Sony talks up 'world's first' OLED TV

Sony demo'd a series of OLED-based TVs at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas this past January. Today, it said one of them go on sale on 1 December - the first ever commercial OLED TV, the company claimed. Sony XEL-1 OLED TV Sony's XEL-1: million-to-one contrast ratio Dubbed the XEL-1, the 11in screen contains a …

[Charlie Clark]

Price comparison

Yes, it is expensive to buy but how much did plasma screens cost when they came out? And what about the TCO per year comparison with a plasma screen including energy costs? Let's say 4 hours per day. The Sony XEL-1 is quoted as consuming 45W with a 42" getting through around 250W. That's around a 0.2 of KWH difference which would be around €50 pA: not enough of a saving at the moment maybe certainly something to bear in mind.

[Anonymous Coward]

If I know Sony,

they will use it as the basis for an overpriced game console in an attempt to get their technology into everybody's home :-)

[Natalie Gritpants]

Not quite HD?

It's not even SD.

[Stu]

@Natalie Gritpants

It is an SD set pretending to be an HD set, its only missing 36 lines ( 540 lines in relation to 576 lines in the PAL standard, but then PAL is interlaced so doesn't do 576 lines in reality).

Its kind of how you buy an HD Ready set that claims to do 1080i, but only has a resolution of about 1300 by around 720 so it squeezes it in instead.

I think this TV is a great foray into the new world of OLED technology - I've looked forward to this for years now!

Japan only is a pisstake though. Kind of inevitable though.

[SpitefulGOD]

Prolly

Be using one in 5 years. probably. Although i'd prefer to see those nice e-ink displays go colour.

[Steve]

"It's not even SD."

It is for the American market, which is where most displays are targeted.

I very much like the elegant way Sony made the input decoder box external to the display device. I hate it when you have to run 10 odd cables from your screen, they ruin an otherwise good view.

[Frank Bough]

960x540

...is actually a very intelligent picture size if used correctly. Sharp had a short-lived range of "Perfect PAL Picture" LCD TVs in Europe that used 960x540 panels, with the 1024(720)x576 PAL picture overscanned (cropped much as a CRT would) for an unscaled result as well as showing 1080 line material at a perfect 4:1 'binned' scale down.

Doesn't make so much sense with NTSC sources, of course...

A million to one, eh? That's quite something!

[Steve Todd]

It's actualy pretty poor power efficiency

An 11" screen drawing 45 watts is nearly 1 watt per square inch. A decent LCD TV runs to about 0.3-0.4 watts per square inch (200 watts for a 40 inch and 55 watts for an 19" for example).

[Andy Bright]

Over here you could buy a..

Decent-ish (Phillips / Samsung / Toshiba) 42" plasma for about 2/3rds of that ($1100), or maybe a 46" 1080p LCD - although if you want Sony or Sharp you'd be a few pennies short.

But I think the point is this is just the beginning, and compared to the initial prices of LCD screens (plasma TVs were never that small for obvious reasons) that seems about right.

Maybe in 2 or 3 years they might even sell a few when the price drops to something comparable with today's technology.

1st generation plasma TVs were afflicted with short life spans, and some fools even touted re-charging them - even though the cost of doing such a thing would clearly be more than buying a new one.

The current generation, while limited to 1080i, have better power consumption (but still not that great) and much longer life spans, and of course they're dirt cheap. They cost less to buy now than the equivalent DLP - and reached that price point incredibly quickly.

LCDs are starting to catch up, the budget range are maybe $100 or so more, but obviously in terms of picture quality, budget 1080p LCDs look shite compared to the worst 1080i plasma.

I'm still waiting for my pin-it-to-a-wall-then-roll-it-up-when-your-done, 1mm, 72", 4320p disposable TV - knocked down to 50p at the 1 quid shop.

[Anonymous Coward]

Resolution...

Complaining about the resolution??? Jesus smoking a kipper you're missing the point...

1000000:1 contrast ratio! 3mm thick!

This is a boy's toy! It's not supposed to be a family TV!

It's COOL!

When did we all get so pessimistic, anal and downright miserable that we stopped admiring Cool??

I think it's cool anyway. And I'd give up pixel rez for a monitor that can display perfect blacks (while turned on :p) anyday...

Cheer up, it's Friday in four days...

[Highlander]

I see the bandwagon is still oging strong

Good grief, some of you people are absolutely jaw-droppingly negative. I guess it's because Sony had the gall to produce a working ready for market OLED screen. Imagine that, an actual working product and not simply another proto-type in the lab. The bastards!

Come on, I mean really. You complain about the resolution, the power consumption and one particularly smart individual things this is some kind of technology push for the next Playstation. Smart, really smart.

Personally, I think this is very cool. That screen is *very* thin. It's power consumption is quite high (as a unit) right now, though there is no information on how much of the power is actually consumed by the screen and how much by the box of electronics below it. That contrast ratio and the viewing angle and brightness of OLED screens will make it a winner. 11-inch isn't such a bad size.

Now that a first retail product is here, we can look forward to larger screens, higher resolutions and lower prices over the next 5 years.

[Moo]

Contrast is good

Who cares about 1080p if he can not differentiate the resolution because of ambient light? I just can not wait to see how it renders analog broadcast TV in Turkey.

[Dan]

cool

Of course it's cool. This, in a 42" screen size, in a few years, will be THE screen to drool over. That said, I can't see why anyone is talking about 1080p yet - It's still hotly debated whether you can see the difference with a 42" screen, so a tad overkill on this size!

[Mark]

You want 1080P on an 11 inch screen?!

The resolution is small but so is the screen. There'd be very little discernible difference between the screen current res and 1080P unless you put your face up to the glass!

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Cool

"When did we all get so pessimistic, anal and downright miserable that we stopped admiring Cool?"

When we realised that it was made by those DRM-loving, rootkit-touting, customer-hating gits at Sony.

[Adrian Crooks]

It should be at least 720p on a 30"

I can see the difference between 1080p and 720p on my 20" CRT monitor, and I can see the difference between 1280x720 (720p) and 1280x1024 (most LCD) on a 19" so for me the number of pixels is important. I also like colors and hate how over boosted primary colors are on my LCD along with the ever gray blacks. As such I like the OLED angle, but really wish for higher resolution before it's usable in a large TV.

For now though I like what they have done and hope they keep on pushing to build something usable in mainstream entertainment. The way it is right now I don't see anyone paying that much for an 11" screen.