Research firm cuts into Sony claims for super-thin TV

By PETER SVENSSON, AP Technology Writer

XEL-1 OLED Television

(AP) -- A Sony TV with novel display technology that has drawn rave reviews for image quality may actually last little more than half as long as the company claims, according to a test by a private research firm.

Sony's XEL-1 is the first TV on the U.S. market that uses organic light-emitting diodes, which give a bright, colorful image while keeping power consumption low. The screen diagonal is just 11 inches, making it more of a conversation piece than the center of the living room, especially considering the price - $2,499.99.

DisplaySearch ran two XEL-1 units for 1,000 hours, and measured the drop in brightness. Extrapolating from that, they found it would take 17,000 hours for a display to lose half its brightness, a standard measure of display life.

Sony says the display lasts 30,000 hours, or 10 years of typical use. Spokesman Greg Belloni said that figure is based on years of tests and the company stands by it.

Poor longevity has been a problem with OLEDs, but Barry Young, senior adviser at DisplaySearch, said it has more or less been solved in the most recent iterations of the technology.

"The results demonstrate that the Sony display is significantly inferior in many ways to the current (OLED) designs," DisplaySearch's researchers wrote.

For example, Young said, Samsung makes a smaller OLED display for cell phones that lasts longer than Sony's TV.

Š 2008 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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Posted by superhuman 05/07/08 19:42

Rank: 5/5 after 2 votes

From their graph at:
http://www.displa...d_tv.asp
it can be deduced that either the relation is nonlinear or they have significant measurement errors (unfortunately not shown). In either case 1000h seems way too short to predict how the display will act after 17000h (the mentioned differential aging is only present in the last 4 points for example). As it is not stated how many devices were tested, what was the exact protocol and what were measurement errors its really hard to judge how reliable the data really is (this could be in the extended version of the report). So while it's great that someone is checking the manufacturers claims these results should be approached with caution, at least until another 3000h confirm the trend.

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Posted by trantor 05/07/08 20:26

Rank: 5/5 after 3 votes

considering the QUALITY of the OLED display, brightness and contrast ratio... wouldnt it in fact reach LCD quality after 17 hours? Like... well, it lost half its brightness, but its still as good as a brand new LCD.

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Posted by Soylent 05/08/08 07:44

Rank: 5/5 after 1 vote

From their graph at:
http://www.displa...d_tv.asp
it can be deduced that either the relation is nonlinear or they have significant measurement errors (unfortunately not shown).

That's correct, the relaxation is not linear, it's known empirically from other studies on OLEDs that a stretched exponential is a good fit.

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Posted by ShadowRam 05/08/08 14:42

Rank: 1/5 after 1 vote

I'm sorry, but a 1000hr test, and the assumption of linearity is just stupid.

DisplaySearch are obviously uneducated morons.