Samsung’s 2021 Neo QLED TVs feature amazing enhancements, but they are still based on LCD technology.
Samsung
Currently, there are two TV technologies available to most people: LCD and OLED. People with a lot of money can certainly get a MicroLED TV, but mere mortals have only two choices. The largest TV manufacturer in the world, Samsung, has been firmly in the LCD camp for many years, while the city opponent LG is the biggest name in OLED. LCD has its strengths, but still has behind the OLED level in the overall image quality.
Now Samsung is working on a new type of TV aimed at combining two display technologies into something bigger than the sum of its parts. This is an OLED / quantum dot hybrid. According to Korea IT News, Samsung Display will end production of LCD panels by 2021 and move to QD-OLED next year. At the same time, Samsung Electronics may start selling these new TVs as early as 2022.
This is what we know so far:
Samsung’s $ 11 billion Quantum Points Bet
I’m sure a small pallet checker can lift the crate, no problem.
Samsung
Samsung has been selling quantum dot LCD TVs for the past few years QLED brand. In our tests, Samsung’s QLED TVs does not match the overall image quality of OLEDhowever, mainly due to OLED’s incredible contrast and oblique performance. In October 2019, Samsung Display announces that it is building a factory to make TVs that combine these technologies:
Samsung Display will have won 13.1 billion by 2025 to build ‘Q1 Line’, the world’s first mass production line on the Asan campus. According to production, the new line will start production in 2021 with an initial 30,000 sheets (8.5 generations) and will deliver a large QD display of 65 inches or larger.
This is an investment of approximately $ 11.1 billion. Although the company calls this ‘QD screen’, it is not so electroluminescent, or “direct view” quantum dots. That technology is still several years away. This is going to be a QD-OLED hybrid.
During the announcement, the President of South Korea, Moon Jae-in, also referred to Samsung’s competitor LG regarding Korea’s place in the world TV production: “It is important to maintain the top position of the global exhibition market with technology which changes the game, “Moon said. “Following LG Display’s three billion investment in large OLED panel production in July, Samsung Display’s latest investment plan further brightens the outlook.”
One thing you may have noticed is that Samsung calls this ‘QD screen’, which can be confusing as it is not a direct view of quantum dots (more on this later). Since LG has been the only name in the city (figuratively and literally) for OLED for years, it is unlikely that Samsung will name any version of this technology OLED. We’ll probably have to wait until CES 2022 to find out.
Look at this:
CES 2021: The best TVs from the program
15:01
How QD-OLED will work
A simplified diagram of how a QD-OLED hybrid would work. A blue OLED material creates all the blue light, plus the light energy that red and green quantum dots will use to create red and green light.
Samsung
How will it work? Nanosys, a company that makes quantum dots, shared some details. CEO Jason Hartlove is understandable about the technology, which relies on converting light from an OLED panel:
“Quantum Dot Color Conversion is a whole new way of displaying color in exhibitions,” he told CNET. “The result is pure quantum color with much higher efficiency because no light is lost in a color filter.”
The combination of quantum dots and OLED plays according to the strengths of both technologies. The idea with any TV is to create red, green and blue light. LED LCDs with quantum dots, such as Samsung’s current QLED TVs, use blue LEDs and a layer of quantum dots to transform some of the blue into red and green. With the current version of OLED, yellow and blue OLED materials create a ‘white’ light. In both cases, color filters only allow the color needed for the specific subpixel.
The idea with a QD OLED is to simplify these designs into one by using OLED to create blue light, and then a quantum layer to convert some of the blue into red and green.
How Nanosys QD-OLED aims will work. Samsung’s version is likely to be similar. A blue OLED layer creates blue light that passes through a quantum color conversion layer (“QDCC”) that converts some of the blue into red and green. Thanks to how quantum dots work, it is significantly more efficient than using color filters.
Nanosys
There are theoretically many advantages to this method. Using only one color or material of OLED will reduce the manufacturing cost because it is easier to build. For example, LG uses only two OLED materials, blue and yellow, for each pixel across the entire screen. Light-blocking color filters create green and red. QDs have almost 100% efficiency, significantly better than filters, so in theory the hybrid TVs will be much brighter. Plus, there is the possibility of even wider color numbers at all brightness levels.
On the left, the current version of OLED. ‘White’ in LG’s case is a combination of blue and yellow OLED materials. On the right, how QD-OLED is likely to work, use only blue OLEDs, and then switch some of them with red and green quantum dots.
Nanosys
Because every pixel can be turned off, these hybrid TVs will also have the incredible contrast ratios for which OLED is known.
Since blue OLED materials age faster and faster than red and green, this means that the TV ages evenly without changing color if the entire panel has one color. Keeping aging to a minimum, and thus having a TV that does not look dull after a few years, is one of the major manufacturing problems. This is especially true here HDR era of extreme brightness levels.
A very, very close view of a QDCC layer. Behind it can be blue LEDs, or blue OLEDs. Either way, the color that comes out is red, green and blue.
Nanosys
While this new Samsung plant focuses on TV-sized screens, the technology can also work in phone-sized screens. Since Samsung apparently has no problem making excellent small OLEDs, I would be surprised if it is so quick to upset the market with something as advanced as this. Also, the Samsung OLEDs on the phone use red, green and blue OLEDs compared to LG’s blue and yellow. Samsung tried to make RGB OLED TVs and just could not make it profitable. What is more likely and mentioned in the latest rumors is that they will use this technology to build high resolution 8K computer monitors along with larger TV screens.
As mentioned earlier, it is clear that Samsung strongly believes in this technology as the production of LCDs at its factories in Korea is stopped. This does not mean that it will not sell from next year any LCDs. Samsung is a big company, and part of the company is make LCDs, Samsung Display, stop production. The part of the company that sell TVs, Samsung Electronics, did not make such an announcement. Part of the latest delay was that Samsung Electronics needed LCD panels before they were ready to sell QD-OLED panels. They have worked it out for 2021, and are likely to acquire LCD panels from a third party going forward.
The future in
It looks like QD-OLED is around the corner. But what about even more digestive display technology? Well, people with quantum points seem to think direct view quantum points are only a few years down. These electroluminescent quantum dots, or ELQD, have all the benefits of OLED, all the benefits of QD and no problems with the LCD or the worries and the lingering problems of OLED. Indeed a very promising technology.
The other new TV technology that is already on the market anyway is the extreme high point of the market MicroLED. It has many of the same benefits as the QD-OLED hybrid, but does not rogue with the pesky organic matter. Affordable versions of it are still a long way off. Oh yes, and MicroLEDs also use quantum dots. It’s a fascinating technology to use far beyond TV screens.
Meanwhile, we have mini-LED, which is also pretty cool and much cheaper than any of these.
In addition to TV and other exhibition techniques, Geoff also does photo tours of cool museums and places around the world, including core submarines, massive aircraft carriers, Medieval castles, airplane cemeteries and more.
You can follow his benefits on Instagram and YouTube and on his travel blog, BaldNomad. He also wrote a best-selling science-fiction novel about submarines in the city, along with a sequel.