Competing technologies - Page 47

Our friend at the DisplayBlog, Jin, has written an interesting view on OLEDs. Basically he says that by the time OLEDs are available (around 2010, hopefully) LCD/PDP TVs might have better contrast, be just as thin and with the same color gamut - and obviously they will be cheaper when OLEDs first arrive. In fact he thinks that a 30" OLED will cost about as much as a 60" LCD - and he's probably right at that - I'm not sure however that everyone will want such huge TVs!

My take is a bit different. First of all, I believe that OLEDs will improve at a faster rate than LCD/PDP. It's true that much more money is invested in the older, more proven techs, but being a new technology OLEDs can enjoy a much faster rate of improvement (it's always like that with new tech).

Field Emission Technologies (of which Sony owns 37%) plans to mass-produce FED TVs in 2009. FED (Field Emission Displays) offers better picture quality than LCDs, and require half the energy (as they do not required backlighting). At first the TVs will be 26" in size, and later on they plan to produce 60" TVs.

Field Emission Technologies will invest something between 190$M and 280$M, buying a plant from Pioneer which is currently making Plasma TVs. Their sales forecast is 235M$ in the first two years.

I recently had the chance to interview Mr. Corey Hewitt and Dr. James Buntaine from Kodak OLED Systems. Kodak is where OLEDs were first discovered, and they are still in the fore-front of the technology. This is going to be a long article - these guys have given me a lot of background info, even before answering my questions. But first let's introduce Corey and James:

Mr. Corey Hewitt, Operations Manager & Vice President, Kodak OLED Systems
Mr. Hewitt's responsibilities include worldwide operations, finance, marketing and business development. Corey has traveled and worked closely on a worldwide basis with Dr. Buntaine in determining the future strategy for OLED technology and how it relates to Eastman Kodak Company. Corey received his Business Administration/Finance degree from the University at Buffalo and subsequently completed his Masters of Business Administration from the Rochester Institute of Technology. Corey has joined Kodak in 1999, and held several positions before becoming the Operations Manager and VP of Kodak OLED Systems.

Mitsubishi says that ther Laser-TVs are ready to hit the stores at Q3 2008. The "LaserVue" TVs will come in 65" and 73". Mitsubishi is not telling much about the technology, but they say taht the color gamut is twice the ones of 'traditional HDTVs'. The sets run at 120Hz, at 500 nits of brightness - pretty much like LCD/Plasma TV sets. The TVs are quite thick, though, at 10-inch.

One of the big advantages is the power-consumption - it's less than 200 watts - half of that of LCD, a third of plasma.

Read more here (Engadget)

According to E-Ink's Executive, e-newspapers are set to "explode" in late 2009. E-Ink claims that some newspapers in Japan, America and Europe are all considering making the move to e-paper. They will begin trials at the end of 2008 (several thousands of terminals).

Read more here (Engadget) 

Sharp's Miyuki Nakayama : "Organic EL screens like that just aren't a threat to LCD and they won't be for at least another decade. The picture quality is superb, but the screens don't last long and they can't easily be made bigger."

Sharp has "big plans" for LCD TV, and also smaller embedded LCD displays.

Chunghwa Picture Tubes (CPT) reports that it got authorization from ITRI (Taiwan's Research Institute) to use their organic TFT (OTFT) tech. CPT will be developing active-matrix flexible displays.

Read more (digitimes)

Panasonic's visual products and display devices business senior vice president and director, Masaaki Fujita, said that OLEDs will replace LCDs in the future. Plasma will still get developed, but LCDs will surely be replaced by OLED.

Masaaki says that Plasma has a better future than LCDs because of the self-illuminating nature (no need for backlight), and also because of its low manufacturing cost.

Sony has given an interesting presentation at SID. It seems like that the power efficiency depends on the TV program. In most programs OLED fares better than LCDs. (see the slide photo to the right)

Yoshito Shiraishi, general manager of E-Products and Business Development Department, TV Business Group, Sony, highlighted the superiority of OLED, saying, "OLED has many advantages over LCD."

E-Ink has a new display - based on Segmented-Display-Cell (SDC). It means that the new displays are 40% thinner, and are more flexible. The new displays can be formed in non-rectangular shapes, which allows for nice new designs. Delphi will be using the new display in their future keyfob products.

Read more here (Engadget)