What is OLED TV?

OLED (organic light-emitting diode) televisions are due out this year. Here's why you should be excited.

(Credit: LG)

 By now you've probably heard about OLED, or organic light-emitting diodes. LG and Samsung both revealed potential models at this year's CES, with the LG winning CNET's Best of CES Award.
Make no mistake, this is the most important advancement in TV technology in more than a decade, and a vast improvement over both LCD and plasma.
Here's why.
The what
You only need red, green, and blue light to create a TV image. OLEDs work by putting electricity through certain materials that glow these specific colors. No other TV technology creates light directly like this. LCDs use color filters and light-blocking liquid crystals above a light-creating backlight. Plasmas use UV light created by igniting pockets of gas to excite red, green, and blue phosphors.
The why
What does this mean? Well, OLED TVs will be thinner, lighter, more efficient, and better performing than any current television technology. Each pixel can be shut off, for an absolute black (no other tech can do this, save CRT), meaning an actual infinite contrast ratio, not just marketing hype.
For example, LG's 55-inch OLED unveiled at CES weighs 16.5 pounds and is about as deep as a pencil (3/16 of an inch).
It's hard not to be excited about OLED, as it ticks all the boxes of a dream television: incredible contrast, impossibly thin, extremely energy efficient.
LED vs. OLED
As we've discussed before, current televisions marketed as "LED TVs" aren't actually LED TVs. They're LCD TVs that use LEDs for the backlight. While LED LCDs are energy efficient compared with "regular" LCDs and plasmas, they're still not as energy efficient as OLED. As far as the difference between LEDs and OLEDs, the latter uses materials that include carbon ("organic") to create light when supplied a current. In an extremely oversimplified and generalized explanation, LEDs are like tiny light bulbs, while OLEDs are light-emitting areas or surfaces.
The only real "LED TV," as in a TV that used LEDs for the image itself, was Sony's Crystal LED prototype it showed at CES. If this technology moves past the prototype stage, we'll report on it more fully.
RGB OLED vs. 'white' OLED
The current OLED TV technology can be split in two camps: RGB OLED and "White" OLED. RGB OLED is similar to how plasma TVs work, with separate red, green, and blue OLED subpixels.
White OLED is rather different, and a bit confusing at first. Red, green, and blue OLED materials are sandwiched together. When powered, these create a white light. This white light passes through a color filter, to create the red, green, and blue subpixels.
by Geoffrey Morrison