Pricey 55-inch OLED TVs from LG, Samsung delayed until 2H 2013

Rick

Posts: 4,512   +66

Remember those astonishingly thin, bright and feature-packed 55-inch OLED televisions slated to cost between $8,000 and $9,000? It appears those inordinately priced TVs are now inordinately delayed. The revised ETA is now a very distant "late next year", according to unnamed sources at The Korea Times.

Samsung and LG, the two electronics makers who promised us these exciting, mind-rotting devices, are said to be having worse-than-expected difficulties manufacturing the sets. "Samsung and LG recently scrapped their plans to mass-produce 55-inch OLED televisions this year as the companies are having serious difficulties in improving manufacturing yield" sources claimed.

Samsung and LG have yet to confirm these troubles, however.

After showing off its ultra-thin 55-inch OLED television at CES, LG figured it would have consumer offerings as early as May. Yes, that's right folks: May of 2012. Obviously though, that deadline passed many months ago. Afterward, LG revised its OLED TV's release date to sometime this fall -- an estimate which also appears to be overzealous.

Although the ETA of LG's elusive OLED offering has remained a moving target, Samsung has been hoping to introduce its own 55-inch OLED entry before this year's end. Much like LG though -- if sources are correct -- Samsung will not have 55-inch models until late 2013.

Earlier this year, Samsung accused LG of having "systematically stole its display technology and poached Samsung employees." Dozens of individuals, including six LG employees and LG itself, were formally charged with stealing trade secrets.

OLED (organic light-emitting diode) technology is superior to traditional LCD in a number of ways and the pairing of OLED + TV should product a delightful consumer experience. 

OLED screens don't require a backlight because each pixel provides its own light source. As a result, such displays can be super thin, provide better contrast, deeper blacks, better viewing angles and do it all with (potentially) less power. OLEDs provide faster response times too, effectively eliminating latency or "ghosting". While large LCD panels typically have response times higher than 20 milliseconds, comparably-sized OLEDs can attain latencies less than .01 millisecond.

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Good riddance. They weren't that good to start with. The only way such high price can be justified is if they offered 4K resolution with automatic up-scaling. But those are just regular 1080P-s, which for the money they ask make you puke...
 
Why what is the problem? Are production costs too high? What are the "worse-than-expected difficulties"?

Did you read the specs on these things?! it sounds like the most awesome, perfect TV ever. In fact, it's almost too good to be true.

Turns out it is. :(
 
Samsung and others are about to offer 5" phones with 1080P, which is 441 PPI. To offer TV-s amidst this with just about 50 PPI and yet 10 times the price is a shame.
 
Out of topic, but:
I have a feeling that Apple will be the first to release an OLED monitor for desktop, but I wonder who will provide the displays for them, Samsung is out of discussion, maybe LG?
 
Why do people care so much about all these new panel technologies, is it because they are so thin? Are you going to jack off to their thinness or something?

A couple years ago the new LED TVs were all the rage (especially 3D ones), what, are they all obsolete and lame now? But forget those, even the modern LCD or Plasma panels are also pretty decent quality wise, but even so the majority of ordinary people cant really see much of a difference between these technologies with naked eye anyway, you need to be a tech enthusiast/perfectionist to actually feel the difference of a few ms less response time or slightly different blacks, etc. What really matters is what signal you feed into the TV, you can get a few thousand dollar TV and then still suffer the crappy picture because the your cable provider does not offer all the channels in HD and your DVD collection has inadequate resolution. (ha, HD, 1080p should have long since been the standard by now, however not only have we not gone to higher resolution, we are still having trouble fully switching to the so called HD).

So really, in the end when bragging to your neighbors about your bleeding edge ultra high tech TV, you only get to say what it COULD potentially do if you feed it Blueray instead of what it actually does with the majority of the media.
 
I bet it is not the manufacturing but the shipping. You toss that box being light and the tv breaks in half. At that thin you just bump the box and it breaks. Unless it is the flex screen at which point you can fold the thing. At .01 ms it should be perfect for fast action movies or games. It will hypnotize your kids.
 
The image quality in the current TVs is fine as it is, what matters more now is the quality of the input signal that goes into your TV rather than what the TV itself can do in perfect conditions.

What we really need is to increase the panel size (the all around standard size now seems to be ~52-55 inches, there are some 65" ones available but they are expensive. I think the 65" should be made the new "standard size" instead) and then bump up the resolution. Of course with pixel count increase in the TVs you also run into the problems of input signal standards vs panel resolution, and how to convert/display the output if the resolutions do not match, that could really degrade the image quality.

Would it be possible perhaps to do what Apple did with their screens and just double the pixel count over the standard 1080p ?

I think, if something like that is doable (65" panel with double the current HD resolution), it could actually be worth 7-9k, unlike the yet another yearly "new breakthrough panel technology" with marginal image quality increase that people will hardly ever notice in real life conditions.
 
OLED panels are very important because LCD technology has a lot of issues. OLED has much better colors and near zero latency, which should benefit not only gamers. for a comparison look the color quality on a smartphone like the samsung galaxy S2 or the display on the Playstation Vita. I don't know about Apple, they don't even have OLED on their phones.
 
Why do people care so much about all these new panel technologies, is it because they are so thin? Are you going to jack off to their thinness or something?

A couple years ago the new LED TVs were all the rage (especially 3D ones), what, are they all obsolete and lame now? But forget those, even the modern LCD or Plasma panels are also pretty decent quality wise, but even so the majority of ordinary people cant really see much of a difference between these technologies with naked eye anyway, you need to be a tech enthusiast/perfectionist to actually feel the difference of a few ms less response time or slightly different blacks, etc. What really matters is what signal you feed into the TV, you can get a few thousand dollar TV and then still suffer the crappy picture because the your cable provider does not offer all the channels in HD and your DVD collection has inadequate resolution. (ha, HD, 1080p should have long since been the standard by now, however not only have we not gone to higher resolution, we are still having trouble fully switching to the so called HD).

So really, in the end when bragging to your neighbors about your bleeding edge ultra high tech TV, you only get to say what it COULD potentially do if you feed it Blueray instead of what it actually does with the majority of the media.

The answer is in the very human nature, to strive for better without stopping, that's all there is to it ;)
 
Why do people care so much about all these new panel technologies, is it because they are so thin? Are you going to jack off to their thinness or something?

A couple years ago the new LED TVs were all the rage (especially 3D ones), what, are they all obsolete and lame now? But forget those, even the modern LCD or Plasma panels are also pretty decent quality wise, but even so the majority of ordinary people cant really see much of a difference between these technologies with naked eye anyway, you need to be a tech enthusiast/perfectionist to actually feel the difference of a few ms less response time or slightly different blacks, etc. What really matters is what signal you feed into the TV, you can get a few thousand dollar TV and then still suffer the crappy picture because the your cable provider does not offer all the channels in HD and your DVD collection has inadequate resolution. (ha, HD, 1080p should have long since been the standard by now, however not only have we not gone to higher resolution, we are still having trouble fully switching to the so called HD).

So really, in the end when bragging to your neighbors about your bleeding edge ultra high tech TV, you only get to say what it COULD potentially do if you feed it Blueray instead of what it actually does with the majority of the media.

obviously you don't know much about the weakness of the LCD and Plasma, or you inherently don't care. technology evolve to improve on the shortcomings of current gen tech. OLED improves on the dredded back lighting issue that plagues all LCD and Plasma by lighting each individual pixels as oppose to the entire panel, this only brings pictures to even closer to real life. colors are brought to life, not to mention consume a fraction of the conventional tv sets.
 
@howzz1854 LED backlit LCD covers that case you refer to pretty well. It might not have 0.01ms response but it has 5ms at a much better price.

Still... when they get something to the market at a decent price, I'll have a look! The tech does sound interesting.
 
@howzz1854 LED backlit LCD covers that case you refer to pretty well. It might not have 0.01ms response but it has 5ms at a much better price.

Still... when they get something to the market at a decent price, I'll have a look! The tech does sound interesting.

the LCD local dimming only covers quadrants. OLED are organic pixel based, in which each individual pixels can be controlled. that's like saying both cars have engines, but they're not the same, if you're comparing a corvette to a v6 accord.

it's the same thing with every new technology. when LCD panel first came out, the top of the line cost upgrades of tens and thousands of dollars. but that's no reason to bash it.
 
so..... smaller quadrants... what's the difference, still nowhere near as good as organically lit pixel by pixel.
Quadrants implies 4. I just pointed that out. I also already said I know it is not quite pixel level. What is the point of your post?
 
I want a 4K monitor and I think a good size would be around 27inch, then a 17inch screen for my laptop. I don't really care that much about using a 4K TV, but the screen real estate would be very useful. I am not a fan of multi-screen and would rather a single high-res screen.
 
Quadrants implies 4. I just pointed that out. I also already said I know it is not quite pixel level. What is the point of your post?

what is yours...

btw you do know that you can still slice a quadrant into smaller quadrants and so on... skipped math class?
 
I have a degree in mathematics and I'd dare say I didn't skip any classes...

http://www.thefreedictionary.com/quadrant
http://www.mathsisfun.com/definitions/quadrant-graph-.html

some lousy degree... at least I know you know how to count to 4.

here's a slightly more advanced math for you, take a rectangle, slice it in 4, and take one out of 4, and slice it again, and take one out of another 4 and slice it again into 4. but that's probably a little too complex for you. sorry.
 
some lousy degree... at least I know you know how to count to 4.

here's a slightly more advanced math for you, take a rectangle, slice it in 4, and take one out of 4, and slice it again, and take one out of another 4 and slice it again into 4. but that's probably a little too complex for you. sorry.
Yes you can do that. But here's a spoiler for you. It is no longer called a quadrant.

An area divided into quadrants has exactly 4 zones. No more. No less. If you call them quadrants, there are 4. The moment you divide again, you are no longer talking about a quadrant. Basic english. Refer to the earlier links. That is the definition of a quadrant.
 
Those of you who wish to carry on your argument regarding the definition of quadrants, you are invited to do so via private conversation. I kind of think that's enough for this thread.
 
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