“Top emission RGB OLED is not going to be around a year from now.” 😳

With the announcement of the FSI XMP550, a 55” QD OLED with a peak brightness of 2,000 nits which will retail for $19,995 USD, it’s interesting to travel back in time 4 years, when Sony launched their dual layer LCD BVM-HX310, and listen to Bram Desmet, CEO, FSI, share his thoughts on the future of ‘top emission’ RGB OLED. He even goes so far as to say that OLED isn’t well-suited for HDR.

“At IBC 2018, Sony launched the BVM-HX310. It’s a display based on LCD technology, but it has much the same specification as the X300 and targets much the same market as the X300. Why would a company risk competing with its own product, having already created a successful display that was widely received as the holy grail?

Bram Desmet, of monitor specialists Flanders Scientific (FSI), suggests that the answer may be practical. Flanders makes displays based on various technologies from various manufacturers and is a client of Sony Semiconductor, the branch of the company which manufactures the OLED panels used in X300 (and competing) displays.

Desmet says, simply, that “for pro markets, the top-emission [high-brightness] type OLEDs that are used in the [Flanders Scientific] DM250s, the X300 from Sony, that tech is gone. The manufacturer has pulled out from even trying to make those. Top emission RGB OLED is not going to be around a year from now.” With brightness a sore point of OLED displays, HDR was always going to work them hard. “There were challenges,” Desmet continues. “They’re not that well suited for HDR. There’s a huge challenge with burn-in, lifespan.” A challenge indeed, given that displays using high-brightness OLED panels routinely push £30,000.”

Note: The author of the interview, Phil Rhodes, was mistaken. Top emission does not mean high brightness. In traditional OLEDs (bottom emission), light travels through the thin-film transistor (TFT) layer, which can reduce efficiency and introduce color shifts. In contrast, TE-OLEDs emit light directly from the cathode side, bypassing the TFT layer. The QD-OLED panel in the XMP-550 is a top emission technology.