The OLED TV: Why won't you die, already?

I was admittedly flabbergasted a few months ago when I started hearing rumors about 55" OLED TVs en route from Samsung and LG Electronics, along with the more recent whispers of an OLED partnership between Panasonic and Sony. After losing tons of money in recent years on LCD- and plasma-based displays (and the panels from which they're derived), why would these consumer electronics manufacturers be dumping an abundance of additional R&D funding into an embryonic technology that offers limited (if any) benefit over the now-dominant LCD?

After reading Ray Soniera's trip report from this past week's SID (Society for Information Display) International Symposium, I'm even less optimistic about large-screen OLEDs' chanes than I was before (and that's not saying much). Soniera, if you don't already know the name, is President of DisplayMate Technologies and about the closest thing to a display guru that I've ever come across (with the possible exception of Joe Kane). I most recently mentioned Soniera's work in conjunction with my "Retina" display piece of a month-plus back.

Soniera got the opportunity to visually audition the aforementioned LG and Samsung 55" OLED prototypes at the show. His observations on the Samsung units were scathing, but could have perhaps been surmounted by better calibration and demo content:

The Samsung 3D OLED TV with its running demo was very nice but definitely not in the stunning category like the LG 3D OLED TV in my opinion. The running demo was mediocre and that might be the source of the problem. One surprising technical point - the Samsung OLED is using a Low Temperature Poly Silicon LTPS Active Matrix backplane, which is very expensive to manufacture. This first model is designed for showing off their OLED TV technology and almost certainly will be sold at a loss...

The Samsung 2D OLED TV was in my opinion horrendous because its color saturation was turned up so high that it was beyond gaudy and into visually repulsive territory in my opinion. Samsung has this thing about flaunting color saturation rather than flaunting color accuracy. They make excellent state-of-the-art display hardware, but when it comes to calibrating their own products they degrade the picture quality and accuracy with exaggerated marketing features and effects that are designed to make them stand out (scream) in stores and in marketing materials.

His analysis of the LG set was more upbeat (hit up the link above for all the spec details):

The LG 3D OLED TV with its running demo was absolutely stunning - visually it was the most impressive TV I have ever seen. And if you have read any of my Display Shoot-Out articles you know that I am a tough grader for displays and don't readily hand out compliments (for displays). On the flip side, this was a prototype unit and I was watching a manufacturer's demo - and all good demos are finessed to be seductive - and I admit to being seduced at the show. But in our DisplayMate Labs and Shoot-Out facilities everything is objective and we have our own suites of test patterns, test photos, test videos, and instrumentation, plus I become just like Mr. Spock, incapable of being swayed or seduced by human emotions... So I am looking forward to testing a production unit later this year ...

However, to the comment above regarding "almost certainly will be sold at a loss"...

The first generation of both the LG and Samsung 55 inch OLED TVs are predicted to cost $8,000 or more - so sales will be limited to early adopters with deep pockets. Like every other new technology the manufacturing costs and retail prices will fall over time. Eventually, the manufacturing costs for OLEDS will be lower than for LCDs because they don't require backlights and other optical components. But that will take years ...

I about fell out of my chair when I saw that "$8,000 or more" estimate. Check out the 55" LCD and plasma displays at Best Buy's site, for example and you'll find prices starting at less than 1/10th of that $8,000 figure. Suffice it to say that at $8,000, I doubt either manufacturer will find many (if any) deep-pocketed early adopters, especially in this tough economic climate. And given how mature (and ever-improving, from various quality viewpoints) LCD technology is, and what a fairly small percentage of the total BOM cost a backlight (even a LED-based one) is, I'm going to take a stab at rewriting Soniera's last two sentences from my personal perspective:

Theoretically, the manufacturing costs for OLEDS will eventually be lower than for LCDs because they don't require backlights and other optical components. But that will take years ... if it happens at all ...

Look, I've said it before (several times before, in fact) and I'll say it again. There are compelling markets for OLED displays; where flexibility is desirable, where the thickness and power consumption of even a svelte backlight are non-starters...and where OLED's limited lifetime and poor performance in high ambient light usage environments (i.e. outdoors) aren't constraining factors. And one can't discount OLED's ability to over time move into small-display applications in which LCD manufacturers no longer want to participate.

But I flat-out see no credible path by which the OLED is going to make even a minute dent in the computer display and (especially) television markets. Long-repeated promises of coming-soon dramatic cost reductions have repeatedly evaporated. And developing a new technology simply to keep lower-cost emerging competitors at bay doesn't automatically ensure strategy success. I don't consider myself to be a particularly "rigid" individual, so I remain open to being proven wrong. But someone's going to have to give me a credible argument, first.