1. For interesting reads on Plasma HDTV, LED HDTV, LCD HDTV, check
http://plasmavslcdvsled.net
HDTV Almanac - A True LED HDTV
One of the most interesting stories to come out of CES 2012 is
about a pair of technology demonstration displays that were
tucked away in the Sony booth. Labeled “CrystalLED”, these 55″
HDTV panels were quite different from any other display that has
been marketed as an “LED HDTV” in recent years. These panels
actually were LED displays, using discrete, individual LED
components for each sub-pixel in the 1080p display. That adds
up to more than six million LEDs.
Reports from the show were that the image quality was
excellent, and why shouldn’t it be? LEDs are emissive, so viewing
angle should not be an issue, and they are mind-numbingly fast,
so there should be no problem with image blur. LEDs have an
extremely long lifetime (when was the last time you had an LED
power indicator “burn out” on a piece of equipment?), so they
should last forever, or at least well beyond the time when you’d
want to replace it. The only problems that I can foresee are the
challenge of “binning” the parts so that you get consistent color
output from all two million LEDs of the same color, and the fact
that some LEDs show color shift with changing temperatures.
Oh, and then there’s the problem of how do you actually build
these suckers? A tip of the hat goes to my friend and colleague,
Ken Werner, did some old-fashioned journalistic legwork for his
“Display Daily” column for Insight Media. He cites a “reliable
source” who indicated that each of the six million LED chips were
individually wire-bonded to the electrodes. It is not immediately
obvious how this sort of assembly could be automated at a speed
and yield that would be economically feasible. In fact, the display
industry is moving toward production processes that let you
spray or print the display materials onto the substrates; a move
to discrete LED components would seem to be a big step in the
wrong direction.
So my best guess is that you should not bank your HDTV budget
2. in hopes that Sony will be selling one of these LED displays any
time soon (if ever).
Posted by Alfred Poor, January 16, 2012 5:00 AM
For interesting reads on Plasma HDTV, LED HDTV, LCD HDTV, check
http://plasmavslcdvsled.net