 to around 85% in July 2023. However, fab utilization is expected to decline to around 75% in Q4 2023.

Value Electronics hosted their annual TV shootout, checking several high-end TVs to see which model provides the best images. The TVs were professionally calibrated, and tested one next to the other. In total, Value Electronics' shootout featured 6 65" 4K TVs - 3 OLEDs and 3 MiniLED LCD. IN the 8K shootout, there were 3 TVs, from Samsung, Sony and LG. As in previous years, OLED TVs were crowned the "King of TVs", in both the 4K and 8K categories.

For the 4K TV shootout, the best TV in the shootout was Sony's A95L QD-OLED TV. The runner-ups were Samsung's S95C (another QD-OLED TV) and LG's G3 OLED (with an LGD WOLED Panel). The 8K shootout's winner was LG's Z2 WOLED TV.

Aviation display technology specialist Rosen Aviation is increasing its line of high-end OLED displays, and is set to introduce a 97-inch WOLED panel, the biggest ever display in an aircraft cabin.

Rosen Aviation - future VIP cabin design concept

Rosen Aviation's 97" OLED is set to receive the supplemental type certificate for a VIP aircraft by the end of 2023. Rosen has already signed up its first customer. Rosen says that beyond the exception OLED display quality, this display is very lightweight compared to a comparable LED LCD solution.