The Future of Displays

[Janak Parekh]

<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://pd.pennnet.com/Articles/Article_Display.cfm?Section=Articles&Subsection=Display&ARTICLE_ID=173726' target='_blank'>http://pd.pennnet.com/Articles/Arti...TICLE_ID=173726</a><br /><br /></div>This is an excellent article talking about various trends in modern display technology, including 3D displays, OLEDs, LEPs, power reduction issues, and more.<br /><br />"While some segments of the portable market creep along at a relatively slow pace, others move fairly quickly. Most designers have a tough time keeping up with the latest and greatest microprocessors, due to the pace they keep. But there's an area that's moving even faster—displays. The displays in today's portable systems are far more impressive than the models that shipped just a year ago, and the innovations on the horizon are quite remarkable (see, "Displays that talk," p. 30).<br /><br />There's been a lot of talk recently about three-dimensional displays, as well as Organic LEDs, or OLEDs. The OLEDs could potentially put a very bright color display on a portable system, with a wide viewing angle. The knock on these displays has been that they are expensive to manufacture, and they consume lots of power. Both these issues are now being addressed, particularly the power aspect."

[kagayaki1]

An OLED engineer I talked to last week said the the OLED technology suffers from a fundemental flaw that will keep it out of desktop monitors for a while (15", 17", etc). They're having trouble keeping the displays fully powered when they get larger than about 10".

I remember seeing a picture of an OLED screen (Hitachi?) and it was cool, but still pretty small. They don't encounter the same problems with small displays (example: the new Kodak camera) and, as the engineer tells me, PDA test screens are stable. It's just when they try for standard monitor sizes they run into problems.

It may be a while...
-Jason

[mscdex]

What are you talking about? OLEDs were designed so that there would be very low power consumption (especially since there is no need for a backlight), and that they were very inexpensive to manufacture because they are organic, and not made from expensive modern-day LCD-type materials.

[Janak Parekh]

mscdex, sometimes the early technology doesn't match such goals. Check out the article -- power consumption has been higher than desirable for OLEDs up until this point.

--janak

[mscdex]

mscdex, sometimes the early technology doesn't match such goals. Check out the article -- power consumption has been higher than desirable for OLEDs up until this point.

--janak

I realize that, but I was referring to just thinking about the concept and the logic behind it. It's organic... which means it comes from nature and isn't made from mostly/all expensive man-made materials. And that the properties of this organic substance make it self-illuminating, you wouldn't need a backlight, which would cut down power consumption quite a bit.

[kagayaki1]

Some of it is about not enough power, but it's important to clairfy what "not enough" can mean.

In some OLED cases, they're having problems with equal distribution of power over the entire surface. I'm not much of an expert about it, so I can't really provide a technical explination, but like any voltage regulation problem, it usually takes a major creative thought to get it solved.

-Jason

[Jason Dunn]

mscdex, sometimes the early technology doesn't match such goals. Check out the article -- power consumption has been higher than desirable for OLEDs up until this point.

--janak

I realize that, but I was referring to just thinking about the concept and the logic behind it. It's organic... which means it comes from nature and isn't made from mostly/all expensive man-made materials. And that the properties of this organic substance make it self-illuminating, you wouldn't need a backlight, which would cut down power consumption quite a bit.

I posted an article similar to this about a month ago and we had some interesting discussions - basically, right now OLED screens are very cheap to make, but they're having a hard time making them large, and when they do, the power consumption is actually MORE than a modern LCD. So, great in theory, but they have to iron out the bugs and glitches. And then there's the whole issue of the monitor wearing out...that one worries me a little.

[D.psi]

Just a quick clarification here... From a chemistry standpoint, organic means that it involves carbon based molecules. It does not mean that it is naturally occuring substance; this is a big distinction to make.

So when mscdex wrote:
I realize that, but I was referring to just thinking about the concept and the logic behind it. It's organic... which means it comes from nature and isn't made from mostly/all expensive man-made materials.

It was an overstatement of what organic gives you in this context. It is true that looking at nature you do find some self-luminating compounds, but I would believe that any OLED display started with something similar to what is available in nature, and quickly migrated to something that is not naturally occuring in the quantities required to give you thousands of displays.

You can look at what gives you the colour from peacock feathers, and butterfly wings, then refine it to provide RGB pigments that could be turned on/off. But these would need to have the self luminescence issue resolved (they only reflect light). Or look at fireflies, and try to determine how they light up. But fireflies only have one colour (kinda yellow), so how would you get a polychromatic display?

Hopefully we'll get a new nice-looking, low-power, high-definition display technology soon.

D.psi