OLED: What we know

(Credit: LG)

Rumors are still flying about the next great TV technology: Organic Light Emitting Diode.

It's difficult to pry info out of the companies involved, but I figured it was worth putting down what we know, what we think we know, and what we know we don't know, ya know?

OK, go.

Hardware

What we know: OLED is the next generation of TV technology. It has the best performance characteristics of plasma and LCD, with few of the drawbacks of either.

For the specifics, check out my article "What is OLED TV?"

What we don't: LG has confirmed it's using RGBW, or red, green, blue, and white subpixels (as described in the above link). Samsung, at CES, affirmed its fealty to RGB (no white subpixel). What we don't know is what Sony and Panasonic (see below) are going use. Will there be a performance or price difference between the different versions? We don't know.

Which leads to...

Performance

What we know: Wow. OLED is just...wow. Seriously. OLED is way better than the best plasma, and makes the best LCD look like a cell phone screen circa 1998. The trick is being able to turn off individual pixels, for a black that is actually the absence (or near enough to it)... [Read more]