LG to unveil 18-inch OLED display that ‘can be rolled up like a newspaper’

[Hamartia Antidote]

LG to unveil 18-inch OLED display that ‘can be rolled up like a newspaper’ | ExtremeTech

LG, Samsung, Sony, and other display manufacturers have unveiled flexible screens before, but this concept is more advanced, and frankly, stunning. The company is showing off at CES 2016 an 18-inch rollable display that can be rolled up like a newspaper. What’s interesting about this is the sheer size of the panel, if you can call it such; most manufacturers have shown off bendable displays at various smaller sizes in the past, and of course curved (but fixed) HDTVs have been in stores for several years now.

Instead of this fitting a smartphone that you could put in your pocket, a display like this is much tougher to pull off, and removes the hard barrier you’d find on a large tablet or convertible laptop that sets its form factor a certain way. The imagination can run wild with the possibilities; a few off the top of our heads would be a second screen for a smartphone, or (eventually) a full-blown tablet with an on-screen keyboard that you could just unroll onto a table and start working on.

At the show, LG is also showing a range of new products, including a dual-window 55-inch display, an 86-inch LCD, and a 139-inch Vertical Tiling OLED displays all appropriate for commercial signage; a 25-inch “waterfall” curved LCD designed for car interiors; and a 10.3-inch car display that works with gloved hands. We imagine LG will show off a bunch of new HDTVs we can actually buy, too.



LG is no stranger to solid display tech, even though Samsung and Vizio seem to have the most mindshare for consumer HDTV shopping these days. In May, LG unveiled a wallpaper-thin 55-inch OLED concept (pictured above) that weighed just four pounds and attached to the wall via a magnetic mat; you could then peel the display off of it and move it from room to room, assuming you had multiple magnetic mats installed on the walls.

Back in September, DisplayMate’s Ray Soneira pitted the $6,000 65-inch LG 65EG9600 OLED panel against a $5,000 Samsung UN65JS9500, and tested it for color gamut, backlight bleed, viewing angles, and more. The LG did substantially better on a variety of tests against the Samsung.

In October, for more weird display fun, LG unveiled the V10, an Android phone with two screens and two selfie cameras; the device went on to do well in reviews around the Web.

Later on this week, we should learn more about the foldable 18-inch OLED display, and hopefully how it’s made; stay tuned for details.

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LG "wallpaper" TV

 

[Pulsar]

Foldable Device Screens, Coming Soon To Your Pocket
By Kit Eaton

A breakthrough in foldable OLED screen tech means a display can be folded in half like a sheet of paper without creasing. It's no exaggeration to say this could change every mobile device's design.

Foldable computer displays have been the stuff of sci-fi legend for ages, and numerous device prototypes have been designed and tested...but almost none have made the journey into a real product. With any luck, that won't be the case for a new OLED design from Samsung Advanced Institute of Technology—because it's flexible enough to be folded in two like a sheet of paper, and resist the formation of picture-distorting creases for more than 100,000 re-folds.

The secret in the new design is that the active matrix OLED display is actually mounted on silicone rubber, which is a hyperelastic material (one that can endure huge elastic strain from stretches) and a protective pair of glass shields that also act as touchscreens. By using existing OLED production techniques, the Samsung team has worked out a way that folding screens can be made with just a few adjustments to the technology—essentially mounting the OLED units on a different substrate and using materials that have almost identical optical properties. They're also capable of being bonded to each other very strongly in the final display "sandwich." Their closely aligned optical properties mean there's no distortion to the imagery, and the joint in the screen when unfolded is almost invisible.

The silicone base helps give the screen a very small bending radius of just 1mm, which means it's feasible to make a screen that can fold over 180 degrees, and because it's flexible yet resilient it results in a screen that can be bent in half 100,000 times and yet suffer a loss of light intensity in the crease zone of just 6%—almost undetectable to the human eye.

High-quality active matrix OLED tech is well developed, and the rest of the materials in the invention are also commercially available, meaning there the barrier to entry is lower than usual for this tech to appear in products. The Samsung team is working on that, with the aim of expanding their research prototype into real large-screen devices.

Reliable, resilient folding displays could absolutely revolutionize product design. Pushed by innovations like the iPad (which its designer Jonathan Ive has often noted is designed to eliminate all traces of clutter so it's basically just one thing: a screen), and the explosion in mobile computing, we're taking large color displays into more places than ever, as users. But the design of all of these is crimped by the need to remain portable, and yet deliver a large enough screen. Enter this new screen, which could double the size of your smartphone's display with just a single fold.

And that's just a simple implementation. As foldable screen tech develops, there will likely be design innovations we can't picture yet, because gadget designers will be freed of a lot of the structural constraints forced on them with current display tech. Dare we say it—the "paper computer" seen in shows like Caprica may not be all that far off.

Video here....

Foldable Device Screens, Coming Soon To Your Pocket

 

[forcetrip]

CES 2016: Hand-on with LG's roll-up flexible screen


If you're in the business of making TV cabinets - look away now.
For the rest of you, feast your eyes on a remarkable innovation-in-progress.
LG Display has been working on its fully flexible screen for some time now, but it's at this year's CES the BBC was given the exclusive first hands-on.
The screen can be rolled up and scrunched around, and the display is full HD.
The one I played with was 18in (45.7cm) corner to corner, but the team at LG say they're aiming for screens that are 55in and beyond.
At that size they will be able to produce a screen quality of 4K, they say - that's four times HD.
Right now, the resolution is 1,200 by 810 pixels.
How did they do it? Of course they wouldn't share the precise details, but the crucial technological leap has been moving from LED TVs to OLED TVs.
The O stands for organic, and it removes the necessity of a back panel providing light to the screen. Therefore, it bends.
Why would you want a bendable TV? LG says it's ideal for making displays, like in a shop, but also for people who no longer want to sacrifice an entire corner of a room to a television.
With a bendable screen like this, you can roll it up and pop it in a cupboard until you need it again.

Dead pixels

Unfortunately - and you knew this bit was coming - LG isn't able to say how much it would eventually cost, or indeed, when it will actually be sold at all. At the moment, the team is buried in the prototype stage.

"The larger prototype is expected in the near future. But as for a commercial product, we're still planning the timing," says KJ Kim, LG Display's vice president of its marketing division.
That can be translated as it'll be a while yet.
Because while the screen is remarkable, it suffers a few flaws.
The night-time demo we saw, with quick flashing lights, was designed to conceal the numerous "dead" pixels in the display.
Dead pixels are those that have been damaged, so instead of emitting the correct colour just get appear as a tiny empty square.
There were several dead pixels on the screen and, after I played around with it a bit more, several more emerged.
Right now, the screen can only be rolled up in one direction, which isn't a limitation, really, but something they will need to suss out before it comes to market.
Also, it's crucial to point out that the screen can be rolled, but not folded flat.
Folding it flat would permanently damage it, and therefore the screen doesn't represent a chance for something many have lusted over for a while, an interactive video newspaper that feels just like the paper product.
But we're getting there.

CES 2016: Hand-on with LG's roll-up flexible screen - BBC News

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[Hamartia Antidote]

hey i found a vid

Edit: ah you beat me to it. It's on the BBC page too.

 

[forcetrip]

hey i found a vid

Edit: ah you beat me to it. It's on the BBC page too.

I searched Youtube for the video but couldn't find it. Good looking out.

 

[Hamartia Antidote]

I searched Youtube for the video but couldn't find it. Good looking out.

It was posted about a half hour ago. It had 2 hits when i saw it.

 

[forcetrip]

It was posted about a half hour ago. It had 2 hits when i saw it.

My armband computer is a few years away.

 

[Hamartia Antidote]