Thursday, June 25, 2009
The Point of No Return
 [Source] |
But the outcome wasn't always looking this rosy for OLED. The known issues of blue lifetime, manufacturing difficulties, and the generally fast progress of LCD technology, put the dream of OLED on a knife edge for a while.
Thankfully LCD wasn't quite good enough, soon enough.
Five years ago, had LCD advanced to the level it's at now, we may have had to wait MUCH longer for OLED to take hold. At that time, LCD was far poorer - there was no Wide Color Gamut CFL (WCG-CCFL) backlight, never mind LCD backlighting. No 100 frames per second either, and response times, viewing angle and general piture quality was far from what it is today. Indeed, back then OLED looked like the answer to all our dreams.
But it's too late now. OLED has passed the point of no return. And even though the margin from LCD has narrowed in recent years, so much OLED investment has been made that it will surely come to dominate the market within 5-10 years.
Oh sure, OLED was always going to eventually come to market, but it may have taken 10 or even 20 years longer, since LCD would have been perceived as 'good enough' for the market.
Thursday, June 4, 2009
Weird and Wonderful Uses for OLED
Because OLED is so thin and flexible, it lends itself to many applications that be awkward for other display technologies. Without further ado, here are four of the coolest ones yet:
 |
Usually, a patient would be required to stay in the hospital to get zapped by red lazers to treat the cancer. Instead they can go home and let the OLED bandage do all the work.
 |
If cars used a thin OLED screen for the mirror, there'd be less need to worry about blind spots, because the 'mirror' could show anything. That's gotta make driving safer and more convenient.
 |
We mentioned this briefly in the first post. Imagine if keys could contain mini screens to portray their function. Instead of icons that we point and click with the mouse, one can start to press the keys directly. Keyboard shortcuts suddenly look a lot more intuitive. Even the letters of the alphabet can change completely for things like 3D programs.
 |
OLED has often been mentioned as being useful to incorporate transparent images into eye glasses to augment reality. Well this gizmo goes a step further and responds to eye movements (blinking, eyeball moving) to scroll and otherwise manipulate imagery inside the lens. An eye sensor is used to track the eye. Pretty nifty stuff...
