FLEXING FOR THE FUTURE

LG.Display was at CES touting the advantages of OLED’s flexibility, potentially a handy USP against the rival technologies of MicroLED and QD-LED (see p10). Shown as a concept was this Media Chair for personal relaxation, with a curved 55-inch OLED screen within an automated chair that allows the user to tilt back and keep the screen at the optimum viewing distance of 1.5 metres. It also demonstrates a technology which w suspect may extend to its consumer TVs rather more quickly — Cinematic Sound OLED

(CSO), which uses a film to vibrate the screen itself to produce audio. Its development dates back to at least 2017, the year Sony’s Acoustic Surface was also introduced, with LG both patenting its technology and already succeeding in having it adopted as a KS standard in Korea in 2020, a process which had required LG.Display to establish a dedicated organisation to study evaluation methods by which CSO’s strengths could be objectively quantifyied against conventional speaker technology. CSO was also demonstrated at CES on a gamer’s ‘Bendable’ screen with a 48-inch flexible OLED panel that can curve on command, shifting from flat TV watching to curved gaming immersion. Both these models are prototypes. Of more immediate impact may be LG.OLED’s extension of its Evo technology panels beyond the G1 flagship on which it appearedin 2021 to the G2 and C2 ranges. OLED Evo technology enhances the brightness of OLED by using deuterium, an organic material with a longer lifespan that can withstand a higher voltage and includes a green-emitting layer. The G2 will also benefit from heat dissipation technology (see Sony story) which will allow it to be pushed to even brighter performance (not hitherto an OLED strength) in terms of both peak and average nits.