Both LG and Samsung have demonstrated at CES 2019 that they are still the kings of the TV market.
They are also making it extremely hard for Chinese TV makers to compete in the premium TV market, Samsung with their Micro LED technology and LG with their OLED.
Now for the first time cracks are starting to appear between the two with Samsung now in a position to deliver a TV technology that will scale and is good if not better than OLED.
While LG has launched a rolled up OLED TV it is for a limited market, is expensive and will most probably fall in price soon after being launched. On the other hand, Samsung has delivered a TV technology that is cheap to manufacture and is powered by new processor technology which is not only designed and made by Samsung but is the future for TV’s that have to handle vast amounts of content and the upscaling of content and formats.
According to Samsung Micro LED is the future for large screen TV’s.
What Samsung have done is ditch backlight which is where the industry is going.
OLED is self-emissive, which is why Samsung chose not to go with it. At the same time, it has problems with burn in.
There is also brightness limitations and concerns over the lifespan of the organic compounds.
On the other hand, Micro LED technology is far more mature. Each pixel requires three LEDs as a result a 4K set requires 25 million pixels. Mass producing them perfectly aligned and with no variation in brightness is apparently difficult however Samsung has a reputation for being high quality manufacturers of technology
These demands will lead to prices being very high in the first place, although they should come down once the manufacturing process has been refined.
Instead of using organic light emitting diodes they use tiny, non-organic LEDs – three per pixel. That means that each pixel can be turned on or off individually or can display a completely different colour to the one next to it. The result is essentially perfect contrast and colour control.
Like LG’s rollable OLED TV Samsung’s first Micro LED TV’s are to be in the tens of thousands of dollars and these will fall as Samsung cranks up manufacturing, prices should be similar to what we currently expect to pay for a premium TV within two years.
The first thing you notice about the new Micro LED TV’s is that the TV’s are brighter than OLED.
OLED is limited to a peak brightness of around 1000 nits, Samsung says its first Micro LED TV’s will boast 4000 nits and could go as high as 10,000 nits in the fairly near future. They are also power friendly using significantly less power than OLED TV’s.
Micro LEDs aren’t organic meaning that they will last longer than an OLED TV. Samsung says its Micro LEDs will keep going for around 100,000 hours – that’s over 11 years of non-stop use.
Thirdly, Micro LEDs are very power-efficient, largely because there’s no need for a colour filter for them to shine through. There’s nothing between the LEDs and your eyes, so they can be brighter with less effort.
LG did not want to talk about their new roll up TV or about the potential problems that users face especially with children around.
The bottom line is that Micro LED is designed to take the best of OLED and make it brighter, longer-lasting and more affordable which is a problem that LG face with their OLED TV technology. This is the same LG OLED TV technology that is being sold to brands such as Hisense and TCL who don’t have the processor technology similar to LG to boost the performance of their OLED TV’s.
Micro LED technology from Samsung was first introduced at CES 2018 with the roll out of The Wall display. It was constructed using Micro LED panels, and while it was shown in a traditional 16:9 configuration, it can actually be specified at any size and ratio.
Now Samsung is set to launch a 75″ Micro LED TV that with a traditional 16:9 aspect, they can also go up to 100″ and down to 40″ without losing quality.
While we’ll likely see sets become available next year, it’ll be another two years before prices fall to be really affordable.
