If looks were all it took to sell a product, the new OLED television that Best Buy showcased at its Richfield store Monday would have been sold out the day before.
Sharply etched orange and yellow colors oozed across a jet-black screen in slow motion. Green droplets frozen in mid-splash seemed almost realistic enough to touch. The 55-inch screen was slightly curved toward the viewer at both edges, was no thicker than three credit cards and weighed just 38 pounds, including pedestal.
There's only one catch: The OLED TV costs $15,000.
Made by LG Electronics Co. of South Korea, the set represents the leading edge of innovation in TVs and the best hope for manufacturers and retailers to kick off another cycle of spending by consumers for upgrades akin to what occurred a decade ago during the change from tube-based to flat-panel TVs.
Today, the costs to produce — and the prices to sell — flat-panel TVs have plunged to the level where they have become commodities. A 55-inch liquid crystal display, or LCD, TV costs as little as $500.
OLED stands for organic light-emitting diode and stands out from LCDs by not requiring a light that adds size and weight and affects the quality of the display. In an OLED TV, the diodes themselves provide the illumination, resulting in the deep contrast and ultrathin screens.
In addition, the OLED screen can be viewed from almost a right angle with almost no change in contrast or color. Aside from the image quality, LG says the OLED screen refreshes faster than an LCD TV screen, thus producing sharper images of moving objects.
LG, the second-largest maker of TVs by revenue, has been racing with its Korean competitor, Samsung Electronics Co., the world's largest TV maker, to produce OLED TVs at a volume where they can profitably offer them for sale. Both firms showed big OLED TVs at trade shows in the U.S. and elsewhere the past two years. But they've both encountered difficulties in building them and currently offer them in a few countries.
