Are Organic TVs the Way of the Future?

Don't touch that dial, as Wired unwraps

one of the hottest innovations to hit

America's favorite pastime, television.

Just when you thought binge-watching

the latest seasons of Silicon Valley and Game of Thrones

couldn't get any better,

LG has unveiled its curved OLED TV.

To understand its leap forward,

let's take a look back at the previous advance

in TV technology, LCD, or liquid crystal display,

which utilizes light-emitting diodes

and millions of pixels to create a high definition image.

However, the richness of LCD color displays

and the thinness of LCD screens

are limited by those extra layers of crystals,

LED backlighting, and additional substrates.

By contrast, organic LEDS, a. k. a. OLEDS,

generate their own illumination

in response to electric current.

That means fewer layers for a screen depth

as narrow as .17 inches, roughly the width

of a number two pencil.

And speaking of things you can sharpen,

the ability of OLED pixels to switch off as necessary

allows them to create a deeper, more detailed,

and yes, sharper black levels.

In LCD TV, the backlight is always on,

and this constant brightness creates milky blacks

which diminish picture quality.

The new OLED technology also adds

a white sub-pixel to the red, green, and blue

of traditional color displays,

further boosting OLED's visual range and contrast

for bolder, more vibrant images.

And that outstanding picture quality

extends to the screen itself,

bringing us the sexiest part of this OLED TV, curviness.

By engaging the peripheral

as well as the central range of vision,

the curved screen provides an immersive viewing experience.

As for what's next in TV innovations,

well, the fact that OLEDs can be sprayed

onto thin plastic substrates

means that some day in the future,

you may actually be able to roll up your screen

when you're done with it,

or as they say in TV,

That's a wrap.

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