I see David Pogue is trying to scoop Karl Lang in today's NY Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/01/technolo...ch/01pogue.html

Insiders know Lang mentioned Sony's O.L.E.D. at his monitor seminar at PhotoExpo last October. But Lang predicted a 5-10-year wait before Sony could create a size that photographers could embrace and afford. Maybe a new prediction is in order.

Uh huh...the one he was talking about was 11" and cost $2500. While 10 years seems an outlying number, 3-5 years before massive increase of production and size of OLED doesn't seem too out of line. We're only now getting 42-47" LCDs below $2K for TVs (although Samsung has a 70" 1080i for only $39,000).

Which happens to be the same one featured in Pogue's article. Lang didn't have a stock photo of the actual unit, though.

This tecnology is such that once the production lines are set up you can manufacture these babies like newspapers. Cost will be minimal and you most probably will take delivery of a large screen TV rolled up in a tube.

It's possible you can have whole walls that are OLED to change room colors on a whim... no more paint... display art... TV... you name it.

Gonna be great

This thread got me interested in reading about OLEDs. The same technology will be used to make low cost efficient lighting.

http://www.oled-info.com/oled-light

Yes, OLED screens is something I have been waiting for many years. The early ones had problems with the blue component not lasting for very long. However it seems like they are solving that part.
Production should be very cheap, I remember reading one can actually print them out, so size and volume should not be a problem.

What I find strange is that no company has focused on making the first screens for the graphical and photography desktop users, who are already paying a premium for high quality displays.
With oleds you will not discuss contrast anymore, because black is simple having the pixel turned off, no backlight to create annoying lightgrey or color shifts!
We will have no more problems with viewing angles, as each one is a led that is shining in all directions. It will be possible to calibrate the displays for perfect eveness. They use less power and the displays will be very thin!
Switching times are measured in nanoseconds instead of milliseconds, so no more lag!

Eizo, Nec, why aren't you making oled screens yet?!
Or sony, how about grabbing the whole professional display market from them

According to the article OLEDs have burn in issues with fixed images that are common in photo editing. Also, we already have monitors with much greater contrast and brightenss than we use for photo editing where we are trying to adjust images for printed output.

GE has just announced that they can do roll to roll manufacturing of OLEDs. I think their goal is OLEDs for lighting not for monitors. Osram is making OLED lighting. Others are working on it.

Yeah.... all you'll need then is a $10,000 video card to address all those pixels.

Yes they have burn in issues, as CRTs and Plasmas have. Still all the rest of the specifications (except blue life length) beats everything else, so I'm willing to live with having to change display after a couple of years.

I agree that we already have greater contrast than what we can print. The important thing for me is not really the contrast, it's that blacks are simple not blacks on any monitor today. Turn on the best of the best monitors with a black image (nothing else showing on the screen) in a dark room and what you see is not a pretty sight

Sony's tv sounds fun, but Samsung has something more interesting cooking!
In january 2005 they already had a press release about this 21" OLED display with 1920×1200 pixels resolution.
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20050105-4500.html
Curious to know what happened with it...

At the risk of stating the obvious, to manufacture a new type of screen, using a new technology, requires substantial investment in research and development, and then more investment in factories. And when you are the first, you might have trouble getting the tools. So you would have a huge capital investment and associated risk as you might find yield or sales do not meet expectations. And many companies might still have to recoup investment in existing manufacturing facilities, which mitigates against moving to something completely new.

Chances are that Sony will learn a lot from making 11" screens, and will slowly increase the size. Maybe you remember how long it took to go from 11" TFT screens on laptops to todays humungous and cheap units?

Maybe this matters to you but not to me. Black and white are relative terms not absolute ones. Our visual system quickly accomodates for that. For instance we'll still see a black piece of paper as black when we take it from the shade into direct sunlight. On our monitors I think the most relavent thing is the brightness range not the the starting point. But maybe others are more sensitive to this than I am.

Sony isn't the only one with OLED technology or the ability to manufacture OLED screens cheaper. It may not be chic to think of them these days but Kodak has some serious mental and manufacturing prowess in this space as well.