CNet has posted a video interview of Kodak's OLED Wireless Digital Photo Frame, saying that the OLED display offers brilliant color and a sharp image. Update: The video is no longer available.

The 7.6" AMOLED panel offers 800x480 resolution, white to black contrast ratio of 30,000:1. It is made by CMEL.

Universal Display Corporation and SFC from Koea announced today that the companies have entered into a strategic business agreement to develop and commercialize highly-efficient phosphorescent OLED material systems.

Based on Universal Display’s proprietary UniversalPHOLED technology, Universal Display will support SFC’s development and marketing of phosphorescent hosts and other non-emitter materials that are matched to Universal Display’s phosphorescent OLED emitter materials. The companies will market and sell their respective materials that result from the collaboration. As part of the arrangement, SFC will transfer certain existing phosphorescent emitter materials to Universal Display, including manufacturing and sales of these materials.

What Hi-Fi has spoken to Samsung's VP of Flat-Panel development, who says LCDs will 'hold off OLEDs for many years'.  HS Kim says that OLEDs are pricier, and people will not pay more for such TVs. Also LCDs are advancing quickly in areas such as power consumption, so this isn't good news for OLED either.

On the plus side, HS Kim says Samsung can already make 50" OLED TVs, and may show them at CES.

This comes only a few days after Samsung said we'll see OLED laptops in 2010 and that OLEDs are going to be 'mainstream' soon.

Out take? First of all Samsung is a big company with many units, so it's fair that not everyone thinks the same. Samsung is commited to Mobile OLEDs - for phones, PDAs and laptops. These panels are smaller (up to 15" for laptops), and the power efficiency is important for mobile devices. However in the TV market, things are more difficult...

After a long legal battle (over 3 years), patens in the SED TV case have been settled, and now Canon can launch their SED TVs. SED TVs are said to have a beautiful picure and viewing angle, but are as thin as an LCD or PDP display.

Canon is yet to mass-produce those kind of TVs (up until now they only produced prototypes). In fact Canon's president said they will not launch SED TVs immediatly - in fact because of the recent slump in TV prices, Canon will have a hard time introducing an expensive new TV.

Yesterday we reported that the TOPLESS project is showing an OLED lamp, we now have more info and a photo (to the right, click to enlarge - it is shown next to Joseph Swan's original incandescent light bulb design from 130 years ago).

The lamp is just a prototype (the cost to make them are very high currently). They used battery to power these - as they use only 4-5v to power. The efficiency is about 17Lm/W (as there is no out-coupling. With out-coupling the efficiency is over 30Lm/W), each panel operating at 3W. The panels are just 0.7mm thick, made by Sumation with TOPLESS materials (here's a link to a couple of photos of the panels).

If you want more info on TOPLESS, check out our interview with Dr. Geoff Williams, the project's manager.

At the Interservice/Industry Training, Simulation and Education Conference (I/ITSEC), several companies show products that use eMagin's OLED microdisplays.

Intevac Vision Systems (IVS) shows a near eye displays, bonicoluars with microdisplays, and a monocular product. NVIS are showing a hand-held display, while Rockwell are showing a transparent microviewer designed for remote viewing. 

Sensics are also showing new head-mounted displays. The xSight is using 12 of eMagin's 3D OLED-XL displays, and delivers a 123 panormaic field of view, with 1680x1050 pixels per eye. There's also an OEM version.

All in all there are 9 products that use eMagin's OLEDs.

Samsung gave their point of view about OLED mobile displays in a keynote speech. They like OLEDs because of the great picture quality, environmental issues and touchscreen compatiability.

Samsung says that by 2010 we will have OLED laptops - and 5" and larger displays will be 'the mainstream'

In 5 years 28% of laptops will use an OLED display (yeah, exactly 28%). OLEDs will only cost 10% more than LCDs by that time. 

Vitex has produced a nice video of several OLED products that use their thin film encapsulation technology. Among those products you can see the Samsung's flapping display, foldable phone and curved displays. Several UDC OLED prototypes are in there as well, including their flexible displays, developed together by LGDisplay.

Vitex told us that their tech is used on AMOLED and PMOLED displays, on glass, silicon or metal foil. Some of those products use direct encapsulation, and some use barrier substrate. A few of the photos seen show products that use flexible CIGS PV cells laminated with Vitex's barrier.

GE has reportedly stopped working on Incandescent light bulbs. They actually had plans to make efficient and clean Incandescent bulbs, and even had working prototypes, but they scrapped those plans because governments are starting to ban those kind of light sources.

GE will instead focus on LEDs and OLEDs. GE has stated before that it hopes to have OLED light products by 2010.

The TOPLESS project is showing today a white-light OLED desk lamp. The lamp is built from 5 panels. Each one is 0.7mm thick, and they are made by Sumation UK with TOPLESS materials.

Currently we just have a couple of photos of the panels themselves, We'll have photos of the lamp and information soon. More info on TOPLESS can be found in our June interview with Dr. Geoff Williams, the project's manager.