May 15th, 2008
By John DeFore
Among the most drooled-over new home entertainment products today are the OLED TVs recently introduced by Sony.
Standing for Organic Light Emitting Diode, the innovation eliminates the need for back lighting — allowing for unbelievably thin monitors — and produces pictures that almost everyone agrees are far superior to plasma and LCD. The trouble is, they could be nearly as big a step backward in environmental terms as they are a step forward in aesthetic ones. Sony has been promoting its debut OLED model, the XEL-1, with ad copy like this: “Energy Efficiency: OLED technology delivers a more efficient means of utilizing light, which is generated by the organic material itself instead of an always-on backlight; also, when elements are in their ‘off’ state, they consume no power whatsoever.”
That may leave customers with the wrong impression, according to independent testing done by Japanese publisher Tech-On. A story published there in March suggests that current OLED sets use a surprisingly high amount of electricity. They even quote the tech’s other promoters admitting as much, reporting that Toshiba president/CEO Katsuji Fujita said, “OLEDs of 30 inches or more consume two to three times more power than LCDs. It will take a little more time to drop this to at least the level of LCDs.”
Now comes another third-party analysis, conducted by industry consulting group DisplaySearch, concluding that the XEL-1 won’t last nearly as long as advertised. A web site devoted to OLED news has seen the report, and summarizes its findings: While Sony claims that the TV will last 30,000 hours, or 10 years of normal use, DisplaySearch’s measurements lead them to peg the lifespan at just over half that, 17,000 hours. (The company let two XEL-1’s run for 1,000 hours, and extrapolated from the decrease in their pixel brightness over that period.)
Sony, of course, has had a lot longer to test these devices than outsiders, and has told journalists it “stands by” its numbers. The question may be nearly moot for the time being, though: As the XEL-1 measures a tiny 11 inches diagonally and is weighed down by an extraordinary $2,500 price tag. Not many videophiles will have a hard time holding out for improvements in the technology.
Copyright © 2008 | Distributed by Noofangle Media
