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Musing on CES
January 10, 2019
This beautiful device didn’t get much play at CES probably because it was in the lobby of LVCC North. But it is IBM’s latest Quantum Computer and likely to change the way computing is done for the next decade.
Stayed at the Encore – not too big; accessible; rooms are reasonably close to elevators; hard to get lost and short cab ride to the LVCC
Samsung keynote was very professional, although not especially informative on displays but if you want a companion and don’t cherish the responsibility of walking a dog, they have they got a product for you! It’s a robot about the size and shape of a soccer ball that sounds like R2D2 and can be trained to follow you around and act upon commands – Stay, Heel, No, but it can’t Sit, Go Down or Jump. --- It’s a ball for goodness sake. It kind of snuggles but there’s no wet licking. It feeds itself as long as there is electricity and doesn’t leave any excrement’s. If it encounters dirt as it travels the floor beeping and squeaking it would quickly signal the robotic vacuum cleaner or mop to clean it up. It will also turn on the TV, answer the door, take pictures of the house, accept packages and beep loudly at the kids when they misbehave. It’s called baillie (or something close) and wants to accompany you to the next Star Wars flick to visit old friends.
At their private suite in the Encore, SDC showed 2 versions of a 65” QD-OLED; a 4K and an 8K. they ran at 150 nits, which was equivalent to an LG RGBW OLED, they had previously acquired. Must have been a very old model as the new ones operate at 650 -7650 nits. But the big difference from what we and others had previously published was that the TVs not no color filter nor a circular polarizer. All that was used was a proprietary anti-reflective film that they claimed cut the reflection down to <1% compared to the RGBW OLED that was 4%. We asked about the delays reported in the Korean press, which we report in the Production Section of this Musing, but they claimed to be on schedule. There oxide backplanes still needs two more masks than LG’s. There was some other cool stuff exhibited in the private suite:
Royole gave a press conference and had very large booth on the LVCC North floor as they prepare to issue an IPO. The two new products introduced at CES was an updated version of the pencil and paper notebook that has a flexible display which captures the analog writing and puts it on a smartphone of tablet. The second was a smart speaker from Cleer that was a cylinder with a 7 1/2 “ curved OLED display that wraps inside the cylinder. It looked beautiful with great audio, but had a price of almost $900. Samsung also showed a cylindrical smart speaker with a conformable OLED, but it was on the outside of the cylinder and could be straightened out to be a flat screen. There was no mention of the Flex Pai at the Press Conference or at the Booth other than to mention that they were the first to do it and at the boot, which was multi-level and had to be at least 10,000 sq. ft. there was not a single use of the acronym OLED.
Visited TCL subsidiary CSoT’s private suite and they naturally had a lot of LCD panels as they had just released the first 65” 4K and 8K mini LED backlit LCD. They claimed the CR was 100K:1 and the luminance was 1,000 nits. They use an 8-domain VA design and have 1,000 dimmable areas. However, they weren’t showing video, so it was tough to tell if there was degradation as image traversed each dimmable area. The viewing angle was not spec’d, but to these old eyes looked pretty good. During their press conference, they were very negative on dual cell TVs. But on the show full Hinsense’s dual cell panel from BOE looked pretty good and seemed to be ready for MP, which they claim would be in the middle of 2020. The big OLED news is that TCL showed two IJP polymer OLED TV panels, which were presented as sufficient proof that IJP was real and justified a new OLED TV fab that would skip RGBW entirely.
Met with Kopin in their suite and as Chris previewed, they will announce a 1.4” OLED microdisplay with 5,000 nits luminance and 2K x 2K resolution. They do not use direct patterning and instead use RGB enabled White with a color filter. The breakthrough is the addition of a micro lens with the same refractive index as the (glass) color filter. They also use their in-house designed c-Si backplane that integrates the drivers, video buffers, processors, modems using state-of-the-art merchant IC suppliers. Basically, they beat eMagin to the punch, because they avoided the very challenging direct patterning process. The FOV is ~105 degrees.
Think the HoloLens 2 capability in a pair of glasses within 1 to 2 years when the backplanes uses 2 nm features.
January 10, 2019
This beautiful device didn’t get much play at CES probably because it was in the lobby of LVCC North. But it is IBM’s latest Quantum Computer and likely to change the way computing is done for the next decade.
Stayed at the Encore – not too big; accessible; rooms are reasonably close to elevators; hard to get lost and short cab ride to the LVCC
Samsung keynote was very professional, although not especially informative on displays but if you want a companion and don’t cherish the responsibility of walking a dog, they have they got a product for you! It’s a robot about the size and shape of a soccer ball that sounds like R2D2 and can be trained to follow you around and act upon commands – Stay, Heel, No, but it can’t Sit, Go Down or Jump. --- It’s a ball for goodness sake. It kind of snuggles but there’s no wet licking. It feeds itself as long as there is electricity and doesn’t leave any excrement’s. If it encounters dirt as it travels the floor beeping and squeaking it would quickly signal the robotic vacuum cleaner or mop to clean it up. It will also turn on the TV, answer the door, take pictures of the house, accept packages and beep loudly at the kids when they misbehave. It’s called baillie (or something close) and wants to accompany you to the next Star Wars flick to visit old friends.
At their private suite in the Encore, SDC showed 2 versions of a 65” QD-OLED; a 4K and an 8K. they ran at 150 nits, which was equivalent to an LG RGBW OLED, they had previously acquired. Must have been a very old model as the new ones operate at 650 -7650 nits. But the big difference from what we and others had previously published was that the TVs not no color filter nor a circular polarizer. All that was used was a proprietary anti-reflective film that they claimed cut the reflection down to <1% compared to the RGBW OLED that was 4%. We asked about the delays reported in the Korean press, which we report in the Production Section of this Musing, but they claimed to be on schedule. There oxide backplanes still needs two more masks than LG’s. There was some other cool stuff exhibited in the private suite:
- An LTPO smartphone display that they will use but Apple will not
- Smaller punch-holes for displays in 2020
- An under the display camera, with no hole for 2021, achieved by the judicious placement of subpixels and not by transparency
- The Audio camera/display replacement for the side view mirror that demonstrated a 1.7ms faster response time than a comparable LCD, which at 100 kilometers/hr. results in a distance of over 110 meters at normal temperatures, but significantly deteriorates for LCDs when the temperature goes above or below a range required by automaker specs.
- New dopants that reduce the power consumption of OLEDs by 10 to 15%
- A new hinge and panel that allows the display to lay flat when closed. See our write-up in the Smartphone section.
- A truly foldable display based PC due in 2021
- The latest RGBW OLED TV 8K at 85” with 11.2 built in sound system
- The down rolling and up rolling 65” OLED TV, but still no definitive date or price other than sometime this year. But of course, that’s what they said last year.
- There were 30 On-Star people from GM – the one’s that designed in the LG’s 38” automotive console for the Cadillac to be announced in February. He boss seemed to be enamored by OLEDs and integrated touch as well as the transparent windshield for head up displays. They want everything OLED and called it a game breaker. – They need something to differentiate the products
- More attention was being put on airline design and they showed the window replacement creating a smooth fuselage , allowing planes to flow through the air with less wind resistance and use less energy. They also showed a redesigned first class cabin with a transparent display separating the customer from the aisle. In the transparent mode the flight attendant could communicate with the passenger and vice versa, but it could also operate in a non-transparent mode. There was also a 55” conformable display that could be used for video watching in the flat mode or immersive gaming in the curved mode.
- LG continues to work on transparent implementations for retail and showed foldable display based PC; but not foldable smartphone.
Royole gave a press conference and had very large booth on the LVCC North floor as they prepare to issue an IPO. The two new products introduced at CES was an updated version of the pencil and paper notebook that has a flexible display which captures the analog writing and puts it on a smartphone of tablet. The second was a smart speaker from Cleer that was a cylinder with a 7 1/2 “ curved OLED display that wraps inside the cylinder. It looked beautiful with great audio, but had a price of almost $900. Samsung also showed a cylindrical smart speaker with a conformable OLED, but it was on the outside of the cylinder and could be straightened out to be a flat screen. There was no mention of the Flex Pai at the Press Conference or at the Booth other than to mention that they were the first to do it and at the boot, which was multi-level and had to be at least 10,000 sq. ft. there was not a single use of the acronym OLED.
Visited TCL subsidiary CSoT’s private suite and they naturally had a lot of LCD panels as they had just released the first 65” 4K and 8K mini LED backlit LCD. They claimed the CR was 100K:1 and the luminance was 1,000 nits. They use an 8-domain VA design and have 1,000 dimmable areas. However, they weren’t showing video, so it was tough to tell if there was degradation as image traversed each dimmable area. The viewing angle was not spec’d, but to these old eyes looked pretty good. During their press conference, they were very negative on dual cell TVs. But on the show full Hinsense’s dual cell panel from BOE looked pretty good and seemed to be ready for MP, which they claim would be in the middle of 2020. The big OLED news is that TCL showed two IJP polymer OLED TV panels, which were presented as sufficient proof that IJP was real and justified a new OLED TV fab that would skip RGBW entirely.
Met with Kopin in their suite and as Chris previewed, they will announce a 1.4” OLED microdisplay with 5,000 nits luminance and 2K x 2K resolution. They do not use direct patterning and instead use RGB enabled White with a color filter. The breakthrough is the addition of a micro lens with the same refractive index as the (glass) color filter. They also use their in-house designed c-Si backplane that integrates the drivers, video buffers, processors, modems using state-of-the-art merchant IC suppliers. Basically, they beat eMagin to the punch, because they avoided the very challenging direct patterning process. The FOV is ~105 degrees.
Think the HoloLens 2 capability in a pair of glasses within 1 to 2 years when the backplanes uses 2 nm features.
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