Monday, April 27, 2009
Colour Me Green
 [Source: Nokia Research, Johan Bergquist] This CIE diagram effectively compares the colur gamut of each device. The pink and red triangles almost intercept each other by the way. |
No, I'm not talking about reducing carbon emissions or saving energy (though that's true as well), but rather the saturation of the green light component of the display. CRTs and LCDs have generally fared pretty well displaying blue and red, but for whatever reasons, the colour green has always fell short, exhibiting some blue pollution and even more red pollution (for more details and info, visit this page). What should be a deep crisp emerald green usually turns into a murky grey-green swamp.
This is where OLED comes in. Glance to the image on the right. It's a CIE diagram showing the output of 4 colour standards - sRGB, NTSC, LCD, and of course OLED. Notice the larger colour gamut of the yellow OLED triangle. Even the red saturation is deeper. Although the blue component has a way to go compared to sRGB/LCD (veering towards green/cyan), the document containing this diagram was published in February 2007, so the tech could have advanced since then.
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When you finally purchase an OLED screen for yourself, also check out the LCD test site and our own 'test card' which checks for colour, detail and other attributes.
Thursday, April 23, 2009
The Start Of Something Big
 [Source] The new Optimus keyboard will allow every key to be customized to whatever graphic you wish. |
As many of you probably already know, OLED is a wonderful lighting technology which will be suitable for television, handheld devices (such as ipods and mobile phones) and even general purpose lighting. Compared to LCD, CRT or plasma, it has the advantage of being solid state, with deep blacks, colour saturation and a near 180 degree viewing angle.
They're also super thin. We're talking about a display which can be measured in MILLIMETRES or less, not centimetres. Combine that with the ability to manufacture OLED screens with printing techniques and we have the potential to hang giant OLED screens on the wall or on every packet of cornflakes. OLED's response rate is also second to none, so expect fluid video, with none of the motion blur plaguing LCD screens.
In fact, almost every possible benchmark you can think of looks favourable next to LCD or plasma. That's why it's not just an evolutionary step in the world of lighting/display technology, but a complete revolution. OLED will be everywhere; a standard.
Of course, there are a couple of short term hurdles yet to overcome, including cost of manufacture, and the lifetime of the blue OLED element. But these issues are being solved, and of course Sony have already released their small but tasty XEL-1 11" OLED TV (if you have $2500 to spare). A quick search in the news will yield increasing amounts of OLED related coverage. With everything from mobile phones to Apple's upcoming laptop, to embedded displays for each key in the new Optimus keyboard, the future's looking bright indeed.
