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
it says nothing of that sort.
If you mean some other response, please point it out for me.
Maybe BB willn't have liquidated them by Holiday Season 2023, and I can get a 4K 75" 120hz FreeSync display for well less than $1k. :p :kookoo:
Whenever I see a product that only offers the legal minimum warranty it suggests to me the manufacturer has no faith in their own product.
Does white text on WOLED use the white subpixels, or are they only called into action when requiring the higher brightness for HDR, leaving the usual RGB trio to handle sRGB up to their maximum 700nits or similar.
While is is technically possible with some materials in some circumstances to absorb multiple lower-energy photons and emit fewer higher energy photons, I don't think that's possible with the type of semiconductor QDs used in OLED displays. QD's are photon splitters to the best of my understanding, and photon combiners are more theoretical than practical outside of scientific research labs. I'm not an expert in this field and the exact chemistry and type of QDs used are guarded trade secrets that only the manufacturer can disclose, but www.nature.com/articles/ncomms9210 looks like a half-decent primer on the various types of QD (I only skim-read it, but that looks like roughly the right application for what we're talking about with TVs)
So yeah, it is arithmetic - I just suck at explaining it, clearly.
Blue photons have ~3.0eV of energy, and red photons have ~1.9eV of energy. Effectively a blue photon hits a red quantum dot and the dot absorbs ~1.9eV of energy from the photon. That photon has ~1.1eV of energy remaining, which isn't enough to interact with any more quantum dots, so it passes through unchanged. The quantum dot then releases the ~1.9eV of energy as a second photon. So you get your one-photon-in, two-photons-out mechanic; 3.0eV is blue, 1.9eV is red, and 1.1eV is infra-red. What about the red photon at ~1.9eV, surely it will hit more red quantum dots as it passes through, right? Well yes, but in that case you get exactly 1.9eV in and 1.9ev out, which is effectively no change (other than the direction of the photon, which is random)
The beauty/magic of quantum dots is that they absorb photons rather than electrons, are are thus light-powered semiconductors, rather than electricity-powered semiconductors. For a photon to interact with the quantum-dot's molecule, it has have enough energy (eV) to move an electron "up" to a higher energy state (orbital), so if a red 1.9eV photon arrives at a blue quantum dot whose molecules require 3.0eV of energy to raise an electron to a higher energy state, the photon cannot interact with the electrons in the quantum dot and they pass through unchanged. Yes, they can collide with atomic nucleus occasionally, but this is almost infinitely rare; The models we make of atoms show a big blob as the nucleus but while electrons are best described as "charge clouds" that definte how big an atom is, the actual nucleus is tiny, about 1/100,000th the diameter of even the smallest possible electron cloud, so there's 1-in-10,000,000,000 chance of that actually happening.
the stores i worked in the past 15y had at least 4-5 LG oleds on display, not single one xperienced burn in,
while running the same video content (with fixed tex/logos).
unless you mean image retention, but that's not the same thing.
i just cant give those claims any value, when it looks like ppl dont even know the difference (between BI and IR).
@chrcoluk
lol, what utter crap.
you know how many things are sold (mainly on tv) that offer "lifetime warranty"? you think they actually last a lifetime? nope.
maybe start looking into the cost side of it.
any business making something will incur (higher) costs, even if they have a low failure rate.
lets say you make just 1M tvs, and you have to have EVERY single part for EVERY model that you make,
and of course its not enough to have 1 piece each.
ignoring parts cost for a moment (you dont get them for free, yet arent making money off of it),
you still need a warehouse, a crew to run it, and pay for power/water/insurance etc.
@SkySong
oled dont have burn in, its not a plasma tv.
not really an issue. unless you run max brightness/contrast.
Will it look a bit nicer at 4K 120Hz with HDR? Sure - but it won't really make the gameplay any better, fix any bugs, or reveal detail that wasn't at least mostly there at 1080p60.
Somewhere along the way of developments in the PC gamur space, we went from 'high refresh is awesome if you can actually run it' to 'Must have >100 FPS or my world falls apart'. Strange how that works, but always easily recognized as #firstworldproblems. In my view it says more about the person saying it than about it being a thing.
I game at 4K60 mostly and while the extra resolution gains you sharpness for distant detail, it also exposes textures that aren't high-enough resolution and you can see the polygon angles of a curve. Sometimes, higher resolution actually hinders immersion and realism rather than helping it.
It's way overblown. Funny how I notice the complaints about the tech are all almost exclusively by people who have never touched an LG OLED TV of recent (last 4 years) vintage.
even more, when I see folks thinking IR = BI