Among the landmarks for OLED development, making a Christmas tree out of them probably isn’t high on a lot of researchers’ lists of priorities. Still, it’s a good demonstration of luminance and a very timely proof of GE’s inroads on OLED technology. With all the work being done on new illumination tech, we’re going to be looking at a display revolution over the next couple years.

It also really drives home the point on just how nerdy GE engineers must be.

[via HardOCP]

Available at Amazon for the low, low price of $1,000, the Kodak OLED 7.6-Inch Wireless Digital Frame sports a widescreen 800×480 resolution, 2GB of internal storage, and WiFi connectivity to Flickr or Kodak’s Gallery service. Just the thing you need to show off pictures of your dog!

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Samsung has shown off some incredible OLED advancements over the last few months but the best might soon be revealed at CES. The company might, might bring a 50-inch display to the Consumer Electronics Show.

“We can make larger displays, and we may demonstrate a 50in OLED TV at the CES show in January, though we haven’t decided yet,” he said, “But how much more would you be willing to pay for such a set?

Previously, the largest OLED screen shown to the general public was a 40-inch with a 1,000,000:1 contrast ratio so this 50-inch would be a good step forward. The display technology still has a ways to go before it hits a cost-friendly alternative to LCD or plasma.

No real data on what appears to be a prototype FOLED screen that can fold into a smallish cellphone but I want. Every since William Gibson described a computer that folded out like a butterfly in Count Zero I’ve wanted something like this.
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Sony’s razor-thin OLED display (thickness: 0.3mm) was one of the most spectacular products of the CEATEC 2008 exhibition that took place just outside of Tokyo last month. Now Samsung, after having the tech world impressed with its “flapping OLED display”, showcased a similar device during the FPD International 2008 in Tokyo.

Samsung’s 15 million-color display boasts a screen size of 6.5 inches and a resolution of 480×272. The company said it didn’t use conventional glass for the substrate and decided to go for low-temperature polysilicon TFT for the drive element.

Via Tech-On

Samsung is showing-off a 40-inch OLED screen and a new report indicates that the set is the biggest possible size with current production techniques. Because of this limitation, the set cannot be mass produced and therefore the 1,000,000:1 contrast ratio capable set is not going to be for sale anytime soon. 

“Our low temperature poly-Si TFT mass-production line cannot make panels larger than 31 inches,” a Samsung staffer said. “This 40-inch TFT panel is the largest size that can be made on our pilot line, and it cannot be mass-produced right away.

I’m sure if an affluent Dubai prince wants one of these sets, Samsung would probably hook’m up, but for us Joe-the-plumber types, we are going to have to wait awhile.

That “flappy” OLED screen from this morning has a bigger, more rigid counterpart. This 40-inch OLED is the largest yet shown to the general public and sports an impressive 1,000,000:1 contrast ratio rather than previous Samsung model’s of 5,000:1. Plus, it has a 1080p resolution and probably a hefty price tag if it was going to market. Commercial production, however, is still sometime down the road.

NYT via SG

Sony unveiled a spectacular OLED display (curved, 0.3mm thin) at the CEATEC 2008 exhibition earlier this month, only to be followed by a product from Samsung, which the company calls “flapping display”.

The Samsung display is just 0.05mm thin (yes, that’s millimeters) and currently being showcased at the FPD International 2008 in Tokyo. According to the company, the 4-inch panel could even be made thinner (even though its thickness already comes close to that of paper). The display features a contrast ratio of 100,000:1, a luminance of 200cd/m² and 480 × 272 resolution.

Via Tech-On

This review might be cheating the CrunchGear 300 a little bit, since it’s covering three products in one post, but they’re all from the same manufacturer and all do pretty much the same thing, so it makes sense to review them together.  Read on for information about an LCD and two OLED digital picture frames from Digital Foci.

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Philips has a treat for geeky developers, artists, DIYers and just plain geeks with an assortment of its incredibly thin Lumiblade OLED lights. The starter kit contains everything one needs to craft their very own OLED lighting solution with different size screens, shapes, and colors. The hope is that these creative types will think out of the box and create something innovative with these flat lamps. Interested? Got-to email Philips for pricing and availability.

Philips via OLED-Display

Kodak will be showing off a fancy OLED photo frame in Germany next week. I bet it’ll look really nice. I also bet it’ll be prohibitively expensive for most people. Yep, there we go — it’ll cost $999. I hope you have some really good looking friends and family.

If you have beautiful acquaintances and deep pockets, here’s what you’ll get: a super thin 7.6-inch screen with 180-degree viewing angle and 30,000:1 contrast ratio, Wi-Fi connection for streaming photos from Flickr and/or FrameChannel, 2GB of memory, 16:9 aspect ratio at 800×480 resolution, video playback, and support for multiple memory card formats. It’ll be available from Kodak.com in November.

Look for the frame if you’re at the Photokina show in Germany next week.

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Samsung’s Director of CE in the UK Andy Griffiths doesn’t see a long-term future for Blu-ray and told Pocket Lint in an interview that this is the year for the format to finally work out all the kinks, which it essentially has.

“I think it [Blu-ray] has 5 years left, I certainly wouldn’t give it 10.”

Rather than bank on Blu-ray, Samsung is backing the OLED technology they’ve been working on, but it won’t be ready for the masses until manufacturing costs drop.

“We will launch the OLED technology when it’s at a price that will be appealing to the consumer, unfortunately that’s not yet.”

Griffiths says we won’t reach that point until about 2010. Samsung has been pushing their Internet friendly TVs this year and it’s likely the direction they will continue to go for some time. What was that about downloadable content taking over optical disc media?

Sony wants to be the number one TV company by the year 2010.  To that end, they’ve announced three sexy new products today at IFA.

The Bravia EX-1 PictureFrame television is a wall-mountable LCD television that utilizes wireless HDMI to reduce cables going to your set.  It’s designed to look good on your wall, as though a piece of art.  The wireless HDMI has a range of about 30 meters, so you can tuck that little white box under the couch or in the closet.
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It seems that one of the limiting factors in miniaturizing OLED screens is the substrate. This isn’t surprising, considering the OLEDs themselves are microscopically thin, but I’m kind of surprised they haven’t moved on from glass substrates already since the benefits are so manifest. I guess cost must have been an issue, or else maybe there just was never a friendship like that between Vitex and Novaled. Like the Wonder Twins, their powers combined produce a product greater than the sum of their components.

Vitex is providing its “Barix” film technology to encapsulate Novaled’s most energy-efficient OLEDs, creating a flexible, super-thin, long-lasting OLED display (hopefully). I’m not sure exactly where these things are in relation to you, the consumer, but I’m guessing not very near at the moment. We’ll keep you posted, although tech like this tends to fade into the background once it’s adopted.

It seems development of OLED displays is really picking up steam, with Japanese companies pioneering in this field: Toshiba Matsushita Display (TMD) and Idemitsu Kosan say they managed to develop a small-molecule organic electroluminescent display with a lifespan of up to 30 times longer compared to existing TMD displays. With 100 milliwatts, the prototype (lifetime: 60,000 hours) also boasts just one tenth the power consumption.

The companies also claim they achieved the world’s highest level of performance in a 2.2-inch QVGA (240×320) screen, which can be used in cell phones and portable media devices.

Idemitsu is mainly responsible for developing the raw materials and substances used in the OLED displays and has been collaborating with TMD for 3 years now. Based on the most recent breakthrough, the companies plan to accelerate the joint development of small- to medium-sized OLED displays for mobile equipment. Mass production of the new OLED displays is slated to begin next year, with a projected monthly output of 1.5 million panels.

Full press release after the jump.

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[Image credit: University of Utah]
The LEDs you see in use all over these days — in traffic lights, flashlights, and all over your computer — are able to convert somewhere between 50 and 70 percent of the energy passed to them into light. This high efficiency makes them ideal for those purposes mentioned, but high costs have prevented them from replacing other types of lighting completely; fluorescent is still much more cost-effective. Organic LEDs, however, which are made of organic or “plastic” (?) materials, promise to be much cheaper to make, and may be cheap enough to replace traditional lighting in most situations. Everyone’s excited about OLEDs, but new research suggests there may be complications.
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