From the course: Video Gear

Benefits of OLED

From the course: Video Gear

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Benefits of OLED

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- I turn to you to be an expert on all things displays and color. I've known you for a long time, and you're also an early adopter of relatively new technology. So there's thing thing called OLED. - Yeah. - I've got to be honest, it kind of freaks me out. There's live things in the monitor. - Yeah, so OLED is a crazy cool technology in which the reason I love OLED, which stands for organic light-emitting diode, is because of the black level. When you compare OLED to other popular technologies like LCD or LED-backlit displays, the black level on most displays can't even come close to OLED. Furthermore, plasma, which used to be kind of the de facto standard for getting the best black levels, and by the way, plasma's kind of dead, Panasonic's no longer making them, Samsung is about to stop making them, well, the black levels on the OLED display compared to a plasma aren't even night and day because here's the deal with OLED. When it's not showing something, when a pixel is not on, it's completely off. - So each of these can actually be fired, so unlike a black that has some light emitting from it still, because there's no such thing as truly off with most of these other display technologies. - And this is the way that you can visualize this, if you go to a local big-box electronics store and maybe you can get into a dark-ish environment, I know that's hard to do in one of those stores. - Yeah. - But if you compare, say, an edge-lit LED set and just put up a black field so it's not showing anything, and then do the same thing on a OLED display, and consumer OLEDs are out there. LG, for example, is probably the biggest purveyor of them, look at them side by side. With nothing on the screen, it will look like the OLED display is off. - But there are a couple of things to know, right? I mean, the latest and the greatest is never the cheapest. - That is, for sure, true. Now, the problem right now with the OLED market is that when it comes to sort of overall performance, in my opinion, you're not gonna get better performing displays on the pro side of things. Sony, Flanders Scientific, TVLogic, they're all making professional 10-bit OLED displays that are just amazing to look at, but to get that technology and that performance, you sacrifice two things. The first, Rich, is a lot of change. - Yeah. You'll pay for it. - A lot of coin. A lot of coin to do that. You know, for example, a Sony 24.5-inch OLED, their BVM Series, can cost you 15 to 25,000 dollars. The other thing that you sacrifice is size. Right now, it's pretty easy to find OLEDs in five, seven, eight inches, up to about 34 inches. - Right. - But if you need a 50- or 60-inch OLED, yeah, those are few and far between. LG is making them now, but they're making them on the consumer side of things, and you know what consumer means, right? - Yes. - Less good. Exactly, so there are some sacrifices to be made there. Additionally, Rich, I'm sure you've seen this. Have you even gone to like, you know, a big electronics store, what's the thing that you notice about the shape of a big OLED screen? - They tend to be these curves. - Yeah. - Yeah, and it's just, the bottom line here is this is interesting display technology. Now, I think OLED is worth keeping an eye on. It's certainly, like all things, going to continue to fall in price, but another thing that I think is pretty important is that there are some resolution limitations right now, too. Rob, correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe that a 4K OLED is pretty much a unicorn at this point. - Ah well, unicorn in the sense that they're not shipping en masse but LG, for example, has announced 4K OLEDs at this past CES, they're starting to ship some of them, but those are going to be really pricey. I mean, even on the consumer side, those are going to be in the seven, eight, nine thousand dollar range for a 60- or 70-inch set. - So this is what like Spielberg is putting into his house for his personal screening room. - Or yeah, where I'll just, you know, sell all my possessions and buy them, but yeah, that's pretty much the idea. Now, Rich, there is one more thing I really want to make sure that people know because this is kind of hard-to-find information. When you look at professional OLED displays, from Sony and FSI and the others that I mentioned, generally speaking, they're RGB OLEDs. Kind of how those panels are built together is RGB OLED, so true RGB. When you look at consumer sets that kind of make the manufacturing process easier, more repeatable, those are called White OLEDs. There's actually another layer packed in there with the OLED panel. It's easier to manufacture but technically, they are a little different, and they can produce slightly different results in terms of color accuracy and things of that nature. - Well, I hope you enjoy this week learning about some professional options to look for when you're putting together both a studio and a field monitor, as well as a look at new technology that's going to impact which monitor you'll end up with. I'm sure that OLED displays will continue to evolve and will likely end up on your desktop and so, you may be lucky enough to have them already, but like all technology, it's worth keeping an eye on. For Video Gear Weekly, my name's Rich Harrington. - And I'm Robbie Carman. - Thanks for watching.

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