ARTICLE: What is Micro LED?

10,000 nits is ridiculous.
According to Google, The Sun is only 5,000 :p

aha .. for that ... who is than producing the best sun glasses to watch the TV. Thanks god there would be no need of super, hyper sun protection cream or milk.

Theoreticaly what means 10.000 nits for our eyes in some fast changing pictures on our TVs?
 
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There's only so bright I'd want a tv. My oled is uncomfortable when it goes from a dark to light scenes.
The main benefit of this tech is oled level blacks without the risk of burn in. I don't want to substitute the burn in from my screen to burning the sky sports logo onto my eye balls.:D
 
10,000 nits is ridiculous.
According to Google, The Sun is only 5,000 :p

I think you missed half a dozen zeros off it there. For example this wikipedia article says it's 1,600,000,000 nits which seems like more believable value.

10,000 is certainly bright enough to be annoying if abused, but walk outside on a sunny day and much of the world will be reflecting those levels of light.

It might be an idea for some rules on advertising to be brought in though.
 
Most commercial LED screens are about 1000 nits - and that is too bright for indoor use. Higher brightness needs more power and a 400" screen needs about 20A as it is anyway!!

Cost wise, you are looking at between £5K & £25K per square metre, plus the cost of the processor and cabling - usually an industrialised Cat6 connection carrying the full resolution signal looped through the panels. The panels are connected in a specific order and the size and shape of the screen defined. The panels then simply skim off the portion of the picture to display.

Dead pixels are easy to fix. Just pop out the faulty sub panel from the front and replace. Normally they just need the LEDs re-soldering, so an easy fix.

The really fine pitch stuff is good for installations but a nightmare for touring and events (My former industry), as the slightest bump to an edge and the panels will not line up. 0.5mm pitch means about 0.20mm to the edge of the panel - which might weigh 10Kgs or so. Kid gloves to handle required!!
 
WOled as we see and know is great but not what would I call a robust tech with so many unresolved issues around imperfect panels,decay of the organic compound over time and risk of image retention and screen burn.It will never ever be created perfect at consumer prices.Not really built to last either!
Qled and Micro led can be build for stress free use and incredibly durable and achieve Oled levels of blacks - it will eventually dominate over WOled for its sheer robustness.
Oled tech is still still costly with very large size panels.The organic nature of Oled is at the heart of its limitation when compare with what micro LED can be made to be - from a clean slate.
With Oled you can only scientifically harness so much of its nature attributes and peel away its flaws.I mean a 4000 nit max Oled screen can never be a doable or practical device in the consumer market.
With Micro LED or Qled no problem!
On a business side - TV manufacturers been tied to just one Oled maker is also not good like with FB social media domination.
Samsung does not like been dependent and we have seen that with it disdain for HDR Dolby Vision and also refuse to buy Woled.So Micro LED is also a business weapon to curb what would be complete Oled domination.
 
WOled as we see and know is great but not what would I call a robust tech with so many unresolved issues around imperfect panels,decay of the organic compound over time and risk of image retention and screen burn.It will never ever be created perfect at consumer prices.Not really built to last either!
Qled and Micro led can be build for stress free use and incredibly durable and achieve Oled levels of blacks - it will eventually dominate over WOled for its sheer robustness.
Oled tech is still still costly with very large size panels.The organic nature of Oled is at the heart of its limitation when compare with what micro LED can be made to be - from a clean slate.
With Oled you can only scientifically harness so much of its nature attributes and peel away its flaws.I mean a 4000 nit max Oled screen can never be a doable or practical device in the consumer market.
With Micro LED or Qled no problem!
On a business side - TV manufacturers been tied to just one Oled maker is also not good like with FB social media domination.
Samsung does not like been dependent and we have seen that with it disdain for HDR Dolby Vision and also refuse to buy Woled.So Micro LED is also a business weapon to curb what would be complete Oled domination.

I love how you say that in such a matter-of-fact way, yet we haven't even got to the prototype stage yet. So not only do we need somebody to prove that the technology is actually feasible to produce we also need to then see if it can be mass-produced.

If you think OLED is expensive tech I have an inkling that you will be shocked if and when micro-led does see the light of day ...
 
I think you missed half a dozen zeros off it there. For example this wikipedia article says it's 1,600,000,000 nits which seems like more believable value.

That'll teach me to believe the internet :p

10k is still crazy though, my oled peaks at about 800 and it's dazzling with some content.
 
WOled as we see and know is great but not what would I call a robust tech with so many unresolved issues around imperfect panels,decay of the organic compound over time and risk of image retention and screen burn.It will never ever be created perfect at consumer prices.Not really built to last either!
Qled and Micro led can be build for stress free use and incredibly durable and achieve Oled levels of blacks - it will eventually dominate over WOled for its sheer robustness.
Oled tech is still still costly with very large size panels.The organic nature of Oled is at the heart of its limitation when compare with what micro LED can be made to be - from a clean slate.
With Oled you can only scientifically harness so much of its nature attributes and peel away its flaws.I mean a 4000 nit max Oled screen can never be a doable or practical device in the consumer market.
With Micro LED or Qled no problem!
On a business side - TV manufacturers been tied to just one Oled maker is also not good like with FB social media domination.
Samsung does not like been dependent and we have seen that with it disdain for HDR Dolby Vision and also refuse to buy Woled.So Micro LED is also a business weapon to curb what would be complete Oled domination.
You can't compare LG to FB as FB have done lot's of unethical stuff stealing personal information selling it on etc. LG at least let's other companies buy their OLED tv panels to try and grow OLED television sector. They aren't keeping all the panels for themselves which would be them trying to dominate the OLED tv market. LG took a chance spending billions buying Kodak's OLED patents and building the manufacturing plants so fair play to them. Plus rival companies can make their own OLED panels if they don't want to get them from LG.

Do agree though on OLED not being a long term television solution. It will end up same fate as plasma as the brightness can only go so far, probably never get to the 4000nits of some 4k HDR movies let alone 10'000nits. Full emissive MicroLed is the future just not in the silly jigsaw puzzle multiple panel concept of Samsung!
 
The main question to me is - do we have any realistic timescales for when micro-LED will be available for consumer TVs at sizes such as 55"/65"?

A while ago I met someone from a TV research company and he said that such sets were still a few years away.

I do wonder if companies such as Samsung want to make it seem like consumer micro LED is just around the corner to discourage people from buying OLED sets now.

Samsung's push for 8k must also make the job harder for them as the pixels in an 8k set are only 1/4 the size of those in a 4k set.

Much is made of the difficulty of producing micro LEDs as each micro-LED has to be the size of a sub pixel. On a 4k 65" set each pixel has a total available area of 0.35mm x 0.35mm - equivalent to a pixel pitch of 72 per inch. In that area there must be at least 3 sub-pixels.

LG already have individual LEDs this small for their OLED TVs. (and smaller for 55" sets.) The difference is that OLEDs use organic (carbon based) emitters in their LEDs. Why are non-organic LEDs much harder to build at this size than organic LEDs?
 
The main question to me is - do we have any realistic timescales for when micro-LED will be available for consumer TVs at sizes such as 55"/65"?

A while ago I met someone from a TV research company and he said that such sets were still a few years away.

I do wonder if companies such as Samsung want to make it seem like consumer micro LED is just around the corner to discourage people from buying OLED sets now.

Samsung's push for 8k must also make the job harder for them as the pixels in an 8k set are only 1/4 the size of those in a 4k set.

Much is made of the difficulty of producing micro LEDs as each micro-LED has to be the size of a sub pixel. On a 4k 65" set each pixel has a total available area of 0.35mm x 0.35mm - equivalent to a pixel pitch of 72 per inch. In that area there must be at least 3 sub-pixels.

LG already have individual LEDs this small for their OLED TVs. (and smaller for 55" sets.) The difference is that OLEDs use organic (carbon based) emitters in their LEDs. Why are non-organic LEDs much harder to build at this size than organic LEDs?

You can bet your bottom dollar that if Samsung had cracked OLED "the wall" wouldn't have seen the light of day. Now you can argue whether that is a a good thing or a bad thing as it means we may see some real progress in micro-led tech and it also forces the hands of others to say hey we are looking into the tech as well.

Once somebody actually produces a fully working prototype in regular screen sizes then micro-led can become a discussion but as it stands right now it is just a pipe dream.
 
You could also imagine a lounge where the entire wall was a Micro LED screen, and you could use certain parts for information like the news, weather or a social media feed, while also watching your favourite TV show on another part of the screen. You could perhaps save the entire screen for watching the big match or a blockbuster movie.

This sounds an awful lot like that scene from Back To The Future II :)
 
That'll teach me to believe the internet :p

10k is still crazy though, my oled peaks at about 800 and it's dazzling with some content.

Bear in mind that this brightness is for highlights, the sun catching ripples on water and the like. The actual light emission across the whole screen shouldn't be increasing that much.

It's there to give the picture more texture and realism, not to blind you.

Although it will be tricky to get right as it depends on factors like the size of the TV so I suspect more flexible HDR standards like HLG may be more successful in the long run.

The main question to me is - do we have any realistic timescales for when micro-LED will be available for consumer TVs at sizes such as 55"/65"?

A while ago I met someone from a TV research company and he said that such sets were still a few years away.

I do wonder if companies such as Samsung want to make it seem like consumer micro LED is just around the corner to discourage people from buying OLED sets now.

Yeah, this is undoubtedly just a publicity stunt to take attention away from OLED, like all the other things Samsung are doing like offering screen burn warranties.

They're even using off the shelf module systems rather than making a proper panel.

I wouldn't expect sensible production Crystal LED/Micro LED TVs for a good five years, and they could well be reserved for big TVs (75"+) for a few years after that.

Mini LED/FALD is by far the more interesting technology for anyone looking to buy a TV soon, it could produce rapid and spectacular improvements in HDR performance at the £1k price point over the next couple of years.
 
Yeah, this is undoubtedly just a publicity stunt to take attention away from OLED, like all the other things Samsung are doing like offering screen burn warranties.
Yeah, and naming their old fashioned LED backlit LCD TVs as QLED to con people into thinking it's a new technology. I was actually having a conversation with a friend a while back who at one point said ".... and then you have Samsung's QLED, their version of OLED" and who was actually very surprised when I "enlightened" him with the facts.
 
I get that Micro LED is the obvious way forward (and look forward to it!) and that OLED has it's limitations, but I don't understand in what way OLED is not basically also just micro-sized LEDs? Isn't this more of a sideways step (removing the 'organic' element) from already micro-sized LEDs?
 
I get that Micro LED is the obvious way forward (and look forward to it!) and that OLED has it's limitations, but I don't understand in what way OLED is not basically also just micro-sized LEDs? Isn't this more of a sideways step (removing the 'organic' element) from already micro-sized LEDs?
It's no sidestep as the organic OLED panels can barely get over 1000nits. 4K blu ray's are mastered from 1000nits (some lower) to 10'000nits, an OLED tv probably won't ever even with advancements in the technology be able to reach 4000nits let along 10'000nits.

OLED tv's look great but brightness is their achilles heel similar to Plasma compared to lcd years ago! Full emissive MicroLed panels will be able to reach 10'000nits. It will have the perfect blacks of OLED together with the much better HDR highlights in bright scenes MicroLed brings :thumbsup:
 
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I get that Micro LED is the obvious way forward (and look forward to it!) and that OLED has it's limitations, but I don't understand in what way OLED is not basically also just micro-sized LEDs? Isn't this more of a sideways step (removing the 'organic' element) from already micro-sized LEDs?
This is how I understand it. OLED has 4 organic LED sub-pixels per pixel - and these are essentially already "micro"-LEDs - but using an organic compound as their light emitter rather than a non-organic one.

The big disadvantage of any organic compound is that it decays over time. That will fall as the compounds used are improved but will always be a feature of an OLED.

The individual non-organic micro-LEDs must be more complex to build that Organic-LEDs - otherwise Samsung and LG wouldn't have started with OLED before micro-LED and we would have micro-LED already. (A lot of people seem to forget that in the race to produce the first OLED it was Samsung that were the first to market with a 55" OLED screen in 2013 - which was subsequently quietly dropped.)

One significant issue that Samsung are likely to face with micro-LED is price. In 2015 LG launched the 65EF950 at a price of £5,000, in 2019 the 65C8 sells for less than half of that at £2,300. By the time Samsung have a 65" micro-LED it is likely that LG will have had 2 or 3 more generations of their OLED panels. With each generation LG has improved brightness and got better resilience to screen burn as they have improved the emitter compounds.

So while micro-LED are likely to have significant advantages in brightness and lack of screen burn they are likely to also have a significant price disadvantage.

Also Samsung are apparently working on a quantum dot OLED display. It wont solve the burn in problem but could make OLEDs a bit brighter.
 
I do think that we could see a MicroLED QD TV too. A single Blue MicroLED pixel with a Photo Emissive QD Layer in front that converts some/all the Blue to Red and/or Green - basically the same principal of the QD OLED. You could also have a single MicroLED for LEDs as a Backlight for each individual pixel. Mini LEDs are likely to be illuminating a section of pixels - maybe 100's of pixels per backlight.

The 'advantage' of MicroLED QD or, if possible, backlighting LED's is that these only need to be a 'single' colour with the QD or LED layer creating the image colours. With a MicroLED TV, you need far more complex MicroLEDs - at least capable of delivering the quantity of Red, Green and Blue to create the Wide Colour Gamut and at the brightness needed to deliver HDR. If they make the MicroLED pixel out of essentially 3 (1 red, 1 green and 1 blue), that is far more complex and a 1000nit Red for example, would be utilising just a third of the MicroLED where as if it was a single colour MicroLED - either as a backlight for LEDs or as part of a QD MicroLED TV, the brightness would be using the whole MicroLED with the QD/LED layer creating the Red. With a single MicroLED in the 'back' in these type TV's, you may get 'brighter' HDR because the 'whole' MicroLED can be used instead of just a 3rd of it. Being a single colour too would make it a lot cheaper and easier to make a TV - at least in my mind it should be. Mounting a single colour MicroLED with the Pixel Density required for say a 55" 4k TV must be easier than mounting a three colour (Red, Green, Blue) MicroLED.

It will be interesting to see the new TV technology - regardless of whether its MicroLED, QD MicroLED, MicroLED Backlighting LCDs, QD OLEDs, self emitting QD technology, MiniLED LCDs etc. At the end of the day, I couldn't care less about the technology behind the Image, just the PQ we get in front. I would love to have a TV that delivers perfect blacks, full HDR (10000nits, REC2020) at a reasonable cost and size, doesn't 'burn-in' or wear unevenly - at least for a minimum of 6yrs+ with extreme High usage. I couldn't care less what tech is actually delivering this, just as long as it works and we don't have to play the panel lottery game, have to put up with DSE, Banding, motion issues etc etc...
 
You've lost me a little QD doesn't reduce the LED count at all.

A 4k display will need 24.8M pixels. Whether that's 8.3M red, 8.3M green, 8.3M blue pixels, or 24.8M single colour ones with a QD layer, it's still the same number of LEDs.
 
You've lost me a little QD doesn't reduce the LED count at all.

A 4k display will need 24.8M pixels. Whether that's 8.3M red, 8.3M green, 8.3M blue pixels, or 24.8M single colour ones with a QD layer, it's still the same number of LEDs.
Exactly. A QD layer can change the frequency (i.e. colour) of light but it cannot control brightness. As the brightness of each sub-pixel must be controlled independently, each sub-pixel in any emissive technology must have its own independent light source.
 
10,000 nits is ridiculous.
According to Google, The Sun is only 5,000 :p
In that case it would be worth having a wall of micro LED TV on one side of the living room and a wall of solar panels on the opposite wall to help with the leccy bill.
 
Am I allowed to ask about motion handling?

We lost the best of that when plasma went belly up, and I'd much rather have OLED with plasma-esque motion handling than I would OLED with LCD-esque brightness, though both together would be welcome.
 
Am I allowed to ask about motion handling?

We lost the best of that when plasma went belly up, and I'd much rather have OLED with plasma-esque motion handling than I would OLED with LCD-esque brightness, though both together would be welcome.

I wouldn't be surprised if the motion is carried out in the same way as OLEDs and LCD's - the Sample and Hold approach....
 

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