The latest technology that is appearing on the consumer TV market is the OLED (Organic Light Emitting Diodes). Conventional LEDs are familiar to everyone from the early red LED displays in calculators and watches in the 70’s, to the wide range of colours that can now be found in torches, car lights – the Audi A5 and Audi R8 are an example and the back lights in LCD TVs.

An OLED TV display is actually closer to a traditional CRT based screen than a LCD or Plasma display, as OLED’s have a triad of three red green and blue colored dots and these are laid down as the film of organic compounds.

OLEDS have many advantages compared to other thin screen technology and as they don’t need a power hungry back light, OLEDs can be made very thin and even can be produced on flexible and roll up forms. The lack of a backlight also means that OLEDs consume much less power than a LCD or plasma display. 

OLED based displays enable a greater range of color gamut, brightness, and viewing angle than LCDs because OLED pixels directly emit light. OLED pixel colors appear correct and unshifted, even as the viewing angle approaches 90 degrees from normal. LCDs use a backlight and cannot show true black, while an “off” OLED element produces no light and consumes no power. Energy is also wasted in LCDs because they require polarisers which filter out about half of the light emitted by the backlight.

OLEDs also have a faster response time than standard LCD screens. Whereas a standard LCD currently has an average of a 4-8 millisecond response time, an OLED can have less than 0.01ms response time.

Sony is the only manufacturer that has a OLED TV on sale, the Sony XEL-1 which is an 11 inch model on sale in the States and Japan and will be on sale in the UK early next year. Larger OLED TV’s and displays are expected to feature in the CES show in January.

Sony’s goal is to produce a 42inch OLED screen which is probably a year or so off though prototype OLED screens of this size have been shown.