Widescreen Gaming Forum

Question about LED monitors.

How exactly do they work? Do we still have panels? like...TN/PVA/IPS? BEcause I just read about a 24" version coming out by samsung...and it got me thinking. Its boasting 1,000,000:1 Contrast and I couldn't help but wonder. Is LED a new technology or is it just another way to light up the back of the panel?

The samsung one that you are talking about is most likely an LCD with LED backlighting, opposed to the cathode tubes used previously. Should give the monitors the ability to be thinner, provide better color, better power usage ect. But yes theres still TN/PVA/IPS those do not change with these monitors.



Down the road though there is OLED, which is a new screen type (like LCD, Plasma or CRT) Which will hopefully blow us all away. Theres also FED/SED which also hold a ton of promise.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organic_light-emitting_diode
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surface-conduction_electron-emitter_display
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Field_emission_display

LED like dafox said (in affordable stuff) is mostly just a more even backlighting that doesnt darken over time, has no start up time, and is slightly more energy efficient. OLED is down the road but most stuff with it now (excluding small mp3 players) would cost you an arm and a leg.

LED backlit displays are not cheap. Samsung came out with it first in the UK. Some are the always on type and some have smart circuitry to intermittently turn off the LEDs where blacks come on screen for true deep blacks. Those of course are even more expensive though.

From what I've read of OLED tech I don't like it. Sony is currently the only one pursuing it, paying royalties to Kodak because it's their invention. The main drawback to OLED is the blue color spectrum in it has a short lifespan.

Sony claims a lifespan of 30,000 hrs for their OLED TVs, which some have refuted due to lab tests showing OLED diodes of the blue spectrum having a much shorter life. Even at 30,000 hrs though, that's half the lifespan of a typical LCD display.

There is however PLED, a very similar tech using polymers rather than organics. The polymers resist moisture damage to the diodes far better than the organics do. Basically OLED is very susceptible to any amount of humidity in the air. PLED was discovered at Cambridge University in the UK. The group that did so formed Cavendish Labs.

PLED diodes when first discovered were found to last as long as 198,000 hrs. Even if the blue color spectrum fails twice as fast as the red or green like with OLED, that's still 100,000 hrs, the life of a CRT tube. Last I read Philips is the only big TV manufacturer backing PLED.

My hope is that eventually we'll see maybe LG Philips make various sizes of PLED HDTVs, hopefully as small as 26" in 1080p. That would make the ideal all purpose PC display. LG makes some of the best TV tuners too.

This tech is simple to manufacture in some ways, as the polymer (or organic) material is merely inkjetted onto a substrate. The substrate can be ultra thin. We're talking TVs that could literally hang on the wall like paintings. The tricky part is the careful placement of particles within that material which make a pattern not unlike circuit board etchings and produce the light emitting diodes where they cross over one another.

OLED tech has actually been around a while in tiny screens on some handheld devices. As is always the case, once this tech starts getting mass produced and sales go up, the prices will go down.