Japan to fund creation of 40W, 40in OLED TV
Tackle climate change and stick one to the Koreans into the bargain
Sony, Sharp, Toshiba and other Japanese consumer electronics giants are to get government cash to help fund the development of big-screen OLED TVs.
In total, ¥700m ($6.6m/£3.3m/€4.2m) will be made available to the companies, all of it from NEDO, a Japanese government agency that fuels the development of emerging technologies. The funding will be provided over the next five years to March 2013.
Sony's XEL-1: groundbreaking
NEDO clearly views OLED as a key advance in cutting the amount of electrical power the world consumes. The funding is geared toward the development of a 40in 1080p screen that consumes less than 40W and can be manufactured in volume.
Sony launched the first commercially available OLED TV, the XEL-1, in September 2007. But it's just 11in in the diagonal and costs more than most much larger LCD TVs. Sony has already pledged to produce a 27in version within 12 months, and has earmarked ¥22bn ($206m/£104m/€131m) for its OLED efforts.
But it's not alone: Korea's LG and Samsung are both keenly pursuing OLED technology, and NEDO's funding is arguably as much about ensure Japan doesn't lose out to Korea in the OLED race as it did with LCD technology.
COMMENTS
Very nice, but...
don't OLED displays suffer from poor (compared to CRT/LCD) lifetimes?
The manufacturers have to remember that some people will leave their tv on for as long as they're awake, and longer if they fall asleep in front of it with or without the sleep timer. CRTs can cope with decades of such usage patterns but I doubt OLEDs will.
Oh, wait, that's built-in obselecense isn't it, silly me - how else would they make you buy a new set right after the warranty runs out...
its a good move
my 37" and a friends 40" both consume just over 150W each (the 40" is better because is uses the same and is bigger and only uses 1W in standby) - my old 30" CRT uses 55W . i'm all for 40W 40" OLED screens!
Re: Theory
OLED is an active technology, i.e. it generates light, unlike LCD which has a backlight whose output is blocked to get black (well, dark grey), so you only really need to light up one OLED pixel at a time. That must help a lot with power consumption.
@Christian Berger
I'd be amazed to see a 10W CRT unless it's really tiny. My 34" CRT TV uses about 75W. Someday soon I'll have to replace it, but I can't rationalize replacing a fully-functional set until prices go down a little more.
and the point would be what exactly?
http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2008/07/07/sony_fet_fed_plans/
I reckon the only thing the Japanese government are going to get out of this is an outbreak of well-funded dead horse flogging.
KISS engineering. FED has it, OLED hasn't.
