OLED

The New York Times reported this weekend, in an article titled "Looking to Big-Screen E-Readers to Help Save the Daily Press," that Amazon.com is on the verge of introducing a new larger-screen Kindle e-book reader.

A blog post from CNET's David Carnoy ("Amazon to introduce larger Kindle this week?") says that Amazon has scheduled a press event for Wednesday that may be the venue for this announcement.

The larger Kindle (which I think of as a "Kindle Pro," although I really have no idea what Amazon might call it) should be about … Read more

With USB flash drive prices hitting rock bottom, the devices have become a cheap commodity item with little, if any, technological difference between brands. Ennova's new ION flash drive, however, stands out from the crowd with its integrated OLED (organic light-emitting diode) touch screen.

Though details are scant, Ennova said the display will allow users to select files and initiate to-be-announced functions. The OLED touch screen can also double as a biometric fingerprint sensor that changes color to indicate if the print is authorized. A hinged cover is designed to protect the screen and USB port.

The company expects … Read more

Updated on May 4 at 11:10 a.m. PDT with an official response from the site in question.

We've now seen several LED-based computer monitors released, such as the recent Dell G2410 and G2210, and just this week someone asked when I thought we'd be seeing the first consumer OLED computer monitors.

"Not for a while," was my answer and I guess I was right. Megawhat.tv (seriously, could they have come up with a more British sounding name for a tech site?) posted a video of what is, according to them, a 23-inch Samsung OLED prototype computer monitor.

(Update: On Monday, May 4, I received an e-mail from a rep of Megawhat.tv claiming the site was misled and that the monitor in the video is in fact the Samsung P2370L, which is not an OLED monitor. The site claims it received the following quote from Samsung: "It has recently come to our attention that the Samsung P2370L Monitor we have displayed at the Grand Designs Show uses LED BLU rather than OLED technology. Samsung would like to apologise for any confusion caused. This error was caused by an internal miscommunication on our part and all press materials have since been amended to include these details.")

Looking at the video, the form factor seems to be based of on the recently released Samsung P2370, but unlike the P2370, which only includes a DVI connection, the OLED version also includes HDMI. According to the site that is.

OK, after I first posted this earlier this afternoon a colleague of mine pointed me to this site, where it claims that this video is a fake. I was dubious about the video myself mostly because i'd never heard of the site "Megawhat," the display looked way too similar to the P2370 I have sitting right here in my office and the fact that the video gives no real details about what would be a pretty significant display.

According to the Megawhat video (which comes complete with ample '90s MTV-style camera work), the alleged OLED monitor won't be going into production until sometime in 2010.

I'm awaiting an official comment from Samsung on whether this thing actually exists, prototype or not. I'll update this post when I hear back. Until then, check out the video and leave a comment on whether you think it's a fake or not.

Update: Although I haven't receive a response from Samsung, I have received… Read more

While we're still waiting for OLED TVs to get more realistic prices, a Japanese company is moving on to making OLED-based posters for advertising.

The prototype, pictured above as a poster for Japan's Rakuten Eagles professional baseball team, uses both organic light-emitting diodes (OLED) and inorganic light-emitting diodes (regular LEDs) to create an image that looks like it's animated, according to Tech-On. The poster measures approximately 29 inches by 20 inches, and was created by Dai Nippon.

The LEDs are used for white backlighting behind a printed color image, and the OLEDs to create the text. Light … Read more

The camera industry and photographers, having just gotten accustomed to the arrival of video in point-and-shoot cameras, just now are beginning to grapple with its arrival in the more serious SLR realm.

Chuck Westfall, technical adviser for Canon's professional products marketing division and a 26-year veteran at the Japanese company, is in the thick of it. Nikon was the first to market with a single-lens reflex camera equipped with video, the D90, but Canon offers video in two SLRs: the high-end EOS 5D Mark II, with a large sensor the size of a full frame of 35mm film, and the Rebel T1i, a more affordable, mainstream model.

These cameras combine high-definition video--1900x1080 pixels at 30 frames per second in the case of the 5D Mark II--with SLRs' advantages when shooting in dim conditions and with a broad variety of lenses. But even though today's video SLR features offers hold some appeal to enthusiasts and professionals, they're something of an awkward afterthought. SLRs and those who use them that haven't yet had much time to adapt.

Welcome to the world of digital photography, where change is incessant. In an interview with CNET News, Westfall talked about not just video, but also OLED displays, the arrival of rival full-frame SLRs from Sony and Nikon, changing flash card and file format standards, wireless networking, and more.

Question: The age of the video SLR has begun. A lot of people in the high-end camera market are set in their ways, and video is a radical difference for a lot of them. How does that change the camera design, the marketing, and everything you have to do to sell a camera?… Read more

A report released by DisplaySearch on Thursday says that the OLED lighting will become a $6 billion industry by 2018.

There will be an uptick in OLED (organic light-emitting diode) lighting going from small sample products to mass production with Phillips first then GE closely to follow as the leaders in the space, according to the report by Jennifer Colegrove, director of display technologies at DisplaySearch.

The surge should start to happen in 2011.

No one's disputing Colegrove over the birth of cool tech made possible by OLEDS in past years. She gets it right.

"OLED lighting devices … Read more

Amazon U.K. now includes pricing and a vague shipping date for the British release of the Sony X-Series Walkman announced at CES 2009.

Amazon offers a window of two to five weeks for the expected shipping date. As far as pricing goes, you might need to cash a few checks with Gary Coleman before stepping up to the X-Series. Amazon U.K. lists these as 214 pounds ($308) for the 16GB version and 283 pounds ($408) for 32GB. Granted, the cost is right in line with Apple's iPod Touch, but the features on the X-Series aren't quite … Read more

The Sony XEL-1 OLED TV is a beautiful display. Its contrast ratio makes pictures pop, it's thinner than a credit card, but with an 11-inch screen, it's too small, and at $2,500, too expensive.

But it's been a year since it was introduced in January 2008, and as of today, it still has no competitors. Where are they?

Though we've been long promised that the era of OLED (organic light-emitting diode) TVs is just around the corner, it appears we're going to have to wait even longer. The major players in electronics who have the resources to build OLED TVs have been whacked by the global financial meltdown along with the rest of us. In other words, the timing to jump-start a brand new TV technology is terrible.

"The cost to manufacture them remains high and will remain high until someone's willing to take the risk to develop their own manufacturing capacity on a large scale," explained Paul Gagnon, TV market analyst for DisplaySearch. "Risky investments are not something most of these companies are looking at right now."

Samsung, Sony, LG Electronics, Toshiba, and Panasonic have at various points promised to make OLED TVs. Only one of them, Sony, has done so. But even Sony's is hardly what most people would call a viable option. It's not the standard size of a TV, and isn't exactly priced for a recession. The other firms have only prototypes to show.

Fading hope There was some hope that Samsung and Sony would be able to release larger OLED TVs this year. But if they were, they'd have brought them to CES in January in order to stir up excitement for them. That didn't happen. Instead, Sony brought the same 11-inch XEL-1 product that's been available for a year, as well as a 21-inch prototype. Samsung brought out a 40-inch prototype.

It's not that OLED is completely impossible to produce. There are a variety of gadgets sporting OLED screens made by these companies, but they're really small: cell phones, GPS devices, and now portable media players.

Small is easy. Making OLED displays big enough for the most attractive applications like laptop screens and televisions is the hard part. There are only a few TV manufacturers with the resources to invest in and build enormous panel factories, among them Samsung, Sony, Sharp, LG, and Panasonic. Panasonic said in September it would hold off on OLED--which basically means it's going to ride the success of its dominance in plasma displays for the time being. Toshiba, which showed a large OLED TV prototype in early 2007, said just a few months later that it would wait to see how popular the sets would be before jumping in head first. (Also, instead of doing it individually, there are a few smaller other makers getting together to push OLED into faster mass production.) … Read more

The television category is a perennial CES staple and this year was no different. For some reason nobody showed a TV bigger than Panasonic's 150-inch plasma from last year (have we maxed out in flat-panel screen size?), but most of the other trends I discussed in the preview were borne out in the show's extensive announcements. Here's my take on what CES 2009 bodes for HDTV this year.

Plasma ain't dead yet. I get more than my share of e-mails, and have seen plenty of blog comments and forum posts that are quick to claim the demise of plasma at the hands of LCD. Judging from CES announcements by companies that comprise the "big three" of plasma--Panasonic, LG and Samsung--those big glass flat panels have a brighter future than Detroit, at least.

Panasonic, by far the biggest and most-committed of the group, bragged about its newest plasma factory (No. 5) coming online, and showed its largest plasma lineup ever, with five new series and a new 54-inch screen size. I'm really excited to review the company's new "NEO PDP" panels, the first of which, members of the S1 series, will ship in March. They boast significantly improved black-level performance and contrast ratios, according to the company, yet manage to cut power consumption in half. If the latter claim proves true, LCD will lose perhaps its biggest arrow in the antiplasma quiver (at least among consumers who care about the planet and are savvy enough to ignore the nonissues).

Absent any announcements by Pioneer (which will come in late spring, most likely), Panasonic's G10 series is probably the surest bet for Editors' Choice of any TV I saw at the show. That's why I awarded it Best of CES in the TV category. In case you're wondering, however, all of the Neo PDP panels, including the least-expensive S1, share the same basic picture-quality specs.… Read more