Your Questions about OLED TVs Answered!

LG’s 55-inch OLED TV was the single most talked about product at the 2012 International Consumer Electronics Show (CES) inLas Vegas. Before, during, and after. Beforehand, everyone was buzzing about the rumors of something big. During, there was just amazement at the technological accomplishment. And now afterwards, there are plenty of questions being asked online and off about this great new TV. 

We’ve been doing a lot of listening, and here are our answers to some of the most frequently asked questions about OLED TVs.

1. Why is the industry buzz suddenly all about OLED TVs?

Actually, OLED technology is not new. In fact, it’s widely used in gadgets with smaller displays, like your smart phones. But it is not easy to make at larger sizes. In fact, the larger it gets, the more difficult it is to make. But new technological advancements have allowed manufacturers to overcome the key technical difficulties, enabling us to successfully unveil the world’s first 55-inch OLED TV at the 2012 CES.

2. What does OLED stand for?

OLED stands for Organic Light Emitting Diodes. The key letter is “O”. We’ve all heard of Light Emitting Diodes (LEDs) and seen them widely used as backlights for TVs and in other devices. But because OLED is organic, there is no need for a backlight. When electricity is applied through a current, the diodes light up organically. In fact, this would also be the answer if you had asked “how did you get it so thin?” No backlight means we were able to make ours just 4mm thin!

3. What one is better? OLED or LED?

Tough question! We love LEDs, and you’ll be seeing a lot of high-end LED TVs in the market for years to come. They produce excellent colors, are very slim, and are more energy efficient than CCFL backlit LCD TVs. But where LEDs perform well, OLEDs perform even better. The colors are much more accurate. The designs are even slimmer. And OLEDs are even more energy efficient than their LED counterparts.

4. Are OLEDs 3D?

Absolutely! LG’s 55-inch OLED TV offers the same widely acclaimed CINEMA 3D technology available on all our CINEMA 3D Smart TVs, with the same comfortable and lightweight glasses. But the 3D picture quality is better than ever because it generates perfect blacks without any cross-talk. And it does so at lightning fast response speeds and a very wide viewing angle. (Cross-talk, aka image ghosting, is what you sometimes see on 3D TVs using what’s called active technology, when the left and right images overlap or are misaligned.)

5. What are these “White OLEDs” we keep hearing about?

Most TVs generate colors by mixing red, green and blue. In fact, another OLED TV unveiled at the CES by one of our competitors uses RGB OLED, which works fine for smaller displays on mobile devices, but not so great when it comes to larger TV displays.

LG has made OLED TVs much more efficient to manufacture by using what we call White OLED technology. It mixes red, green, and blue OLED colors generating a white OLED color. These pure 4 colors are then perfected through LG’s Color Refiner, which provides an astounding range of colors and that incredible viewing angle that we talked about above.

6. When can I get one?

Actually, we’re not far away from mass producing large screen OLED TVs for home entertainment use. LG promised at the 2012 CES to bring its beautiful award winning OLED TV to consumers this year.

We’ve posted some more information here on how OLEDs stack up against LEDs. And keep checking back because this is going to be a big year for OLED technology and we’ll keep you posted on the latest.