First, let's be clear...Plasma is out, OLED is in.

NorthStar

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I've read a great article this morning:

OLED Pricing, The Death of the $3000 TV, and why the future is now

"I am noticing on the pricing side of this forum that the price of a 65-inch LG OLED at retail is now below $3000 (from some retailers, at least some of the time).

Without discussing price, per se, and who you should buy from, it's important to understand this is a critical milestone in the development of OLED TVs. For the first part of this decade, it was a given that you could pretty much buy the best TV on the market for $3000 at 65 inches. You may have had to shop and you couldn't often do it at Best Buy, but you could do it.

What that meant was videophile-level picture quality in the largest generally sold size was $3000. Within a few years, two things changed, though. First, the availability of larger sizes became much greater. 70s first, then 75s. Even some 78-80s are around. Second, and more importantly, those $3000 TVs vanished. This wasn't a scheme by mfrs. to make more money -- Sony sells so few of those $5000 sets of theirs it's hard to understand why they make them at all -- but rather due to the death of plasma.

Arguably, plasma died 2 years to soon, given how long it took OLED to get to something resembling price parity. Fortunately, it's now there. I could -- without hesitation -- recommend that a friend go buy an LG 65 B series for $3000. It's likely going to be a very satisfying 5-10 year TV for most people.

But some things have become apparent based on LG's recent pricing action. This is a company without a meaningful upgrade in production capacity coming online for close to 2 years (when the new fab is producing). It has sales targets but a very finite unit limit. And yet it is seeking lower prices -- through promotion, retailer spiffs, et al. -- to find a way to "sell out".

That Panasonic is essentially out of the TV business and Samsung no longer sells plasmas should tell you all you need to know about how great that $3000 flagship market was, i.e. it wasn't so good anyone is still in it. That LG is not even pausing at $3000 for a 65-inch TV isn't surprising. The market up there is small, can't satisfy even LG's existing capacity (assuming high yields) and won't absorb even a fraction of what LG has on tap.

TV is not smartphones and LG is not Apple. There is no reason to spend more for most consumers and no technological change that justifies switching to the equivalent of a $650 smartphone (had Apple not invented the popular smartphone, they could never launch a $650 iPhone now either... but let's not explain why they still can or how their very invention created $99 smartphones, that's another post). None is coming. Many of you thought 3D was -- so did TV makers. It's already come and gone. Many of you like HDR -- so do TV makers. It will be profoundly less of an upgrade catalyst than even 3D was (never mind that 3D was in most TVs and HDR won't even get there for years, if ever).

There is nothing wrong with liking these video upgrades at all. But they don't move or make markets. In fact, TV sales have been falling for years (since 2010-11). That's important to understand because even though some of you might subscribe to conspiracy theories about the economy, it bottomed out globally in 2009-10 and has been solid since. The latest data from 2016 shows declines in TV sales and even optimistic forecasts out to 2020 suggests the era of 250+ million TV sales annually may be over -- or at least rare.

Whether or not TV is in a full secular decline like PCs, though, it's growth era is over. The Chinese market continues to show some positives, particularly with upgrading to bigger screens. No surprise when you can buy a 65-inch 4K set for $900! But we've reached a near end state, that looks like this:

1) Overall TV sales are flat/down/up a bit
2) 4K and smart tech are booming, but the latter may be maxing out in many regions
3) Sizes continue to trend upward a bit, but the market for 65+ inch TVs continues to be infinitesimal
4) Prices keep falling, arguably below levels once considered "floor prices", beneath which TVs wouldn't fall.

Looking ahead, we will see the bottom end of the price curve, something resembling a top end of the size curve and possibly a TV market that trends below 200 million units globally forever. Too many macro trends are happening with millennials globally that are pushing video consumption everywhere but the living room. These include the slow (but real) death of multichannel TV bundles. While I don't want to rule out that in 50 years, the world has 100-inch TVs in every home, I'd point out we also can't rule out that most of the world's coastal cities will be partly underwater by then.

For OLED fans, this is not bad news, however. It means LG's hope of carving out most of the upper end of the TV market will require lower pricing than currently exists. I'm fairly sure I've bandied numbers like this before, but it's worth again stating that the 55s will eventually be <$1000 at retail. The 65s will eventually be <$2000. Those prices might start to become visible soon; they seem unlikely to wait longer than the arrival of the 2018-9 models off LG's new fab. I doubt those prices are a bottom, especially with the sheer number of Chinese vendors that will produce LCDs with 4K and HDR and make $1000 at 65-inches a global reality.

I personally no longer believe one should wait before buying an OLED. I also personally will note that my TV is not yet at the age where I like to replace it and won't be until 2018. (Never mind that I can't currently accommodate a bigger set and might be able to by then, which would make this once-every-6-year purchase easier to optimize.) Your mileage may vary, of course, but at least you don't have to worry about the buyer's remorse of having spent thousands extra for "just one year more" of OLED. You will see next year's TV for less money, but not so much less that you risk "chump syndrome."

The closing thought here is on a successor to OLED. It's worth understanding that every pretender flat panel technology advertises itself as "cheaper than the thing that came before once we achieve scale". This claim has been made for OLED for more than a decade. Today, OLED is still not cheaper than LCD. It's not really even cheaper than full array LED backlit LCD, at least not at the only place we care -- retail. Yes, Sony's price is insane but again Sony doesn't make the market. Vizio/LeEco, Hisense, TCL and others make the market. That they don't produce a TV as good as Sony's for half the price isn't a technology problem, it's a "we don't need to" problem. They produce a TV that's pretty damn good or less than half Sony's price.

On an average basis, OLED TVs will still cost more than LCDs in 2020. They are not cheaper, no matter what manufacturing steps and materials are saved. But OLEDs are cheap enough that they will dominate the high end of the market as plasma once did. They will also become very important in the midrange (both price and size-wise) as plasma only did very, very briefly.

There is no room, therefore, for a new technology. To just enter the market in 2020, a quantum-dot emissive display would find it would need to be below $1000 at 55 inches and $2000 at 65. (Perhaps $999/$1999). The mainstream OLEDs will cost less than that but perhaps a "better" display could find some small toe hold at those prices. The QLED would fail anyway because the tsunami of new OLED makers once LG's fab starts producing and driving through the $1000/$2000 barrier will be massive. It might even be massive enough for OLED to win the TV market in the early 2020s (crushing LCD out of the profitable segments, if not most of the unprofitable ones).

For QLED -- or any other technology that's in the lab today -- the advantage will have to come not only in the increasingly irrelevant domain of picture quality (LG is already mainstreaming videophile level images, no one will care about "better" outside of places like this forum) but in manufacturing cost. Perhaps, for example, a QLED can be printed using inkjets and the materials are soluble from day one with 100K hour lives. Someone designs a roll-to-roll printing tech and can maybe even print the backplane. Then you have something special, albeit with its own challenges (lower TVs from $500 to $200 and you don't really grow the market... that's why the floor is actually here on the smaller sizes, there's no sense in selling $99 TVs in most of the world).

There is no reason to believe QLED will be cheap to make. There is less reason to believe something else yet to be invented (in fairness, QLED TV has not been invented so much as theorized) will either. As we head toward 2017, we can safely rule out an OLED successor before of any import 2025. I made similar comments about OLED in the early 2000s and was scoffed out and mocked. But I was correct then and will be correct going forward.*

Enjoy OLEDs. Push LG to make better ones. Encourage Samsung to re-enter the market. Hope the Chinese come soon; they are likely to dominate TV making in the 2020s no matter what happens in Korea. But when it's time to buy, don't worry you're too early. 4K/UHD/sub $3000 are already a sweet spot in the "when to buy" game. I'm personally holding off a bit more, but that's just because of my attitudes on waste, not on when."

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* "I was duped in 2013 into thinking I was mistaken and that OLED was rule. LG and Samsung spent a lot of money at CES duping people that year. It wasn't until last year, however, that OLED was really a consumer product and arguably this year that it became a real one. Those dates are very consistent with comments you can dig out of the AVS archives. In short, I wasn't mistaken in 2005 but was in 2013. As the rock legends say, "won't get fooled again."


By rogo | 10-24-2016
________

TV business is big, Facebook and Tweeter is big, QLED (Quantum dot light emitting diodes: http://www.qled-info.com/introduction/ ) is not big.
But, Samsung thinks it can: http://www.consumerreports.org/lcd-led-oled-tvs/samsung-thinks-qled-tvs-could-be-the-next-big-thing/

Hundred years from now we might not watch TV anymore the way we do today. It's going to be much faster, it's going to be in touch with reality TV, on a day-to-day universal info highway and without any media controlling their agenda. We'll have google glasses and all the news and movies will be live. ...Wherever we are, even @ home.

OLED is now, and prices are going down ... 100%
 

YashN

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Good news about the prices, inevitable as well.

However, how does he know an OLED can last ten years?
 

NorthStar

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A bunch of videophiles have an OLED TV. My next TV is a 4K OLED LG TV.

I don't know about Samsung, they live in the past with their explosive androids, and in the future without any QLED direction...
Panasonic I have no clue, maybe they'll get into the android phones business...
Sony it's true, they overcharge their loyal customer's base.
Vizio, good prices; do they make OLED TVs?
Sharp?

This is my own personal opinion, and my own decision. LED is not for me, OLED is. And QLED is just vapor...
 

YashN

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Jun 28, 2015
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A bunch of videophiles have an OLED TV. My next TV is a 4K OLED LG TV.

This is my own personal opinion, and my own decision. LED is not for me, OLED is. And QLED is just vapor...

Wasn't the point at all.

The point was: we don't yet have the data on the actual longevity of these TVs.

So, saying "you'll have a TV for the next 10 years" is as yet, a bit of a stretch...
 

amirm

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Is Rogo back? What is his post count up to? Years back he held the record and I think it was 25,000??? He then disappeared for a while. I have never seen anyone live and breath displays every minute of his life like he did then.
 

c1ferrari

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How's OLED compared to plasma for processing motion?
 

NorthStar

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Wasn't the point at all.
The point was: we don't yet have the data on the actual longevity of these TVs.
So, saying "you'll have a TV for the next 10 years" is as yet, a bit of a stretch...

You have a very good point; OLED has (can have) image retention/burn-in.
Still, videophiles love OLED. I think it's a safe bet to last 4-5 years, till OLED 8K TVs arrive.
And 20 years from now, no more needed screens; we'll be projecting holographic movies, without screens.

http://www.economist.com/news/scien...aphy-may-not-be-too-far-away-light-end-tunnel
http://www.seeker.com/new-hologram-tech-sets-3d-in-motion-discovery-news-1766506101.html
http://www.iflscience.com/technology/no-more-science-fiction-3d-holographic-images/

? https://www.scienceandnonduality.com/the-holographic-future-from-science-fiction-to-reality/


Is Rogo back? What is his post count up to? Years back he held the record and I think it was 25,000??? He then disappeared for a while. I have never seen anyone live and breath displays every minute of his life like he did then.

Posts: 31,783 ? Couple days ago: http://www.avsforum.com/forum/40-ol...eath-3000-tv-why-future-now.html#post47695161

He posted as recently as today, just few hours ago: http://www.avsforum.com/forum/40-ol...th-3000-tv-why-future-now-3.html#post47750225
____

And because you like to keep track of numbers:

• Member: jdsmoothie
AVS Addicted Member
Join Date: Sep 2007
Posts: 63,799

• On Japanese and Chinese audio forums, expect to see posts in the six digits...100,000+

How's OLED compared to plasma for processing motion?

Excellent question.

http://www.blurbusters.com/faq/oled-motion-blur/
http://www.displaymate.com/LG_OLED_TV_ShootOut_1.htm ? Great article/shootout/comparison.

Extracts from the second link:

No Motion Blur
For the OLED TV high speed screen shots of fast moving test patterns show absolutely no visible display based Motion Blur or latent images from any previous refresh cycles due to a very fast Response Time. A comparison screen shot for an LCD TV shows considerable Motion Blur. For details and the screen shots see Response Time and Motion Blur in the Lab Measurements section.

Response Time and Motion Blur
Motion Blur is a well known issue with LCDs. It arises because the liquid crystal, which is the active element within an LCD, is unable to change its orientation and transmission rapidly enough when the picture changes from one frame to the next. OLEDs, as solid state emissive devices, have very fast Response Times: LG specs the OLED Response Time at 0.1ms, which is more than a factor of 10 faster than LCDs. For a simple test of Motion Blur we photographed a DisplayMate Test Pattern moving at a very fast 1352 pixels per second using a Nikon DSLR camera with a shutter speed of 1/250th second, which is less than the display’s 120 Hz refresh cycle time. Figure 4 has a screen shot for the OLED TV and a similar screen shot for an LCD TV from a 2011 study. Both TVs have a 120 Hz Refresh Rate. On the LCD TV screen shot it is possible to make out latent images from more than 5 prior refresh cycles. The OLED TV screen shot shows a single sharp image. See our LCD Response Time and Motion Blur article for more details.

OLED TV Test Result: The OLED screen shot shows no visible Motion Blur or latent images from any previous refresh cycles, so the Response Time is visually indistinguishable from zero with no visible display based Motion Blur.


Additional:

Viewing Angle Performance
The best place to watch any display is with the viewer sitting directly in front of the center of the screen at eye height – which is called the “sweet spot” and only one person can be there. Other viewers may see a slight to substantial degradation depending on how far away they are from the sweet spot. In many cases TV viewers watch from 30 degrees and occasionally as high as 45 degrees Viewing Angle. All displays show some variation in Brightness, Black Level, Contrast Ratio, Intensity Scale, Gamma, White Point, Color Gamut, and Color Shifts with Viewing Angle. The variations are generally quite large for LCDs. For the LG OLED TV the Lab Measurements show no visually detectable variation in picture accuracy for typical TV watching Viewing Angles up through at least ±30 degrees. See the Lab Measurements section for details.

Viewing Tests
Before, during, and after the Lab Tests we spent a considerable amount of time viewing real TV, movie and video content, lots of digital photos, plus web and computer content via its Smart TV interface. We also invited over a dozen people to come watch and provide their impressions of the OLED TV while viewing their chosen TV shows and Blu-ray movies. We also looked at lots of personal digital photos on this accurately calibrated TV, which is especially important because people generally know exactly what the photo content actually looks like – so Absolute Color Accuracy matters the most with your own digital photos. We carefully setup the viewing area with adjustable low to medium ambient lighting, a viewing distance of 8 feet (2.4 meters) and the center of the TV at viewing eye height level. The viewer comments were unanimous, “this is the best TV we have ever seen.” It’s the result of an excellent calibration that delivers accurate colors and excellent image contrast together with perfect Black Levels, which was particularly noticeable with dark content and dark picture detail that is seldom reproduced well by other display technologies (see below). Simply stated, the picture quality is absolutely stunning!

3D Picture Quality
This OLED TV also has 3D modes using LG’s 3D FPR technology with Passive 3D Glasses. Back in 2011 we did an article on 3D TV Technology with in-depth objective scientific comparisons and analysis, including extensive lab measurements and viewing tests together with quantifiable 3D Visual Sharpness Tests. Our 2011 study only had LCD TVs. As a result, we expected this LG OLED TV to perform better in 3D because of its improved Black Levels, Contrast Ratio, Response Time, and screen optics. We didn’t do any 3D Lab measurements this time, but viewing the same set of 3D movies mentioned in the 3D TV article produced even better 3D as we had expected. The Avatar and IMAX 3D movies that we watched were immersive and gorgeous!

Comparison with LCD TVs
LCDs are currently the dominant display technology because they do lots of things very well. One area where LCDs are clearly number one is in Peak Brightness (because their separate backlight can be easily brightened). The LG OLED TV has a Peak Brightness comparable to the brightest LCD TVs, but only for Average Picture Levels (APL) below 30%, which is typical for essentially all TV, movie and video content. Above 30% APL, which is common for web and computer content with white backgrounds, the OLED Brightness decreases but the LCD Brightness remains unchanged. Other than Peak Brightness at high APL the OLED TV significantly outperforms all LCDs in every other category including Black Levels, Contrast Ratio, Viewing Angles, and Response Time. We’ll cover LCD TV performance in detail in Part II of the article.

Comparison with Plasma TVs
Plasma TVs have traditionally had a smaller market share, but they are often preferred by video enthusiasts over LCDs because of their superior Black Levels, Contrast Ratios, Viewing Angles, and Response Time. However, Plasma displays produce visible image noise at dark intensity levels, which compromises their picture quality, whereas OLED displays do not. The OLED TV clearly outperforms Plasmas in all of the above categories, especially when viewing dark image content. In addition, Plasma TVs typically have peak Brightness (Luminance) levels of 100 to 200 cd/m2, whereas the OLED TV produces roughly double that value, even on the accurately calibrated ISF Expert picture modes. OLEDs will clearly become the preferred technology for video enthusiasts. We’ll cover Plasma TV performance in detail in Part II of the article.

Changes with Viewing Positions and Viewing Angles
The best place to watch any display is with the viewer sitting directly in front of the center of the screen at eye height – which is called the “sweet spot” and only one person can be there. Other viewers may see a slight to substantial degradation depending on how far away they are from the sweet spot. All displays show some variation in Brightness, Black Level, Contrast Ratio, Intensity Scale, Gamma, White Point, Color Gamut, and Color Shifts with Viewing Angle. At 30 degrees Viewing Angle, LCDs typically show a 60 percent decrease in Brightness, a 50% decrease in Contrast Ratio, a significant change in the Intensity Scale and Gamma. Plasmas and IPS LCDs show small color shifts with Viewing Angle but many other LCD technologies show large color shifts of 10 JNCD or more at 30 degrees.

OLED TV Test Result: At 30 degrees Viewing Angle the Brightness decreased by only 1%, the Black Level was still zero, the Contrast Ratio still Infinite, the Intensity Scale and Gamma were effectively unchanged, the White Point changed by 2.3 JNCD, the Color Gamut changed by only 0.5%, and the Reference Colors shifted by an average of 1.7 JNCD. So there is no visually detectable variation in picture accuracy for typical TV watching Viewing Angles up through at least ±30 degrees.

______

All LCDs suffer from motion resolution problems...

"OLED, while being extraordinarily good at black reproduction and motion clarity due to its ability to actually turn off its organic LEDs (OLEDS), isn’t quite going to be capable of delivering the same brightness that normal LED TVs can provide.

Since one of the crucial components of HDR’s quality is its expected brightness, this will possibly make the powerful technology of OLED surprisingly deficient at delivering the extraordinary contrast of HDR when compared to normal LED TVs.

In turn, this could affect these TVs ability to deliver the expanded luminance and color range that HDR promises."


? From March 2015 ? (almost 20 months old): http://4k.com/news/lg-4k-oled-tv-might-not-work-well-with-hdr-5953/
______

Still, OLED is the videophile's generally preferred technology choice in UHD/4K TVs.
 
Last edited:

c1ferrari

Member Sponsor & WBF Founding Member
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Thanks, Bob. I've always thought I'd go to projector (possibly analog) from plasma technology,
but now I will research OLED.
 

NorthStar

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