Today's HDTV market is dominated by Plasma and LCD technologies but they are far from perfect and have inbuilt limitations that seem unsurmountable. Sooner or later they will be surpassed by something else, but by what and when?

Plasma was the original large format flat screen technology and it is still hard to beat on picture quality. Its main drawbacks are high power consumption and a continuing (though diminished) worry about image burn-in. LCD has the advantage of being easy to build over a wider range of sizes and at resolutions as high as you want them. This has made LCD popular with the manufacturers because it is more cost effective to cover multiple applications with one technology. But LCD has poor contrast ratios, response times and colour range compared with plasma and while its power consumption levels are better than plasma they are far from ideal for our ever greener tastes.

Everybodies favourite to take over from Plasma and LCD is Organic Light Emitting Diode or OLED technology. Research on OLED has been progressing for a few years now with some makers proudly showing off their latest prototypes at the big trade fairs ever since 2005. The quality of the video images they display has always been stunning with contrast ratios, colour gamut and response times far better than anything else ever seen. Yet OLED has made very little impact on commerical TV products so far. Why is that? If they have been able to make them for so long what is holding up production?

The answer is of course cost. OLED displays are harder to produce than their current rivals. Even if the manufacturing processes were scaled up to the current levels of LCD production the cost per unit would be high. Yes, people crave better quality pictures but are there sufficient customers who appreciate the difference enough to pay that much more for it at a time when most people are still watching standard definition pictures broadcast over low bandwidth channels?  The huge investments made in improved LCD and plasma production are still not paid off so it does not make economic sense for manufacturers to replace them too quickly.

Aside from the cost there are other problems with OLED that you dont notice when they are demonstarated at the tradeshows. It is hard to produce them reliably at large sizes and they are said to have a short lifespan. These are problems that LCD faced and overcame just a few years ago, but it required big investment in R&D. Any maker with the knowhow to repeat that for OLED already has big interests in the LCD and plasma markets ,so who will take it on.

Until the end of last year the prospects for OLED passing from prototype showpieces to real life market products looked disapointing. Then Sony released the XEL-1 an 11 inch OLED display just a few millimeters thick with stunning image quality. The size is small and the price is high but the mere fact of its availability is a sign that Sony at least sees a bright future for OLED that is not so far away. Sony heads must be buzzing with the victory of Blu-Ray over HD-DVD right now. That may give them the confidence they need to risk the devlopment costs that it will take to get the product in production. If things worked out they could steal a lead on their rivals that would see them dominate consumer electronics sales for several years.

Needless to say their rivals will not want to let that happen which is why Canon, Hitachi and Panasonic have recently announced a joint venture to invest in display technology such as OLED. By clubbing together they spread the risk and the cost and they stand a better chance of reducing Sony's lead. Publically they are not optimistic for the prospects of OLED displays in our living rooms for the next few years. Neither are the leaders in LCD technology Samsung, Sharp or Toshiba who prefer to concentrate on improvements such as LED backlighting that could make LCD vastly better with less radical developments. Sony alone says it sees the future differently. Eric Kingdon, European Technical Marketing Manager for Sony Europe believes we are about to see big changes with OLED playing a crucial role. It is difficult to imagine OLED overtaking LCD and Plasma for the larger screen sizes quite yet, but if Kingdon is right then their are exciting times ahead for more modest sized displays.