OLED

With so many video glasses coming on the market, it's getting increasingly difficult for manufacturers to distinguish their wares. One of them is even offering a fashion line, which seems a bit of a stretch, to say the least.

eMagin, for its part, is taking what sometimes seems to be a novel approach these days: It's focusing on the technology. The company showed its latest offering at a conference in Los Angeles, a pair of 3D glasses that create the equivalent of a 105-inch screen viewed 12 feet away. Other models have made similar claims, but its "… Read more

That recent report questioning the longevity of Sony's OLED television displays apparently has done little to deter the company's headlong rush into the new technology.

The company is reportedly spending $210 million to manufacture medium to large versions of the paper-thin displays in fiscal 2009, according to Engadget. That's a big step up for the screens, which use less power and are far more flexible than plasmas or LCDs. To date the only OLED TV actually available for purchase has a display that measure just 11 inches--the XEL-1--hardly a size that can compete in a market where … Read more

This picture of a Samsung OLED laptop prototype raises more questions than it answers. Just how thin and light is it? Is touch-typing possible on that keyboard? Where's the mouse pad? What's that panel behind the display? Why is the woman pictured on the display checking her pulse? When can I have one?

What a translated-from-the Korean Samsung page does reveal is that it's an AMOLED (active matrix organic light-emitting diode) laptop prototype that Samsung's display division developed for the Society for Information Display's gathering in Los Angeles next week. According to Samsung, the prototype … Read more

Dupont and Dainippon Screen Manufacturing will form a strategic alliance to develop mass production techniques for organic light emitting diode (OLED) displays, according to an announcement made in Japan.

The focus is on developing better processes and printing equipment for the fabrication of OLED displays.

OLEDs are attracting interest because the panels are paper thin but offer extremely high-quality images, superb color saturation, and fast response times. And they draw little power because they don't require a backlight.

At the same time, they face durability challenges. The organic matter used to illuminate the image can by ruined by the … Read more

Sony appeared to be on the verge of starting the next revolution in TV technology last year when it introduced its first OLED television, most notable for its paper-thin screen. The display, which uses bright and low-power organic light-emitting diodes, appeared so promising that the prospects for LCD and plasma TVs were soon called into question.

A new study, however, may cast that future in a different light. A research firm called DisplaySearch tested Sony's XEL-1 TV and found that its brightness began to degrade significantly after 1,000 hours--translating to a loss of half its original quality in … Read more

Sony's teased us for a bit with its impossibly thin, 11-inch organic light-emitting diode (OLED) TV, and finally brought it to the U.S. this year. Now it looks like there will be more to choose from in OLED TVs next year. Samsung SDI says that by 2009, not only will it have OLED panels for larger TVs, but also for monitors and notebook displays, according to a report in Digitimes.

The report quotes Samsung SDI's VP of mobile display marketing, Woo-Jong Lee, who says that Samsung SDI will be able to produce 3 million panels in 2009, … Read more

There's thin. Then there's paper thin. Sony showed an electroluminescent (EL) display that's print-paper thin at the Display2008 conference in Tokyo.

The Sony EL display is based on organic light-emitting diode (OLED) technology that uses electroluminescent organic materials. OLED panels are extremely thin because they don't need backlights. The electroluminescent layer contains a polymer substance that directly converts electricity to light.

The panel shown this week at Diplay2008 is about 0.3mm thick, besting Sony's current 1.4mm-thick EL TV (photo). Epson lists its Premium Glossy Photo Paper as 0.3mm thick. So by this … Read more

We haven't been having much luck with MobiBlu MP3 players recently, but the company's brightest star, their Cube series, will be seeing a refresh on May 1st. The MobiBlu Cube3 will be offered in a 2GB capacity priced at $99, and includes a music player, photo viewer, voice recorder, video player, FM radio, and radio recorder. Looking at the text on the MobiBlu USA Web site, it's not apparent how the Cube3 will differ from the Cube2, but we're hoping the Cube3 will be small enough to inhale.

The Cube3's music player is compatible with … Read more

Your next lightbulb could come off a printing press.

General Electric's Global Research organization said Tuesday that it is the first to demonstrate roll-to-roll manufacturing for organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs)--a move that can dramatically lower costs.

OLEDs have been touted as the next generation of lighting and displays for consumer electronics like TVs.

They are very energy-efficient, are made out of flexible material, and can be tuned to give off different colors of light.

As part of its Ecomagination initiative, GE is investing in the technology in an effort to make it a viable replacement for incandescent or … Read more