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Samsung OLED laptop prototype: latest developments

Gareth Beavis — 1210933200

Samsung SDI has unveiled a concept laptop using an active matrix OLED (AMOLED) with an advanced backplane driver, allowing for better driving of the high-resolution display.

Samsung’s prototype - developed for this year’s upcoming SID 2008 event in the US - has all the fancy gubbins: a touchscreen keyboard so light the screen needs a stand for balance, a technologically advanced monitor capable of super-high resolution and contrast.

But the technology behind the screen is what could make this announcement one of the most pivotal in the ‘OLEDs in laptops roadmap’.

Most OLEDs in use for mobile phones today use a technique called passive matrix driving, which uses a larger amount of power and has a lower refresh rate for movement - fine for smaller screens but tricky for laptops and TVs.

AMOLEDs have individual transistors throughout the display - allowing for more effective power consumption and more impressive graphics, but they cost more and are harder to fabricate without high failure rates.

Samsung’s WXGA (1280x768) also uses a more advanced manufacturing technique to create the TFT backplane for the screen - it may not seem important, but one of the biggest hurdles to OLED development is cost, so to develop a cheaper way of making them is a good thing.

All a silly con?

And after that, it gets a bit more technical, but again, very important in the future road map.

Silicon is used in the TFT backplane used to tell the pixels what to do, but can either:

Poly-silicon (poly-si) mostly used, effective but not really good enough at bigger sizes, especially in making the screens last long enough)

Amorphous silicon (a-si) good enough to provide 20 times the picture quality of poly-si, but unstable and expensive to use.

But Samsung has gone with a-si for the prototype, which might not seem exciting as they’ve done it before with other screens, but rumours are the technology is getting better all the time, especially as intensive development has begun in the OLED TV wars between the bigger companies.

It might be dull now, but could be the springboard for prettier, thinner displays in the future.

Review: Hitachi's impossibly thin LCD TV

James Rivington — 1210865728

Hitachi’s new ultra-thin LCD TV has once again raised that old question: exactly how thin does a TV need to be?

The Hitachi UT32MH40U is just 35mm deep, and so looks incredibly thin indeed. It's possibly the slimmest production LCD TV we've ever reviewed. And so it's also pretty impressive that it still manages to produce a rather good picture.

Slimming down

Back at IFA in August 2007, Sharp stunned us all with its new concept TV that were just 20mm thick. And despite that slim body, the panels have a contrast ratio of 100,000:1.

This Hitachi TV isn’t quite that slim, or quite that good. But it is in our office right now, whereas the super-slim Sharps won’t be around until 2010 at the earliest.

If you’re looking for a competent, extra-slim LCD TV to hang on the wall in your living room, this Hitachi could be right up your street.

Read our full review

CBS to pay $1.8 bn for CNET Networks

Patrick Goss — 1210861060

CBS had agreed to buy CNET Networks and its raft of sites in a deal valued at $1.8 billion ($900 million) the companies have confirmed.

The deal, which includes internet sites CNET, ZDNet, Gamespot. Mp3.com and CNET News.com, saw CBS pay $11.50 a share – a significant premium on the $7.50 share price on Wednesday.

The deal brings CBS a huge platform of internet users catapulting them into the top 10 in the US – and giving them access to an audience of some 200 million. The company already owns social music site Last.fm.

Third quarter

The deal has apparently been ‘unilaterally agreed by CNET’s board’ according to the company’s news site and will be completed in the third quarter.

CBS is one of the biggest television and radio networks in the US, where it is responsible for the likes of CSI and NCIS.

CNet Networks does have UK presence, but no announcement has been made as to how this deal will affect it.

Sky rebrands VOD to Sky Player

Patrick Goss — 1210853300

Sky has rebranded its PC VOD as Sky Player, as well as making several enhancements to the service.

The VOD service has already had more names than the average undercover detective, and after Sky Broadband and, latterly, Sky Anytime fell by the wayside, the satellite broadcaster has opted for a name that sounds a bit like BBC’s iPlayer in order to 'take on the Sky Player brand in recognition of the public’s growing awareness of additional online video ‘player’ services' and 'help newcomers to the service understand its core functionality'.

At least they are open about their reasons.

Progressive downloading

Sky also announced that the Sky Player will allow progressive downloading and the incorporation of live streaming channels including Sky News and Sky Sports.

“The changes we are making to the service today will give Sky customers an even richer online experience. Our leadership in the breadth and depth of content is being supported by improvements to the service’s functionality, such as live channels and instant play and watch,” Griff Parry, Director of On-demand, BSkyB, said in a press release.

“As a core component of Sky’s multi-platform strategy, Sky Player’s role is one of offering Sky customers more value from their relationship with Sky.

“The renaming of the service helps provide our customers with a clearer understanding of what the service delivers, particularly in light of immediate content playback.”

Lots of content

It may be a shameless cash-in in terms of the name, but Sky’s anytime service has had plenty of time to mature and grow over the years and they are rightly proud of an extensive movie catalogue.

Sky’s service also provides live streaming sports channels free for those who subscribe to the extra-box multiroom service and personalised home pages.

Sumitomo unlikely to make OLED TVs by 2009

Gareth Beavis — 1210845045

A recent report stating Japanese manufacturer Sumitomo Chemicals will begin producing OLED TVs by 2009 appears to be wide of the mark.

An informed source at Cambridge Display Technology, the company that develops the polymer light emitting materials (P-OLEDs) to be used in the forthcoming TVs, says “Sumitomo is working with partners so the timing of any product launch is not just [its] call.”

The source goes on to say Sumitomo President Hiromasa Yonekura was “misquoted” in his speech regarding the development of OLED TVs and the timescale placed upon their release.

Printing the future

CDT was purchased by Sumitomo Chemicals in 2007 after a long-standing partnership to help develop P-OLEDs and the Japanese company intends to leverage the technology to make displays and TVs in a variety of sizes.

You will probably have heard of the OLED (which stands for Organic Light Emitting Diode) already, but you probably don’t know two rival technologies exist within it. Small Molecule OLEDs (SMOLEDs) are the most widely used version, already employed by companies such as Samsung in a few of their mobile phones.

These are created by heating up the organic matter and evaporating it onto a template, thus creating a display. This is a complex process and can sometimes be only 5% efficient, as a lot of materials are lost in the evaporation process.

P-OLEDs, also knows as PLEDs or Light Emitting Polymers, can be directly printed into a TV design using an inkjet printer, thus making them a lot more efficient. However, PLED displays have not been able to perform as well as SMOLEDs in the past, and were less cost-effective.

However, since CDT was bought by Sumitomo, the development process has been ramped up, and P-OLEDs are now ready for the mainstream.

Another source at CDT said claims the Sumitomo displays could be inkjet-printed were valid, as the technology has also been developed to the point where it could be used to manufacture larger panels.

So it might not be in this decade, but low-cost, ultra-thin large screen OLED TVs could be with us sooner than many people think.

Special report: inside Samsung's LCD plant

Dan Grabham — 1210771260

This week TechRadar is in South Korea to check out some of Samsung’s new technology and browse round some of its top-secret manufacturing facilities. And we've been lucky enough to take a tour around one of it's amazing LCD factory - one of the foremost locations for LCD manufacture on the planet.

The planet currently employs 6,000 staff and 5,000 in affiliate industries – this could rise to 50,000 by the time the site is completed in 2015.

Read the full report of our visit to the LCD plant.

Ofcom changes TV phone-in rules

Patrick Goss — 1210759920

The television phone scandal has brought about a change to television companies’ licence agreements, with Ofcom insisting that third-party audits are put in place for premium rate phone voting or competition entry.

ITV was fined a record £5.67 million for a range of breaches of phone-in rules, including ignoring votes, giving out prizes to people known to the production team and selecting finalists on their suitability to be on television.

GMTV were also fined for its breakfast phone-ins and Ofcom has now acted to change broadcaster licences.

The press release, which applies to Channel 4, Channel 5 and all ITV regions, reads:

On 30 April 2008, all classes of television content broadcasting licences were varied to include a new condition that imposes new obligations on licensees such that, in summary:

where licensees invite viewers to participate in programmes, they become directly responsible for the handling of all communications from viewers; and
where premium rate telephony is used for voting or competition schemes publicised in programmes, licensees are required to obtain verification by an independent third-party.

Swiss footy fans get mobile digital TV for Euro 2008

J Mark Lytle — 1210747446

The Euro 2008 tournament may be devoid of British Isles footballing interest, but that doesn't stop us bringing you news of some of the best technology on show there.

Swiss fans with appropriate mobile phones will be able to watch matches on their handsets after NEC Japan announced today that it will shortly be installing transmitters for mobile digital TV broadcasts.

Lake Geneva to the Finland Station

Subscribers to Swisscom's SBC network will benefit from the DVB-H mobile broadcasts in Geneva, Bern, Zurich and Basle, while Italian fans can also tune in if they bring their phones along.

Finns and Albanians - the only other places where the mobile TV standard is currently available - are welcome too, but they're likely to have about as much interest as the Brits.

Blue Phase LCD TVs "to blow away competition"

J Mark Lytle — 1210738846

You know all about Blu-ray already, but we're betting Blue Phase is a new term to wrestle with - it's certainly a surprise to us. Fortunately, however, the newcomer has nothing to do with HD TV video formats.

Instead, Blue Phase describes a brand new kind of LCD panel, as announced today by Samsung in Korea. The company says it will show the world's first Blue Phase LCD later this month in the US.

Refreshing change

As for why we should sit up and pay attention, the key is in the refresh rate. A standard high-end LCD TV set can refresh at 120Hz but, Samsung claims, Blue Phase doubles that to 240Hz.

It achieves this by doing away with the need for physical layers in traditional LCDs that align the liquid crystal. These are marketed with brands like 'In-Plane Switching' or known by obscure names, such as 'Twisted Nematic.'

Instead, the Blue Phase crystal aligns itself, which contributes to the faster refresh rate and a far lower production cost. Significantly, the end result should be a far better image.

Virtually real

Samsung executive vice president Souk Jun-hyung explained: "Our Blue Phase mode is a major evolutionary development beyond conventional liquid crystal modes. Samsung's development of the technology provides a tremendous opportunity to move image quality of LCD screens much closer to that of a real moving image."

A 15-inch Blue Phase module will be on show from 18-23 May at the Society for Information Display 2008 show in Los Angeles, with mass production to follow in 2011.

Philips 9603 LCD TV series to launch May 2008

Gareth Beavis — 1210694520

Philips new range of top-end 1080p LCD sets will launch in the UK later this month, offering new features and improving on its Ambilight technology.

The 9603 series, which features sets from 32” up to 47”, will retail between £999 for the smallest of the range, and £1,999 for the largest.

The 9700 series is also set to hit UK shores soon in sizes ranging 42” up to 52”, although there have been delays in organising the retail aspects, so no prices have yet been announced.

“There’s not been a firm decision on which supplier will offer the [9700] range yet,” said a Philips spokesperson. “The sets haven’t been delayed. There was initially talk of just one set from the series being released, but want to have the whole range out.”

Whiter than white

The new range will include dynamic contrast ratios up to 55,000:1, which helps make the blacks look blacker and the whites look whiter. This is achieved by dynamic contrast, essentially the management of the LCD backlight being switched on and off in response to the image displayed.

“By using this system, we can achieve dynamic contrast on up to 95% of the picture, compared to 25% before,” confirmed the spokesperson. This means extremely dark scenes with spots of light will become even more pronounced with less power consumption.

Both ranges will use Ambilight Spectra LED lighting around the edges of the sets, which helps reduce eye strain and improves the image quality. The Spectra aspect actually introduces a delay into the frame’s colour changing, so if an image moves off-screen, the colour frame picks up the transition in real-time.

The Spectra technology will be used on both vertical edges of the 9603 series, and on the top as well for the 9700 range.

TechRadar.com brought you the full list of specifications for the high-end TVs earlier this year, which you can read here.