LG announces 55-inch OLED TV panel

LG has announced that it has developed the world's biggest OLED TV Panel – with a whopping 55 inch offering described as 'a significant step forward' for the screen technology.

Organic Light Emitting Diodes bring several benefits over more traditional screen technology (thinner, lighter, more environmentally friendly) and have long been hailed as the future of out televisions.

Although OLED is now a familiar sight in small screens like phones, the technology remains prohibitively expensive in larger sizes.

Televisions have been available with OLED panels, but they tend to cost a small fortune and offer only smaller sizes.

Viable for home

Korean giant LG is hoping that its 55-inch panel can not only prove popular, but begin to make OLED viable for the mass-market home TV.

"Our objective has always been to actively define and lead emerging display technology markets," said Dr. Sang Beom Han, CEO and Executive Vice President of LG Display.

"Although OLED technology is seen as the future of TV display, the technology has been limited to smaller display sizes and by high costs, until now. LG Display's 55-inch OLED TV panel has overcome these barriers."

LG insists that the panel 'successfully addresses' the issues that have made OLED televisions troublesome.

"The panel adopts an Oxide TFT technology for backplane which is different from a Low Temperature Poly Silicon (LTPS) type generally used in existing small-sized OLED panels," explains LG's release.

"The Oxide TFT type that LG Display utilizes is similar to the existing TFT process, with the simple difference lying in replacing Amorphous Silicon with Oxide.

"Moreover, the Oxide TFT type produces identical image quality to high performance of LTPS base panels at significantly reduced investment levels."

WOLED

The display also use White OLED (WOLED of course) which apparently vertically accumulates the red, green and blue diodes.

"With white color light emitting from the diode, it displays screen information through color layers below the TFT base panel, which leads to a lower error rate, higher productivity, and a clearer Ultra Definition screen via the benefits of small pixels," adds LG.

Of course, the big question is how much does it cost? We'll bring you that information when we find out.

The TV will be on display at CES 2012 - and TechRadar will be there to tell you if it lives up to its billing with a hands on: LG 55-inch OLED review.