The thing is: can I buy a big OLED and use it for whatever, without doing anything special to take care of it, and not have it suffer from burn in 10 years from now?
There's lots of methods now to make this degradation more uniform on OLED, like slightly shifting the image to distribute the load onto multiple subpixels, "cleaning" the panel when its switched off, down to measuring the operating hours of individual pictures and adjusting the brightness of surrounding pixels to blend the degradation.
Overall you can choose what you want to degrade over those 10 years: The LED brightness and color-accuracy of a whole zone / backlight unit (LED-LCD), or have the OLED panel actively compensate its aging (which has gotten ALOT better in the past years)
Either way, I wouldn't put my money on QLED (which is not a technology but a brand). QLED is actually far worse on lifetime than OLED [1], but as it was driven by the marketing powerhouse of Samsung this information is barely known. Considering how expensive it is to produce and that it was basically only made by Samsung to buy time until they can produce OLED as well, I wouldn't expect it to become actually a mature technology. It's more likely that they will replace the Quantum Dot backlight with something cheaper and still keep the brand "QLED" (if they haven't done that already).
AH-IPS LCD panels with zoned LED backlight probably still provide the most stable picture quality over longer time of use, compromising on image-quality compared to OLED. But the last really good TV with such a panel was produced quite a few years ago already...
I do care about seeing ghost letters or shapes on top of the latest TV series I'm watching.
Edit: The QLED article is from 2019, that's quite a few yers ago for cutting edge tech. I imagine tech is constantly improving.
But none of this is new. In reality, I barely heard people complain about their LCDs becoming more and more weak in brightness and color-tinted (usually yellow) each year. And yet, all of this happened to 100% of all LED-LCD panels.
> Edit: The QLED article is from 2019, that's quite a few yers ago for cutting edge tech. I imagine tech is constantly improving.
Yeah, there's alot of research ongoing to improve QD lifetime as a foundation for new LED technology. Here's one from Dec.2022 [1], and one from as late as 2023 [2], all with the subject of solving performance stability of the technology to become on-par (!) with common LED.
> I don't care much about average panel degradation.
> I do care about seeing ghost letters or shapes on top of the latest TV series I'm watching.
Nobody cares about "luminance degradation", they just dont want ghosting
And "ghosting" are artifacts on fast movement due to a lag in panel refresh, it's something entirely different.
I think you're going too far with your statement. OLED/qd-oled and to a lesser degree WOLED all suffer from significant burn-in, which makes them pretty bad for desktop use.
Previous LCD technologies will degrade over the years by losing luminance and color accuracy, but that's a pretty minor issue compared to OLED as far as I'm concerned.
With OLED, not so much. OLED does have tech to compensate based on total pixel usage. You might see that if you tried to change a panel without the electronics. I'm not aware of how widespread it is, but I know iphones can do it.
https://www.rtings.com/tv/tests/longevity-burn-in-test-updat...
This is a great overview demo of current panels! You can already see some very slight degradation in some of LGs OLEDs, but many of the Sony/Visio (and Samsung) OLED panels.
The others mostly look like standard LCD and DDI/Flex defects rather than burn-in so far.
The research paper describes the lifetime and degradation in a uniform setup, as it's research for foundational QD-tech, not for TV panels.
There's alot of research ongoing to improve QD lifetime as a foundation for new LED technology. Here's one from Dec.2022 [1], and one from as late as 2023 [2], all with the subject of solving performance stability of the technology to become on-par (!) with common LED.
Or something more expensive? Not sure if OLED is more expensive or not, but they are already using that as a backlight on the high-end. Specifically, blue which seems to be the issue for QLEDs if the paper is anything to go by.
If they replace it with something more expensive they usually give it a new name to sell the higher price, like "Neo QLED"
Don't organic LEDs also degrade more than their "normal" counterparts?
> Overall you can choose what you want to degrade over those 10 years: The LED brightness and color-accuracy of a whole zone / backlight unit (LED-LCD), or have the OLED panel actively compensate its aging (which has gotten ALOT better in the past years)
I'd imagine it would be FAR easier to compensate the backlight as you just need to re-calibrate one string of LEDs that all see same load over lifetime of the monitor vs somehow tracking per-subpixel usage of each OLED
Yeah, amplified due to their much smaller size, having less surface area for heat dissipation, and also depending on pixel-color in RGB-OLED setups. On TV's WOLED panels are used instead of RGB-OLED, which allows for better heat-distribution and a uniform lifetime regardless of pixel-color.
> I'd imagine it would be FAR easier to compensate the backlight as you just need to re-calibrate one string of LEDs that all see same load over lifetime of the monitor vs somehow tracking per-subpixel usage of each OLED
For luminance there is nothing to compensate, as it simply degrades uniformly. The peak-brightness is simply reducing over time.
Color-shifts cannot be re-calibrated that well because the shift happens due to the chemical decomposition process of the phosphor in each LED, which causes the color of the light going INTO the color-filter to shift (the base light that is filtered for RGB is no longer white).
Once it starts it's not a binary process, the color keeps shifting. Manual recalibration often has no real benefit then, as the color-shift continues and is not uniform across the whole display.
But you can change white balance of most monitors right ? So they at the very least need cold white and warm white LEDs, just change balance of those. using RGB LEDs in backlight could also allow for that correction.
Most all mid tier LCD TVs currently use QD (whether in the backlight or the color filter layers). They don't use Blue QD (only longer lifetime Red/Green), but crystal InGaN in the Blue backlight. Other lower end LCDs use RG phosphor instead of QD to produce white, which also has long term burn-in issues, but as you mention they are not individual to pixels. Color shift of the (global backlight) screens over years can be compensated, but since environmental lighting has a bigger effect on perceived color, I'm not sure why you'd bother (mini-LED can be worse).
Even the very best currently shipping OLEDs (not yet phosphorescent Blue) have visible burn-in at ~2000hr even with image shifting de-contrast techniques. Early 2014 QD (Red/Green) have visible burn-in at ~7khr and modern ones about 20khr. They're about 10x better than OLEDs, but you could still see it several years in (rather than months in for OLED).
I've got no great love for QLED, but R/G QD just doesn't have the same level of burn-in problems that fluorescent Blue OLED does, and neither do Blue InGaN LEDs.
https://en.tab-tv.com/samsung-has-released-recommendations-f...
I'm including this link, because the SID.org papers are all paywalled.
I frankly don't know how you technically define "visible burn-in" in context of QD (do you mean actual pure QD tech or Samsungs mixed use of the tech for QLED TVs?).
If we can agree, that: 1.) The jargon "burn-in" on OLED describes the luminance degradation of individual sub-pixels (i.e. a weaker red because the operation hours of a red sub-pixel were much higher than its neighbours).
2.) Samsung's "QLED" is a brand for a LCD panel with the backlight created using R/G QD and blue LED (instead of blue/yellow LED). The backlight on standard QLED is separated in ~700 zones of the display, so you have huge clusters of pixels using the same backlight zone.
Then: What is the equal meaning of "burn-in" then in the context of QLED? The luminance degradation of the whole zone?
Or is it the "legacy" meaning of burn-in on LCD: The occurence of weaker/dead pixels due to issues in the TFT layer (broken/weak transistors no longer properly rotating the crystals)?
Either way, I can't confirm and don't agree that OLED TVs will see a visible "burn-in" after ~2000hrs of normal use. First-gen models yes, but definitely not currently shipping models.
Similar to standard definitions of Mura a method of defining visible burn-in, you'd have to define the burn image (16pix B&W block or CNN Logo?), the detection image (64 Grey?), viewing distance (30deg FoV?), and visible contrast (+/4 MND?). I guarantee you all the OEMs have a spec.
Here's a set of modern 20hr/day tests at 6 months (posted above) where OLED has visible degradation (mostly Sony/Viso but also Samsung and LG). The new ones are definitely better!
https://www.rtings.com/tv/tests/longevity-burn-in-test-updat...
Consumers don't trust manufavturers. If I pay 2x premium I have zero trust the product is better made or will last longer. My $300 laptop worked for 10 years, $3000 laptop has issues after 2 years.
We have a Toshiba TV that has lasted 15 years. Kinda getting to the end of it's usefull life - its 720p.
On the other hand, I don't expect image technology to advance at the same rate any more, we are at the usefull limit of resolution for example. So maybe if I was buying today, I would actually keep the TV for 20 years.
I'm confused — why are you talking about trusting "manufacturers" as a whole? Isn't the whole point of your anecdote that one manufacturer is trustworthy and the other is not?
Well maybe there are a handful, in some markets, but Miele does not make TVs
Personally, I know more about clothes. Once you switch from fast fashion (Zara, Bershka, Uniqlo) to quality brands (for me, it's Rick Owens, Margiela, Thom Krom and McQueen, adjust for your personal style), they do last a lot longer — I still wear T-shirts that I bought in 2016. However, it means that I shop much less often, own much less clothes and they're all the same style (and the same colour — full black). And I see that people pay lip service to degrading quality, but what majority of them _actually_ want is a lot of regular dopamine from shopping and a wide variety of garments.
You can eat out at fast-food everyday, or spend the same budget to eat at a Michelin-stared place once a couple of weeks (1 star; 2 or 3 stars it would be once a month or more). People tend to choose the former, but then blame "the industry" for their own choices.
I DO notice OLED burn-in, so that <<is>> a problem.
TV takes 10 minutes to load Netflix because it's part of a botnet? Better buy a new one.
It happened to me and it happened to a friend of mine, just a few months apart.
Never ever connect a Samsung TV to the Internet under any circumstances.
So if they're bricked after two years you could take it to the retailer.
And for exactly the same reason most people buying high-end computers and phones won't — the tech will have moved on in 5 years to such a degree that newer products will be significantly better.
I have a 15" Samsung CRT TV from the 90's that still works great. I use it for retrogaming.
> vast majority people buying bleeding-edge OLED TVs (yours truly included) will not use the same TV for 10 years.
IMHO people mostly upgrade their TV because a bigger one comes out. At some point we will reach the maximum practical size for a home TV (kinda like CD drives maxed out at 52x) and then I think people will buy them less. TVs are already kinda cheap and boring and if they don't keep getting bigger, the average consumer will eventually treat it as a commodity item (and maybe it will be priced that way too).
I'm not saying those people don't exist — they clearly do!
But those are not people who buy the most expensive/best TV's on the market.
But you're very unlikely to experience it compared to past technologies, even if you are displaying a static image for extremely long periods
It's a TV!!! There shouldn't be any "negligent" :-)
Some people are fine with tiptoeing around the problem, I imagine most people just don't do anything and mess up their TV.
I shouldn't have to configure FVWM for 20 days to be able to operate the appliance correctly.
The newer TVs can detect that scenario and turn the TV off automatically, unless you specifically disable that setting.
TVs are a luxury good, and there will always be ways to be negligent with anything. Leaving them out in the rain is negligent. Some cleaners will harm the screen, I'm sure. Using them in a too-hot or too-cold environment will harm them. I don't expect my TV to be battle-hardened, and I'm certainly not going to pay the price for that. Instead, I'll take care of it.
I've seen the video where the guy leaves a bright high-contrast static image on his Nintendo Switch OLED for 10,000 hours before finally seeing a small amount of burn-in, but that's not the level that should concern average users. Was just curious if typical large screens fared any worse than the new Switch.