Friday, March 3rd 2023
LG Display Claims Samsung's QD OLED More Susceptible to Screen Burn Than LG's WOLED
Welcome to the battle of the Korean OLED display makers, where LG Display is now claiming that Samsung's new-ish QD OLED displays are far more susceptible to screen burn, compared to its own WOLED displays. In a way, this is LG getting back at Samsung, as the latter has criticised LG for quite some time, over screen burn on its OLED displays, despite the fact that Samsung hasn't had any of its own OLED products until last year. LG Display is basing much of its claims on testing by Rtings, which isn't yet publicly available, but the company also has a technical explanation behind it all.
Both LG's and Samsung's OLED panels are based around RGB subpixels, just like most LCD panels, with the difference being that OLED panels don't have a backlight, as the pixels themselves are supposed to emit the light. However, RGB subpixels on larger screens tend to lack in brightness and this is why LG added white subpixels to its WOLED panels, which was also a source of criticism from Samsung. However, Samsung's QD OLED displays use a blue OLED layer behind a Quantum Dot layer, which is meant to produce a brighter image than LG's WOLED panels. LG now claims that because Samsung went down the path of using pure RGB subpixels, each subpixel is subjected to a lot more stress on static images than its own WOLED design, which in turn causes screen burn. LG Display did apparently not go into much more details than that at the online press conference the company had called last week, so we'll have to wait and see what Rtings reveals in its next update on its long term testing, which is supposed to take place sometime this month.
Update Mar 3rd 15:08 UTC: Rtings reached out to us and explained that they didn't provide any data to LG Display. Instead, LG Display based its assumptions on photos posted by Rtings on its website. Rtings provided the following statement:
Sources:
Forbes, Rtings
Both LG's and Samsung's OLED panels are based around RGB subpixels, just like most LCD panels, with the difference being that OLED panels don't have a backlight, as the pixels themselves are supposed to emit the light. However, RGB subpixels on larger screens tend to lack in brightness and this is why LG added white subpixels to its WOLED panels, which was also a source of criticism from Samsung. However, Samsung's QD OLED displays use a blue OLED layer behind a Quantum Dot layer, which is meant to produce a brighter image than LG's WOLED panels. LG now claims that because Samsung went down the path of using pure RGB subpixels, each subpixel is subjected to a lot more stress on static images than its own WOLED design, which in turn causes screen burn. LG Display did apparently not go into much more details than that at the online press conference the company had called last week, so we'll have to wait and see what Rtings reveals in its next update on its long term testing, which is supposed to take place sometime this month.
Update Mar 3rd 15:08 UTC: Rtings reached out to us and explained that they didn't provide any data to LG Display. Instead, LG Display based its assumptions on photos posted by Rtings on its website. Rtings provided the following statement:
We didn't send any information to LG Display. We published our two-month data and pictures in two waves on February 6th and 16th. It appears LG took these images from our reviews when they were released publicly.
Further to that point, LG Display also did not reach out to us prior to their press call where they referenced our test and images.
125 Comments on LG Display Claims Samsung's QD OLED More Susceptible to Screen Burn Than LG's WOLED
Dam how bright people need these screens ?, people are going be pretty dam darn blind.
Photons are only emitted when an electron drops from a higher orbital to a lower orbital around an atomic nucleus. These orbitals are discrete energy states and there aren't half states, For an incoming photon to "knock" an individual electron into a higher energy orbital, it needs to have enough energy to do that in one "hit". That process of successfully knocking an electron into a higher orbital is the absorbing of the photon. An incoming photon without enough energy will just "ricochet" off the electron (quotes are used because it's easy to model and conceptualise electron-photon interactions by thinking of them as particles with momentum, which is a long way from the truth as we currently know it)
So quantum dots work by absorbing photons. Omitting units and real numbers for simplification, If the incoming photon ha 10 energy and the electron needs 8 energy to move up to a higher orbital, the electron moves up 8, the photon passes through and leaves with 2 energy left, and then the electron drops down to a lower orbital and releases a new photon with that 8 energy. The end result is that one high-energy photon passed through and was de-energised, a second photon was "created" and ejected with the energy that was taken from the first one. 10 energy come in (blue light photon) and 8+2 energy come out (red light photon and infra-red photon).
If only an 8 energy photon comes in, the sum of all photons coming out must total 8 too. You cannot make a 10 energy photon from an 8 energy one, and in this simple example, blue is 10, red is 8.
Whether their claims are true or not, they just brought major attention to the issue(s) that LG and every other display technology IP-holder 'doesn't like to talk about'.
LG, if not *genuinely* confident in their latest OLED-iteration, is at least confident in their ability to out-BS their competitors in PR.
I look forward to 3rd party reviews; especially, where the reviewer(s) had to purchase consumer-available units. (as opposed to being 'provided' a supposedly production unit.)IMHO, MicroLED will be 'a' holy grail-like milestone in display technologies. Sadly, we all missed out on the last big milestone: Manufacturing technology limits at the time and changing consumer-culture killed the Surface-conduction Electron-emitter Display (SED) before it had any time to shine. IIRC, the vestiges of the IP are owned by AUOptronics, today.
Amusingly, Samsung's QD-OLED seems extremely similar 'in concept' to the SEDs. Except, taking full advantage of advances in tech; using Photon-Photon 'conversion' via 'Quantum Dot' nanotechnology vs. SED's Electron-Photon 'conversion' via phosphor excitation.I do believe that is 'mostly-to-totally correct'. However, I was under (the potentially false) impression that QDs worked more like sub-wavelength re-attuners (for lacking a better word). In other words, QDs were attenuating/converting a higher-frequency analogwaveform to a lower one, passively. Basically, I assumed QDs worked more like RF-engineering, but at many-TeraHertz frequencies, and using nanostructures to 're-attune' the THz electromagnetic emission.
(then again, this may be touching on the 'compatible' but 'seemingly contradictory' modeling of 'light' as both a particle(photon) and an EM-waveform.)
In 'particle terms' I thought QD's worked like a funnel/cone, limiting or 'bleeding off' the 'frequency and intensity' of the photon's vibration(phase?) as the photon passes through the nano-structure 'QuantumDot'.
To keep this on track, yes light colour change of a quantum dot is best explained with a simple photon-as-a-particle model with energy level. As mentioned, it's a very simplified and incomplete model that only really works for that one scenario of explaining how energy cannot be created or destroyed when talking about individual photons.
The reality is that the energy level of photons relates to (but does not equal) the wavelength and frequency of photons. That relationship is far for simple to explain, and yes - best to just handwave it all into the larger, more complex topic of wave-particle duality. You definitely can model QD mechanics using EM-spectrum wave behaviours and it's just another simplified perspective of the same exceptionally complicated thing from a different point of observation.
never said anything about what i can "pick up/see", im talking about preference and that not everything needs to be running at a high refresh.
btt
Dont go drinking too much Youtube / Samsung koolaid...
I've never once thought my panels weren't bright enough. My TV room is ridiculously bright and I have an 83" G2 that is plenty bright. My bedroom has a solid wall of windows and my 5 year old 65" E7 is good.
WOLED is mature, QD is still in it's infancy. When Samsung gets into it's 4th+ gen they will hit their stride and iron out the kinks (read up on AVSF on the troubles they're having). I'd consider buying one in 2-3years but until then it's all WOLED for me- unless Samsung gets off their ass on microLED at semi reasonable prices.
'Better' is not 'more' - more is oversaturation. Something lots of screens are great at. Too bad it looks horrible, or more accurately: badly calibrated.
Higher brightness could be perceived as a quality, but if the black point rises along with it, you're on a self-defeating exercise for the most part. This is where VA stands out among LED technologies; it can reach lower black point than IPS and still similar brightness levels, creating a 3-5x better static contrast. The OLED vs QD OLED comparison has similar properties, although I think we can agree they're much, much closer together now than VA and IPS ever were.
I'm definitely looking forward to seeing the tech develop further. But at its current iteration, its a no buy to me.
The problem with what you are describing, is there is not enough energy in a blue photon to produce two red photons (even at 100% conversion), much less two green ones (see: arxiv.org/pdf/1609.04830.pdf)