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Comment by rocqua | Hacker News Reader

I believe the point is that the main research is now on oled and micro-led. Those are truly LCD-less. Instead of having a backlight that is variously dimmed by an LCD panel, they have self emmisive pixels.

Micro led truly aims to just have a single LED per (sub) pixel.

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Micro-led seems to me to be one of those technologies that's always just around the corner.

Perhaps I'm a pessimist, but from the launch of the first mainstream OLED tvs several years ago, I've been hearing "OLED is just a stopgap, Microled is where it's at, and that's not far off now".

Ten years later ... oled is still where it's at, or LCD for a lot of people. I know these things take time, but the anticipation of this tech seems to have lasted at least a decade so far.

Maybe you're not old enough to remember, but OLED was also touted as the future for many years before it actually became available - I remember hearing about OLED at the time when flat panel LCD monitors were starting to become widespread in the early to mid 2000s, but it still took some years for them to appear in phones and then, much later, in TVs. Actually the first device with an OLED display that I had was a cheapo Chinese USB-stick-with-integrated-MP3-player which I bought more out of curiosity for the OLED display and never actually used because I already had a phone that could play MP3s (this one: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_Ericsson_K800i).

My dad had a textbook that said something like 'when current is applied liquid crystals glow, although this effect is interesting it is completely useless. The first LCD watches came out as he was finishing school.

That's not how LCD Displays work, though.

The book was thrown away a few decades ago, I remember seeing it as a kid, but floods got it since. I'm not sure what the quote is.

They do if you power them wrong enough

The first commercial OLEDs launched in 2007 I think, I had an OLED phone in 2012(AMOLED?), and then the tvs got 'big' commercially in what, 2017ish?

My point isn't necessarily that Microled is endlessly delayed, so much as that people are endlessly talking about it, have been for years, and it's still years away from even high-end consumer models. I don't remember the same for OLED, in fact I remember people getting very hyped over LCD vs Plasma, and OLED not really getting a mention as a tv tech, even when it was in phones. Perhaps it's just my memory.

> Micro-led seems to me to be one of those technologies that's always just around the corner.

You can actually buy a MicroLED TV today, but they're huge and expensive:

https://www.samsung.com/us/televisions-home-theater/tvs/micr...

How funny they are selling a $150,000 display and still feel the need to inflate its size from 109.2" to 110".

Once it's powered on for 10 minutes, the heat causes the materials to expand.

Soon thereafter, the thrust from the cooling fans causes the tv to leave forever, but for those first few minutes it is a viewing experience beyond any other. Just last week, one was spotted cruising past the freeway at low altitude, out to sea. Some say it is still going.

Mind you, the display technology doesn't produce mind excess heat. That would be the smart-tv cpu as it loads up a barrage of ads with which to torment watchers with. Skip ad 14:56s

They are so massive that the difference is caused by the curvature of spacetime.

Huh? MicroLED is pretty new. I think the first research demonstration of a microLED display was in 2009 or 2010. You can buy microLED TVs right now. A bit more then 10 years to go from research to product is totally normal.

It’s a bit of a stretch to say they are available now. Yes, there are very low volumes of a few very expensive models being sold, but that’s not really what I’m talking about.

I thought MicroLED was about per pixel backlight for good old LCD.

Gonna hit wiki.

Edit: it's not LCD hehe. I have memorized some incorrect info

That's "mini-LED". MicroLED has small enough LEDs to use the LEDs directly as the pixels.

You seem to be right. I don't have them too confused, though. There have been MiniLED display on the market for years, and they're all LCD

Manufacturers blur this distinction on purpose to sell cheaper items

I believe mini-LED/zone dimming was a development expected to be followed by MicroLED, yet longevity and yield continued to be problem in Micro which left “Mini” branding hanging in the air. IIRC.

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