OLEDs on the way

[Mr. Anderson]

Kodak rolled out a new camera with an OLED display, the first in a camera.

http://www.cnn.com/2003/TECH/11/19/hln.wired.oleds/index.html

Given the potential of the technology we might see computer OLED displays in a few years.

D

[judith]

Here's a great link for watching the hap's in the industry:
Global Sources (http://www.globalsources.com/am/article_id/9000000046760/artclpg/1/page/showrelatedarticles?action=GetArticle)

[Ambrose Chapel]

i wonder what they are charging for that camera.

my dad is obsessed with OLED - every time we end up talking about cameras he ends up saying how he won't buy a new one until OLEDs are the standard.

[judith]

funny... I keep saying the same thing about plasma..

[Mr. Anderson]

ha, but the nice thing about OLEDs is that they have much higher potential than the plasma and LCD displays. They're brighter, use less energy and once they start getting mass produced they'll be cheaper since they require less steps and materials to assemble and produce.

Besides, who wouldn't want a roll up screen for the powerbook? :D

D

[Kid Red]

Ok, let's ground ourselves in reality for a few minutes. OLED in consumer TVs is way off, 5 years at least. With DLP, LSoC, Plasma and a new LCD I hardly see anything exciting for OLED. By the time it reaches market, there will be 5 more alternatives added to the list above. Don't hold your breathe for OLED.

[kuyu]

with OLED, we could easily see battery life in the double digits.

A side note: everyone keeps focusing on the "heat" issue with notebook G5's. What about the power issue. Apple could make a huge splash on X-mas of 04 with a G5 powerbook with an OLED. Just imagine, G5 at around 3.5 - 4.0 GHz, with ten hours of battery life at full throttle.

Also, OLED is easily replacable because of the sheeting property inherint in screen-printing televisions. One more thing, the resolution could get to the molecular level. That would sell a lot of units. "12 inch powerbook with 51,200 X 38400 resolution." Now that's crisp.

[judith]

Yes, and for just $1695, you too could purchase an olight evaluation kit (http://www.olight.com/dupont/olight/public/prod_olight_eval_kit.cfm) IF you could meet the system requirements.

Is Apple teamed with a major developer?

[judith]

Originally posted by Kid Red
Ok, let's ground ourselves in reality for a few minutes. OLED in consumer TVs is way off, 5 years at least. With DLP, LSoC, Plasma and a new LCD I hardly see anything exciting for OLED. By the time it reaches market, there will be 5 more alternatives added to the list above. Don't hold your breathe for OLED.

yeah, i know it's wishful thinking, but considering the competition between DuPont, Siemens, and UDC coupled with Toshiba (who just today announced winning the Army PHOLED contract) Perhaps not so far off after all...
Besides, I like electro-magnetism, so I'm staying w/CRT.;)

[gwuMACaddict]

i remember a fee monthes ago when oled's were tossed around as the next ipod display. i thought that would be super cool. maybe now that kodak is using it in cameras, apple will use it in the ipod. wishful thinking

[judith]

Originally posted by judith
...considering the competition between DuPont, Siemens, and UDC coupled with Toshiba (who just today announced winning the Army PHOLED contract) Perhaps not so far off after all...

ooops! I lied, not Toshiba, but Tohoku - Pioneer.
here's the official release:
Universal Display Corp (http://www.universaldisplay.com/newsroom.php?pr=2003-11-19)

[Mr. Anderson]

Camera backs, cell phones and pdas will most likely see the OLED displays first.

Small OLED monitors will be along a little later (years). Getting a nice 36" OLED display for your computer is not something we'd see anytime soon. Baby steps, but in this case good stuff and great potential - especially if they can get the prices down.

D

[MoparShaha]

OLED's are cool, but isn't a major hurdle with them the actual life of the display. I remember reading OLED's don't last very long. They lose their color saturation, or something to that effect. Anybody else hear about this?

[the future]

Samsung have made the first (?) mobile phone with an OLED display, the SGH-E700. Nice phone, btw, but pretty expensive.

[patrick0brien]

Originally posted by MoparShaha
OLED's are cool, but isn't a major hurdle with them the actual life of the display. I remember reading OLED's don't last very long. They lose their color saturation, or something to that effect. Anybody else hear about this?

-MoparShaha

Yes, actually, the first generation of OLED's would lose the blue channel after about 1,000 hours of use, but that was about two years ago - they are much farther along, but the channel lifetimes aren't as high as they would like. In order to "reach the promised land" for the OLEDs, they'd need to have a lifetime ranked in the millions of hours. And that' is the last technical hurdle we are waiting for.

[phrancpharmD]

Originally posted by judith
Yes, and for just $1695, you too could purchase an olight evaluation kit (http://www.olight.com/dupont/olight/public/prod_olight_eval_kit.cfm) IF you could meet the system requirements.


I thought this was "interesting" use of terminology from their web page:

"The display module connects to IBM-compatible PCs via USB or standard parallel interface"

guess what the system requirements were - PPC CPU?

Guess again!

System requirements
Windows 98/XP/2000/NT
USB or parallel port
CD-ROM drive

What a blast from the past seeing "PCs" referred to as "IBM compatible!"


Back on topic, though. I'm looking very forward to 2006, Apple will have a (dual?) G5 or maybe even G6 PowerBook with an OLED display powered by a diminuitive ethanol (big breaks for ethanol in Dubya's energy "plan," by the way) based fuel cell, and OS X will be around 10.6 or something, and, oh yeah, Longhorn will finally be released. . .

[wdlove]

Thank you for the information Mr. Anderson, the technology looks very interesting. Less space and lower energy use would be a big plus. Since Apple is the real innovator of computer technology, I would expect that Steve will be the first to introduce OLEDS for the personal computer.

[mactastic]

I can hardly even imagine the screen on my TiBook being any thinner. That would be incredible. And the power savings would also be amazing. I wonder how long an OLED-equiped PowerBook would run on current battery technology.

[~Shard~]

Originally posted by wdlove
Thank you for the information Mr. Anderson, the technology looks very interesting. Less space and lower energy use would be a big plus. Since Apple is the real innovator of computer technology, I would expect that Steve will be the first to introduce OLEDS for the personal computer.

I agree - if anyone is going to intriduce this in the computer market, you know it's going to be Mr. Jobs. :) Now the question is when, and what other alternatives will be out there by the time OLEDs due become more feasible in this respect?

[judith]

Originally posted by phrancpharmD

Back on topic, though. I'm looking very forward to 2006, Apple will have a (dual?) G5 or maybe even G6 PowerBook with an OLED display powered by a diminuitive ethanol (big breaks for ethanol in Dubya's energy "plan," by the way) based fuel cell, and OS X will be around 10.6 or something, and, oh yeah, Longhorn will finally be released. . .

I'm all for anything than runs on ethanol! Hmm.. a top-fuel G5..interesting..

[Mr. Anderson]

Originally posted by judith
I'm all for anything than runs on ethanol! Hmm.. a top-fuel G5..interesting..

Not that ethanol is a bad thing - great as far as I'm concerned - I'm just wondering if you'd be able to bring them on airplanes?

That might prevent these from entering the market soon....:(

D

[manitoubalck]

Originally posted by Mr. Anderson
Not that ethanol is a bad thing

Hell no, Ethanol soothes the pain.
Anyway back on topic, I heard that the OLED screens are exteremely flexible, to the extent they can be rolled up. Is that true?

[phrancpharmD]

Originally posted by Mr. Anderson
Not that ethanol is a bad thing - great as far as I'm concerned - I'm just wondering if you'd be able to bring them on airplanes?

That might prevent these from entering the market soon....:(

D

I thought they would only require 5 - 10mL, and you could get DAYS of use out of them. I'm pretty sure I've read about it on various threads here, but it might have been discussed elsewhere. . . It would pretty much suck though if you couldn't carry on your laptop!