# A ***REAL*** "LED" TV, and my own RGB sign!



## EricB (Apr 2, 2012)

http://www.oled-info.com/crystal-led-new-self-emitting-led-tv-technology-sony

(Current "LED-TV"s are really backlit LCD's)
Almost missed this one, now 3 months old! 
When these come out, they will have to rename those fake (backlit) LED screens. (I always imagined people seeing "LED TV" and thinking the pixels were LED's, not knowing it was just a backlit LCD).
I never knew they made﻿ LED's that small. I knew OLED was a different technology, but it seemed to pick up where LED left off in small size. Probably won't be as thin or flexible as OLED's can be. So then perhaps OLED will become primarily for flexible and transparent displays.

In other news, I got myself an RGB (or more accurately, RLB, using lime or yellow-green) BetaBRite Prism sign.

http://youtu.be/hUel1GzFkXw
Got it used for $69! (Really $300-500!)

LedTronics has had RLB's for sale for over 10 years, though it was only a couple of years ago I first saw them, in this sign, which is being used for LOTTO machines in stores. Now, the only one I'm seeing on their site is the DIS-1044-005, which are domed "spider" LED's, while the ones in this sign are flat. They did use to offer a few others. (So I don't know who the OEM's, like if it's really from Cree, Nichia or whoever. Can't find out where they got them from).

I always wanted to know what the colors would look like, since the yellow in the primary green throws thins off. What we end up with, is that "full white" (FFFFFF) is very pinkish, while "light aqua" (00FF80) looks almost like a pure 6000K phosphor white!
(I've been trying to get NYC Transit to use these in signs (they only use red or amber only on vehicles, and RyG (R-L) in station signs).


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## StarHalo (Apr 2, 2012)

TVs are going to be like Apple products from here on out, some amazing new model that completely overshadows the old one every year and a half or so. Don't forget that there was an 8K TV at the last CES..


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## fyrstormer (Apr 3, 2012)

There is no meaningful difference between the picture quality on an LED-backlit LCD vs. a direct-illuminated LED array. The only meaningful difference is power consumption. Anything that tells you otherwise is marketing BS.

EDIT: Okay, if your primary colors are different, then all the combinant colors will also be different. However, that is not necessarily a benefit since it will cause pretty much every picture to look wrong compared to the standard RGB color space used by every other device on the market. Adding an extra primary color (usually yellow) would work a lot better than changing the definitions of the existing three.


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## qwertyydude (Apr 3, 2012)

Actually there is a big difference in picture quality between the picture quality of an led backlit and oled. The problem is not in resolution, they'll both be whatever is made 1080p in this case. But the big difference is in contrast ratio. You can only make the liquid crystals block so much light so there will always be light leakage which reduces contrast ratio. Whereas in oled tv's much like plasma tv's black is truly pitch black. So when watching movies in a darkened room, say for maximum theater ambience, plasma tv's and oled will look much better.


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## fyrstormer (Apr 3, 2012)

LED-backlit LCDs _can_ have comparable contrast ratios (though fluorescent-backlit LCDs can't), because they can dim or shut off the LEDs backlighting dark parts of the image. That way the LCD crystals can stay in their most effective operational range instead of having to try to block massive quantities of light to produce a dark image, which as you pointed out, they can't do very well. It can be argued that an LED-backlit LCD will have inferior image quality if a single sector of the image contains both very bright and very dark colors, and this is true, but that is a largely academic point because you'd have to be watching a movie with seizure-inducing image contrast to ever notice the difference. The cost:benefit ratio still favors LED-backlit LCDs.

However, keep in mind that your theater comparison is invalid, because theaters use film, and film also uses light-blocking to produce dark images. There is never a completely dark image in a theater either -- you just don't notice because the walls are specially designed to absorb light reflected off the screen, to make the room darker.


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## The_Driver (Apr 3, 2012)

fyrstormer said:


> LED-backlit LCDs _can_ have comparable contrast ratios (though fluorescent-backlit LCDs can't), because they can dim or shut off the LEDs backlighting dark parts of the image. That way the LCD crystals can stay in their most effective operational range instead of having to try to block massive quantities of light to produce a dark image, which as you pointed out, they can't do very well. It can be argued that an LED-backlit LCD will have inferior image quality if a single sector of the image contains both very bright and very dark colors, and this is true, but that is a largely academic point because you'd have to be watching a movie with seizure-inducing image contrast to ever notice the difference. The cost:benefit ratio still favors LED-backlit LCDs.
> 
> However, keep in mind that your theater comparison is invalid, because theaters use film, and film also uses light-blocking to produce dark images. There is never a completely dark image in a theater either -- you just don't notice because the walls are specially designed to absorb light reflected off the screen, to make the room darker.



After buying a backlit led tv with local-dimming (philips 32pfl9705) I have actually started to notice the mediocre black levels in my local movie theater (especially analog).


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## fyrstormer (Apr 3, 2012)

I have noticed the same, which is why I mentioned it. I don't really care about black levels though, because I don't watch movies to critique the image quality. Only really obvious flaws irritate me.


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## qwertyydude (Apr 4, 2012)

fyrstormer said:


> LED-backlit LCDs _can_ have comparable contrast ratios (though fluorescent-backlit LCDs can't), because they can dim or shut off the LEDs backlighting dark parts of the image.



That local dimming can have some funny effects such as a perceivable halo around high contrast objects. And also not all led tv's are array types, the super thin fashionable led tv's which are so popular are edge lit, and so suffer the same contrast problems as fluorescent lit tv's.


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## bshanahan14rulz (Apr 4, 2012)

Not that I care, I'm still watching TV on a 19" glass tube, but wouldn't the direct OLED array be easier to see from all angles? Although from what I've seen in stores, they've made leaps and bounds in terms of viewing angles on regular LCD screens too.


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## fyrstormer (Apr 4, 2012)

qwertyydude said:


> That local dimming can have some funny effects such as a perceivable halo around high contrast objects. And also not all led tv's are array types, the super thin fashionable led tv's which are so popular are edge lit, and so suffer the same contrast problems as fluorescent lit tv's.


Mayhap. It's reasonable to assume, though, that connoisseurs of high-end televisions will do their research, as connoisseurs always do, while people who just want something to watch Dancing With The Stars will happily buy a thin sexy TV for their friends to admire. LED-array-backlit LCDs and direct-illuminated LED TVs don't serve both interests effectively, not least because they cost so much more. I won't complain about progress marching on, though.


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## idleprocess (Apr 5, 2012)

OLED TV's are an interesting proposition ... can't imagine the cost of making a display out of discrete LED's unless they fabbed the entire thing like a giant LED array (ala Lamina or Bridgelux) - which probably has depressing yield.



StarHalo said:


> TVs are going to be like Apple products from here on out, some amazing new model that completely overshadows the old one every year and a half or so. Don't forget that there was an 8K TV at the last CES..



Ah, the ridiculousness of bleeding-edge TV specs.

The average person in the average home theater setup (more than 10 feet away) generally lacks the visual acuity to tell the difference between 1080 and 720. Short of filling _more_ of your field of vision and/or sitting a lot closer, there's not much benefit to higher resolution.

There's a better argument for displays > 1920x1080 in the computer monitor market where users are typically as close as 18" or so.


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## StarHalo (Apr 5, 2012)

idleprocess said:


> Ah, the ridiculousness of bleeding-edge TV specs.



Indeed, but the day is near at hand when you go to the theater to watch a 4K flick, and then a few months later you buy a perfect 1:1 digital copy of what was shown in the theater for your 4K TV. And of course the pixel count will have to be upped for the theater screen, so yours will follow..


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## StarHalo (Apr 12, 2012)




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## FRITZHID (Apr 12, 2012)

StarHalo said:


>




that is BAD ***!!!!! I Want One!!!!! tnx for sharing that Star!


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## bshanahan14rulz (Apr 12, 2012)

That kid looks scary. Especially the part where she suddenly lurches back towards the camera and charges like a hungry zombie child.


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## Canuke (Apr 14, 2012)

idleprocess said:


> OLED TV's are an interesting proposition ... can't imagine the cost of making a display out of discrete LED's unless they fabbed the entire thing like a giant LED array (ala Lamina or Bridgelux) - which probably has depressing yield.
> 
> 
> 
> ...



Several manufacturers had full HD OLED displays at CES. The main difference I noticed was the same effect that I see on LED billboards around Las Vegas: the reds are deeper and more saturated than from backlit displays, probably due to the lack of pure red in both LED and CCFL backlights.

You are right that for movie purposes, 1080p is more than enough for most -- especially for moving data, as the human brain takes more time to see details. Super-hires displays would mainly benefit still shots where the viewer has time to resolve details. Very little of what a movie does requires this capability.

The main use for 4K plus displays will be as follows: computer monitors (I'd love to have one of those 4K screens, I'd have room for the full HD frame plus all the windows and controls for editing) and multi-use single displays. By this I mean any display that shows more than one image on the same screen simultaneously. 

Most of you are already familiar with one application of MUSD: 3D, which uses half the pixels for the left image and half for the right. Current 1080p screens must sacrifice resolution, either spatially as in the LG passive system, which splits the screen up into alternating horizontal lines reminiscent of interlacing -- or temporally, which Samsung's active switching-shutter technology uses.

In addition to this, however, is a trick being used for multiplayer games where each player sees only their own view on the same screen (instead of the split-view method). 4K would yield full HD res for 4 players.

Past that point, however, there will be diminishing returns for screen resolution; eventually we'll simply have "retina" TV's with print-level native resolution, which simply means that displays will cease to be resolution-limiting -- and resolution will cease to be part of the ad copy. The next frontier will likely be upgrading the production pipeline side of things for color, with greater color depth ("Deep Color" is the first step there), dynamic range, and eventually additional primaries for fuller gamut (maybe even extra visual channels like UV and IR for effects and signalling). 

That hasn't happened yet, unfortunately, so no matter what happens with displays, there is no content production pipeline that I know of that can exploit them. Until four, five or six-primary cameras, digital intermediate and editing systems start showing up at NAB and/or CES, and the digital file formats to support them show up on the computer side, there simply won't be any content to take advantage of this tech in end-user displays. It will likely take about five years from the day they do show up, to get to end users anyhow.


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## EricB (Apr 18, 2012)

Let's not forget the increasing "graying" effect (at wider angles) for LCD. LED backlighting won't help that. (Also, I imagine individual LED light would probably spill over to neighboring pixeld).

Now, there's also WOLED-CF (LG's use of white LED pixels with some sort of RGB color filtering. Don't think it's LCD; might just be colored glass over each sub-pixel).

And yes, OLED (like my new Samsung Galaxy phone; my other colorful new gadget) does resemble a miniature LED billboard, even down to seeing the red outline from the pixels. Colors look so natural, compared to the overall bluish-silvery-grey hue of LCD. I can tell them from yards away.
I imagine true LED would be even more saturated.



> fabbed the entire thing like a giant LED array (ala Lamina or Bridgelux)


 What is this? When I look this up, it looks just like regular flat LED's.


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## idleprocess (Apr 21, 2012)

EricB said:


> > fabbed the entire thing like a giant LED array (ala Lamina or Bridgelux)
> 
> 
> What is this? When I look this up, it looks just like regular flat LED's.



Fabricating a LED TV from individual discrete LED's (even RGB LED's) would be phenomenally expensive, which is why OLED is seen as the path forward. Even if each RGB LED were $0.001 each, that's >$2000 in LED's alone.

It's possible that the individual dies could be dropped sans packaging onto some strata with the interconnects deposited at the same time along with some optical treatment, which seems like it ought be cheaper. But that that many components being placed (some 6.2 million assuming a neat arrangement of R, G, B per pixel), there might be some yield problems in production.

Of course, I could be way off since my knowledge of semiconductor fabrication is rudimentary at best.


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## EricB (Apr 21, 2012)

Yeah, that makes sense, as I used to look at the RGB dies in regular sized LED packages, and think that the die itself might be small enough to make up a TV screen pixel, but did not know whether they could stand alone on a strata without packaging.
I can't find any more details on this Crystal LED, so I don't know if that is what is being done. I imagine that is the only way that can be done.

What I was asking was what was what Lamina and Bridgelux were, since they were what you used as examples of this. (When I looked them up, they looked like large phosphor coated dies in individual units. Here, might as well give the pic:



).
So is what you're referring to just smaller, non-unitized version of this?


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## idleprocess (Apr 21, 2012)

EricB said:


> What I was asking was what was what Lamina and Bridgelux were, since they were what you used as examples of this. (When I looked them up, they looked like large phosphor coated dies in individual units. Here, might as well give the pic:
> 
> 
> 
> ...



Yes, just scaled up immensely with individually-addressable R,G,B sub-pixel LED's.


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## SemiMan (Apr 21, 2012)

StarHalo said:


> TVs are going to be like Apple products from here on out, some amazing new model that completely overshadows the old one every year and a half or so. Don't forget that there was an 8K TV at the last CES..



.. or it could be like PCs where the latest and greatest is realistically just an incremental increase and the last one works just fine. In fact, one could argue for diminishing returns based on the lions share of PC usage is Internet and simple office programs, something that a 3 year old PC can do just fine. If it was not for software creep, that could extend back even further.

The current IPAD has a better screen and faster communications, but the realm of new applications it opens up with this new feature set is pretty limited. The same could be said about the latest generation IPHONE.

If your happiness comes from the latest gadget great, but if not ....


Semiman


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## degarb (Apr 22, 2012)

My interest is in TV and computer monitor longevity. I just tossed out a 2004 monitor, and needed to shell out $100 for a new one. This, while I am drowning in crts and old tvs from the 80s that were run constantly, and still run (though at more energy consumed). 


I am reading lies on forums and by manufacturers of expected life. One person stated, "You could expect 50k to 75k hours from a cfl backlit tv and 75 to 100k hours from a led back lit--about 4 times a CRT". Well, firstly a cfl will die in 10k hours. Secondly 50k hours the led will be at half brightness; expect to get about 1-2k hours if not properly heat sinked! Thirdly, a crt expected life is 100k hours. 

Obviously, the lies are propagated by the manufactures and commissioned sellers. 

Now, a heavy TV addict (who works in some fashion) will watch about 1k hours per year. So the cfl tv will last them about 10 years. However, if you have young family of 5 people (3 kids), the cfl could die in 3ish years. Then, there are the shut ins.


So, my educated guess, is that the led tv has the potential to outlast the cfl by at least 3 times (30 k hours before irritatingly dim, if heat sinked) Perhaps more if you dim it purposely on daily use. 

But then I wonder, what is the life the lcd meduim itself? My monitor lit up, but it looked mostly white with dead spots toward the bottom, and with no writing. If not a cfl issue (lcd or electronic issue), my new $139 Samsung 23 inch (with obscene contrast ratio and super angle viewing) will die too in 5-8 years. http://www.samsung.com/us/computer/monitors/LS23A300BS/ZA


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http://www.infowars.com/forget-wifi-connect-to-the-internet-through-lightbulbs/


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## StarHalo (Apr 22, 2012)

SemiMan said:


> If your happiness comes from the latest gadget great, but if not ....



Nope, typing this on a first-gen iPad with a severely damaged LCD TV on in the background. And every time the lines form around the block at the Apple store for the latest iDevice, or an appliance store commercial announces a sale on a flatscreen so large it would have been impossible a few years ago, I am reminded that I am in a minority..



degarb said:


> (30 k hours before irritatingly dim, if heat sinked)



All mathematically logical, but as we've been discussing in the LED longevity thread, it'd be nice to hear about/see some examples of LED models that have "worn down"; I would wager some other components of the LED TV would die out long before the lifespan of the LEDs even came into play..


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## idleprocess (Apr 22, 2012)

degarb said:


> http://www.infowars.com/forget-wifi-connect-to-the-internet-through-lightbulbs/



Looks like someone re-invented IrDA, only more expensively with the very noisy visible spectrum.


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