High-Definition OLED Panel Gets Supersized

Following the mantra that bigger is better and flatter is even better, Samsung tantalized flat-panel TV lovers with the announcement that they've developed the world's first 40-inch active matrix OLED display. The prototype panel has a pixel resolution of 1280 x 800 (WXGA for those computer types).

OLED (Organic Light-Emitting Diode) technology is a much-anticipated alternative to plasma and LCD for use in flat-panel displays. Some of the potential advantages of OLED over current flat-panel display technologies touted by OLED developers (in addition to the positive, encouraging sound of the name, "Oh, LED!") are low power consumption, rapid response time, no color filter or backlighting, ultra-thin depth (1.2 inches or less), wide viewing angle, and exceptional image quality. A little-mentioned advantage over LCD specifically is the fact that the "D" in the acronym does not stand for "Display", thereby eliminating the redundancy heard round the world when salespeople, journalists, and geeks say, "LCD display".

The Samsung 40-inch prototype is a single panel (birthed from a 28.75-inch by 36.2-inch mother glass) with nearly twice the diagonal as the Samsung single-panel OLED display - a 21-inch 1920x1080 panel - announced in January 2005. The new display boasts a maximum screen brightness of 600 nits and a black-and-white contrast ratio of 5,000:1.

Electroluminescence is the principle behind the promise of OLED. In an OLED display, organic molecules are excited by electrons causing them to emit photons that make their way to your eyeballs and excite your brain. Plasma displays are also emissive, using tiny "cells" of ionized noble gas (such as neon and xenon) sandwiched between two layers of glass. Excited by energy discharged from the enclosed gas, phosphors in front of the cells output light. LCD technology, on the other hand, employs liquid crystals to control the passage of light (from a backlight) through the LCD matrix.

In addition to Samsung, numerous other companies, including Sony and Epson, are working diligently to engineer OLED displays for use in home theater systems.

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