OLED TVs have been gaining a lot in the TV marketplace in the past couple of years with more screen sizes and lower prices. However, LG Display Company, which makes all the OLED TV panels used by sister company LG Electronics, as well as Sony, Vizio, Panasonic, and others has realized that they can’t rest on their laurels.
Competing LCD TV-based technologies such as QLED and mini-LED have yielded big sales and performance that is approaching OLED picture quality as well as surpassing performance in the screen brightness category.
As a result, LG Display has announced that the next-generation OLED TV technology, dubbed OLED EX is on the way and may be made available to its brand partners by mid-2022.
What OLED Is
OLED stands for Organic Light Emitting Diode. These diodes are self-emitting pixels, generating their own light and color without the need for a backlight system as LCD-based TVs do. LG Display’s OLED panels combine white OLEDs with RGB color filters for screen display.
What OLED EX Is
LG Display is adding more to the mix to improve OLED technology with its EX upgrade. According to LG Display, EX stands for “Evolution eXperience”.
OLED EX adds the following improvements to the OLED technology platform.
Improved Stability
One of the problems with OLED is performance stability over time and at high brightness levels. To minimize these issues, LG is replacing the Hydrogen components of its OLED pixels with Deuterium.
Deuterium is twice as heavy as normal Hydrogen and is a very rare element. Without providing specific details, LG Display has figured out how to extract Deuterium from water and apply it to devices that use OLED displays.
This results in more efficient and bright light performance from OLED pixels. Today’s higher-end LCD-based TVs can get extremely bright, which OLED TVs can’t match using current technology, so improving light output is important for OLED to continue to be successful.
Personalized Algorithm
This may sound like a weird name but this aspect of EX technology uses machine learning to allow an OLED TV to predict the amount of energy needed based on individual viewing patterns. The result is more accurate detail, color, and brightness display in real-time so that the content you are watching looks its best.
This could result in a major improvement in picture quality; it not only will be applied to 4K UHD OLED panels, but 8K panels as well, This means individual control of 33 million pixels at a more precise level than is currently available.
Thinner Bezels
As if OLED TVs weren’t thin enough, with OLED EX, the bezel thickness can be reduced by 30%. One example is that a 65-inch OLED TV bezel can be reduced from 6mm to 4mm. This not only makes for a more attractive wall-mounting option but also contributes to a small reduction in weight.
More To The Story
Although OLED EX promises improvements to currently used OLED TV technology, there is more to consider.
LG Display Company doesn’t make its own TVs, they make the OLED panels that other brands buy to use in their OLED-branded TVs. The other brands then add their own additional video processing and other features they want in their TVs.
This means the LG Display Company depends on sister company LG Electronics, as well as Sony, Vizio, Panasonic, and other brands marketing OLED in various parts of the world to buy their OLED panels. If the price is right, expect wide acceptance, if not, these panels may end up in only a select high-end OLED TV product lines. According to LG Display, their intention is for OLED EX technology to be incorporated into all OLED TVs in a reasonable time frame.
As good as OLED EX sounds, will it be enough to head off other emerging technologies such as Samsung’s forthcoming QD-OLED/QD Display (which Sony has also expressed interest in) and MicroLED as the successors to the latest LCD-based TV technology?
As for what’s available to buy right now, check out our buying guide for Best TVs.
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