Why Toshiba Dropped OLED TV

Investigation by engineers of the Sony 11″ OLED offering has revealed that power is still a major issue and could well affect the roll-out of any future OLED screened as governments world-wide move to bring in rating systems for all TV technology including Plasma, LCD, DLP and OLED.

Earlier this year at the CES, Sony rolled out their new 11″ OLED TV model claiming that power consumption would not be an issue.

However a report by Tech-On, a division of Nikkei Business Publications has published a report stating that power consumption remains a challenge to OEM’s.

The report stated that Sony said from the start that “reducing power consumption would be the next development challenge, said Yoshito Shiraishi, general manager in the E Products & Business Development Department of the TV Business Group at Sony. One of the reasons why Toshiba Corp of Japan delayed release of its 30-inch class OLED TV originally slated for 2009 is also thought to have been high power consumption”.

According to president and chief executive officer (CEO) Katsuji Fujita of Toshiba Matsushita Display Technology Co Ltd, “OLEDs of 30 inches or more consume two to three times more power than LCDs. It will take a little more time to drop this to at least the level of LCDs.”

A government-commissioned document by the previous Howard government noted that mandatory energy requirements for TVs were so aggressive that, if applied to current models, would for example exclude all but a handful of plasma televisions from the Australian market and a second tier of even more aggressive power reduction requirements was scheduled to be introduced in April 2011, which is claimed would exclude nearly all current LCD and plasma models from the market, making local power saving requirements more draconian than those of any other country.

However, the current Rudd federal government seems to be displaying more urgency when it comes to the implementation of power ratings. According to a prepared statement from the Australian Greenhouse Office: “energy use from TVs is expected to double between 2004 and 2014 as consumers buy larger, higher energy LCD and Plasma TVs. The Australian Government is working with stakeholders towards the implementation of mandatory minimum energy performance standards and energy labelling. We expect these standards to come in April 2009.  There is also support for a voluntary energy label – by as early as the middle of this year. We’re working to regulate televisions so that only energy efficient plasma and LCD televisions remain on the market”. 

So in light of this statement, perhaps the move by Toshiba could be seen as being fortuitous after all.

Go to http://techon.nikkeibp.co.jp/article/HONSHI/20080226/148048/ for the full report.