David Katzmeir of CNET has finally got his hand on the ultra-cool new OLED television being produced by sony, and takes us on a little video preview / review of the Sony XEL-1 OLED television:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z5y6tHYZjz4&hl=en&fs=1&rel=0&color1=0x006699&color2=0x54abd6]

The first thing you notice is that it is small, small AND expensive to be exact, but that is just because it is such a brand new technology and prices will drop and sizes will go up just as they did incredibly quickly with plasma & lcd technology.

OLED is still an emerging technology as compared to the more popular and similar LCD and LED/LCD displays, with a currently very expensive manufacturing process which is limiting its size and reasonable everyday cost factor, and as such most people won’t be willing to pay the big bucks for a smaller television.. But over the course of the next year or two as the high price of OLED manufacturing drops, much like the rapid decent of the new LCD/Plasma generations before it, there is a great chance that OLED technology will sit among the top of all television technologies with some key advantages over its LCD brother:

Key advantages of OLED over LCD displays

  • Much brighter colors (deeper blacks – main factor in picture clarity/performance)
  • Much sharper contrast
  • Much more thin and versatile (think paper thin)
  • Incredibly light (throw it like a paper airplane? Haha)
  • Much more energy efficient (save a couple hundred on those electric bills over time)
  • Much better and faster video relaying (no more motion blur/lag/ghosting)

Current Disadvantages of OLED displays:

  • Incredibly expensive per inch as compared to current LCD & Plasma displays, not affordable vs. functional just yet while manufacturing cost remains high
  • Small – in essence the same as being pricey, larger OLED panels just too expensive to be reasonable in the current manufacturing timeline
  • Limited life span as compared to other display technologies – some experts estimating max 10 years before dead, and sooner than that some deteriorating

So while Sony’s XEL-1 television is the first of its kind and is amazing in many ways with some major advantages in size/weight/picture quality, OLED is not much more than an exciting future hope with some great potential advantages.. But limited by price at the moment, it doesn’t look like OLED will be in the spotlight all that quickly, and with Laser / LED technology rapidly emerging as well, it will be interesting to see which future tv technology will become the next LCD / Plasma type champion.