Right now, the standard for display systems is slowly shifting from Plasma and LED, to strictly LED. While the LED screens continue to increase in size, resolution, and quality, people are quickly snatching them up as home theaters.

But what lies beyond LED? What new technology will pave the way and make display technology even better? The answer to this question is OLEDs (Organic Light Emitting Diodes). An organic light-emitting diode (OLED), also light emitting polymer (LEP) and organic electro-luminescence (OEL), is any light-emitting diode (LED) whose emissive electroluminescent layer is composed of a film of organic compounds. The layer usually contains a polymer substance that allows suitable organic compounds to be deposited. They are deposited in rows and columns onto a flat carrier by a simple “printing” process. The resulting matrix of pixels can emit light of different colors.

Due to the structure of OLED’s they are not only able to be implemented with smaller casing than their LED predecessors, but they also use much less power. Additionally, they may be manufactured very small sizes which makes devices like the Optimus Maximus OLED keyboard possible (I will be covering this in another post).

As you might assume, this technology is now very expensive, just as HD LCD screens were at their release to consumers. However, OLED is showing itself in small steps in the technology world. The first consumer display was demoed by Sony earlier in 2007. Though OLED may be cost phrohibitive currently, it is hoped that in a few years the cost of production will decrease allowing for a cheaper cost to consumers.

-Jameson

[Source: Wikipedia]