OLED TVs will get cheaper, Panasonic's TV boss says, predicting
that the self-illuminating television tech will be within reach of average
consumers in a few years' time.
"Probably within two
or three years," said Masahiro Shinada, director of Panasonic's TV
business division, speaking to CNET at the IFA trade show in Berlin, where the
company just revealed its first commercial OLED TV set, the ultra
high-definition 65-inch CZ950. "From 2017 or 2018, the OLED market will
expand."
OLED is an emerging TV
technology that, unlike today's regular LCD TVs, doesn't require a backlight
because the pixels in the screen can be individually switched on or off,
resulting, for instance, in perfect blackness in parts of the screen where
nothing is showing. OLED TVs can be very thin and light, and the technology
produces the best picture quality we've ever seen. On the other hand,
these panels are expensive and tough to build. Models from LG on the market now
start in the neighborhood of $2,000 and range up quickly from there.
Price drop
That pricing problem is,
Panasonic asserts, a temporary one.
"I'm very confident
panel cost will go down," says Shinada, arguing that growth in OLED for
business purposes (when the tech is used in signs or retail displays) will help
to lower prices on the consumer side too. The TV boss expects that if panel
suppliers can improve their yield ratios -- that is, the number of OLED panels
produced that are fit to be put into TVs, rather than scrapped -- prices will
drop dramatically. "Last year, the panel suppliers' yield was very, very
low level" Shinada said. "But currently this ratio is now
growing."
OLED
wars
LG
is currently the only other major TV maker betting on OLED, and it has a head
start, having sold televisions using the technology for several years now.
Panasonic does have form when it comes to self-illuminating systems, however,
having championed plasma TV, the similarly self-illuminating display tech that
was beloved by TV fanatics but lost a format war to today's much more common
LCD TVs.
"Panasonic
developed PDP [plasma display panel]," Shinada said. "But unfortunately
we stopped this business in 2013." Now the company hopes some of the
experience it gained during the plasma years will translate to OLED, and yield
a picture that beats LG's.
Their
OLED TVs will have one thing in common -- both companies are using white
OLED, which means each pixel shines white light through a set of
red, green and blue filters to create a pixel's worth of colour. Another
approach -- one previously favoured by Samsung, uses actual red, green and blue
sub pixels, and no filters. Shinada says the decision to use a white OLED and
filters is the better option for now because of cost reasons, even if the
red-green-blue alternative "probably" would produce a better image.
The company hasn't decided what it will favour in the future, with Shinada
reiterating, "Panel cost is the most important point."
