back to article LG kicks off work on quantum dot TV

LG is to co-operate in the development of quantum dot-derived LED TV displays capable of generating "brighter, richer colours" while consuming a fraction of the energy of today's LEDs. The South Korean giant said it will work with QD Vision, the US developer of the electroluminescent quantum dot LED - aka QLEDs. The two will …

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  1. David Gosnell

    Nice...

    Especially with the apparent demise of SED etc. Question is, how long does this realistically _now_ mean we've got to put off buying a new telly?

    1. Giles Jones Gold badge

      Depends what you own

      If you own a CRT screen you're probably better off with an LCD or Plasma.

      Buy a mid price TV now and wait for something better to come along. I'm quite chuffed with my 42 inch LG LCD TV, it was £499 and is much better than the 32 inch LCD it replaced (which cost over £700).

      1. Boring Bob

        ...jih

        If you have CRT wait 6 months/ 1 year before buying LCD. HD Freeview is comming and if you don't have a HD tele already you might as well wait for one with a HD Freeview tuner in it at a reasonable price.

  2. Caff

    phones

    Great! better battery life and sharper images on smartphones

  3. PoorLumpyPony

    Excuse my ignorance

    But isn't 'confined in three spatial dimensions' slightly redundant

    Is there any physical object which isnt confined in three spatial dimensions?

    1. Elmer Phud

      confined?

      There's always the 'infinity pocket'.

      A bit like the capacity of Eric Cartman's arse but as part of your trousers.

    2. Chemist

      "..three spatial dimensions.."

      Agreed, but I think the real magic is being able to tune the electronic properties merely by tweaking the size of the dots

    3. ian 22
      Boffin

      If these are QUANTUM dots...

      They must be unbounded in the 4th dimension! Will we watch episodes not yet broadcast (or even produced*)? What quantum weirdness will we experience when our tellys become entangled!

      * I'm not suggesting that some of the sh!te is actually "written".

    4. Chris 244
      Boffin

      Not redundant

      There also exist quantum wires and wells, which constrain in two and one dimension respectively.

  4. Stu
    Boffin

    Yay!

    Another technology that we wont see (or will only see on smartphones or iPod Nanos) for a decade or more.

    Didn't they say the same thing about being able to print OLED TVs on substrates cheaply and easily without changing the LCD production process significantly five years back now? We're still waiting on cheap OLED tellies.

    At least we can now drool over the tech as it emerges, and we have a cool new acronym. yay.

    1. Parax
      Boffin

      still waiting because...

      They havn't paid the mortgage off yet.. they invested a lot of money in LCD plants based on a 20 year life for the technology.. but OLED appeared at year 5.. so what to do? write it off? make a loss? it'll never happen. Instead they'll tinker with LCD, move from CFD to LED backlight and pretend its the new OLED Tech as its got LED in the name... oh they have already.

      unfortunatly progress is not driven by science, technology or education, its driven by capitalism.

      1. Charles 9

        Can't you retool, though?

        If you can adapt your existing equipment (without massive additonal outlay) to do OLEDs, which is what Stu is noting, then why not switch over a smaller plant or the like? You'll still be paying off the mortgage, just in a slightly different way.

        1. Ammaross Danan
          FAIL

          Capitalism

          The only reason a plant will do this is if someone ELSE does it first and starts affecting the number of TVs that they sell. THEN they'll retool with the same, or newer, tech and market it as "better" or sell it as "the same" but at a slightly lower cost.... Needless to say, NO ONE makes the jump until "someone else" steps first. Look at how Intel's [lack of] support for USB3/SATA3 has hampered rollout of USB3/SATA3 devices until someone released a certain SATA3-capabable SSD... Of course, if you're running Intel, your mobo has an addon chip allowing for SATA3/USB3 (if at all), but quite a few AMD boards now support it natively on the southbridge.

        2. Anonymous Coward
          Boffin

          re: Can't you retool, though?

          No , as the tools are what are mortgaged, the shed in which they are kept is the cheap bit. the money is in the equipment and the staff designed/trained to make lcds. the cost of any production line and ancillary supply lines, usually far outways the cost of the building in which it is housed, so yes re-tooling is how they will change over but when each of the 30 tools costs you $30million.. its no small job.

          1. Charles 9

            Re-tooling as in...

            ...modifying the existing tools to produce a slightly different product. Like what happened in auto plants during World War II. The equipment was basically the same; they just started building different things. Are you saying that OLEDs cannot be made at existing LCD facilities without making more than minor adjustments to existing equipment?

      2. Britt Johnston
        Happy

        can't wait because...

        of competition, the lesser-loved part of capitalism. While one generation of equipment ages, the next one overtakes them. The Japanese like the driver's seat for the final development, but here's a Korean on the road, a way behind.

  5. Lottie

    Red cross

    Right! If these thingies are coming along soonish I might have to nurse my current telly for a couple more years. Fingers crossed we'll see these displayys sooner or later.

    1. Parax

      Later more likely than sooner...

      see my post above, just as sony said there is no future for the OLED this QLED will not arrive untill someone has paid for the LCD plants, so go buy an LCD TV and when the capitalists have enough money they'll buy/build a new plant. (more LCD's sold = quicker next tech)

  6. LawLessLessLaw
    Boffin

    But what are they made from ?

    Is it Chinese unobtanium again ?

  7. Daniel Owen

    No way we will see these

    How many different display types have we seen never materialise in TVs? FED SED OLED etc.

    The only way we will see these is if they figure out how to make them cheaper to manufacture than LCD.

    Otherwise they will just keep flogging LCD and put 3d on the end of it.

  8. Anonymous Coward
    Alert

    Next year...

    They'll have a cyan Pixel and the year after it'll be magenta... then no doubt the industry will introduce a grey pixel too...

    meanwhile the camera' still only see in RGB. oops had they forgotten to do the cameras?

  9. joe K 1
    Coffee/keyboard

    confinement is relative ...

    Poorlumpypony, the confinement is at the nanoscale, i.e. the excitons are sort of 'trapped' in a box a few tens of nm wide , long and high . That forces them to occupy only a discrete set of energy levels, and hence emit narrow band light. Most other device structures only confine particles in two dimensions, sort of like being stuck inside a very large football stadium, you can roam around it but simply not jump out.

  10. Anonymous Coward
    Thumb Up

    digits or\and letters contain must and ,required is title The

    "the upshot is that you apply a voltage to the things and they emit light. Crucially, the voltage is very low, and the light is of a very tight frequency band, resulting in very specific, accurate colours."

    more to the point this sounds like a VERY Good thing for future Lightpeak and related multi micro fibre channels of light for the massive giga shadow SMB/SOHO network of the near future... too

    the question is, how long before they can produce Something of value in even smaller lower commercial quantities to start with!

  11. Anonymous Coward
    Coat

    ok... Low consumption screens ftw...

    ... because it sucks to recharge my cell phone every (pick one - day, week, month. ). Why can't they come up with cell phones where the battery charge lasts 2 years or more, just like my, uh, FREAKING WRISTWATCH?

    How about never recharging at all, shove an automatic mechanism in it, or solar cells. BTW, some watches have those, and the battery lasts 2 years IN THE FREAKING DARK. Give it enough sunshine, and you could pass it on as family heirloom, still working.

    (Speaking of that, pub o'clock.)

    On the other hand, with color-specific lighting, the screens build on that could get really impressive.

    Drop the coat, it is 39ºC outside.

    1. Filippo Silver badge
      Thumb Down

      re: low consumption

      Probably because your wristwatch is only rarely backlit, doesn't need to broadcast radio, only rarely emits sound, and doesn't need to power electronics that can do real-time encryption and signal processing.

    2. Ammaross Danan
      FAIL

      Idiot? No wonders he's an AC

      "Why can't they come up with cell phones where the battery charge lasts 2 years or more, just like my, uh, FREAKING WRISTWATCH?"

      Last I checked, a wristwatch didn't need to send active signals to a tower X meters away. Put NTP in your wristwatch and see how long that battery lasts. Oh, and try making the backlight on your watch stay on for at least an hour each day. And give it a color screen rather than B&W.

      BTW, solar cells for phones do exist. It takes ~3 DAYS in full light (during the summer even!) to charge an iPhone. I'm sure use will outstripe that. Oh, and the logistics of having to leave your phone (or in my example, a battery with solar cells on it) in the sun for that time....yeah.

  12. Christian Berger

    In Germany we had LED television sets since the 1990s

    But we called them Fernsehbildmaschine, obviously.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n7T1TY6HbLQ

    However getting blue LEDs was hard back then.

  13. illiad

    39 C, where you, in OZ???

    yer FREAKING WRISTWATCH has one main difference to phones....

    people cannot call you on it,

    you cannot get websites on it,

    you cannot put funny ringtones or videos on it!!!!

    got the clue yet??

  14. illiad

    @Christian Berger

    yes, nice show, but very dangerous!!! they made a very similar system in 1926...

    http://www.tvhistory.tv/1926-Baird-Transmitter.JPG

    It would spin so fast, sometimes bits would fly off, damaging furniture and people...

    if anyone made this today, they would be laughed at...

  15. illiad

    @Christian Berger

    that translates as 'Television picture machine' .. read the German comments from hoverpal & Zuschauer50354

    they both say he's crazy!

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