Now that 4K screens are getting bigger and wider, there can be a problem with picture “distortion” on curved screens, acknowledged Samsung in a newly published patent application. The problem arises when conventional 16:9 program material is scaled up for display on a 21:9 or 16:10 or 2.35:1 aspect-ratio screen that's curved, said the application (US 2017/0013728) published Jan. 12 at the Patent and Trademark Office. The distortion is particularly noticeable at the screen edges, said the application from a team of six Korean inventors, first filed by Samsung in Seoul in July 2015. The document runs to nearly 50 pages of opto-mechanical detail but boils down to the basic idea of making the screen’s radius of curve vary across its width, with the curvature of the side areas greater than the curvature at the central area of the screen. The easiest way to understand this concept, suggests the application, is to think of “higher curvature” or “greater curvature” as “bent more” or “bent a lot.” Between three and 24 different curvature zones must be merged smoothly across the screen width, it said. The zones of different curvature may vary in width across the screen. In practice, the panel is bent in a controlled manner by cutting notch lines of varying depth down the screen height, it said. Making a curved screen in this complex manner with multiple curvatures will “reduce edge distortion of scaled content (and) improve an immersive (and) improve side viewing angle,” it said.

Samsung will introduce at CES quantum dot curved monitors for gamers, it said in a Thursday announcement. The CH711 monitors, 27- and 31.5-inches, boast richer color and deeper contrast than previous models and are slated for early 2017 release. Samsung also will preview the 28- and 31.5-inch UH750 UHD quantum dot monitors with a 1-millisecond response time. The step-up SH850 23.8- and 27-inch monitors offer WQHD resolution, DP daisy chain connectivity via a three-sided design and height-adjustable pivot, tilt and swivel stand, Samsung said.

Shipments of flexible displays for smartphones and other devices are expected to reach 139 million units in 2017, up 135 percent from 2016, said IHS Markit in a Monday report. But flexible displays are expected to account for only 3.8 percent of total display unit shipments in 2017, said IHS. Many manufacturers have plans to develop foldable, bendable or dual-edge curved smartphone designs, and Apple is expected to launch the iPhone 8 in 2017 using a flexible active-matrix OLED (AMOLED) display, it said. Apple’s move into that sector “would dramatically drive up expected demand for flexible AMOLED panels,” enough for them to account for 20 percent of total OLED display unit shipments in 2017, said the researcher. “During 2016, many smartphone manufacturers have pressured display panel makers to supply them with more flexible AMOLEDs for their new smartphone designs.” Limited production capacity prevented all but “a few players” having their orders “met in quantity,” it said. Tight supply conditions are expected to ease in 2017 once Samsung Display and LG Display “start operating their new fabs to increase supply capacity for flexible displays, resulting in earlier availability of new smartphone entrants in the market,” IHS said.

Samsung’s agreement to buy QD Vision’s patents and trademarks for $70 million gives it the “freedom to operate” in quantum-dot technology for TVs and monitors and “advance its own R&D efforts,” said Ross Young, CEO of Display Supply Chain Consultants, in a Saturday blog post. If the future of displays and TVs is in quantum dots, “it will be helpful for Samsung to acquire” the 250 quantum-dot-related patents and trademarks in QD Vision’s portfolio, said Young, a onetime DisplaySearch founder. The acquisition gives Samsung “the upper hand” against competitors, which now may need to take a license from Samsung and pay a royalty to produce or use displays that compete with Samsung’s quantum-dot “implementations,” he said. Young doubted the acquisition will hurt Samsung’s close collaboration with Nanosys, the world’s largest supplier of quantum-dot technologies and materials. Young estimates that Nanosys quantum-dot films can be found in nearly 20 different Samsung SKUs in TVs ranging from 43 to 88 inches.

Panasonic developed an In-plane switching liquid crystal panel it said is capable of contrast ratios of more than 1,000,000:1, 600 times that of conventional liquid crystal panels. The panel’s light-modulating cells allow pixel-by-pixel control of backlight intensity, useful for high dynamic range monitors for broadcasters, said the company in a news release. Sampling will begin in January for the high-end panel that’s also targeted to video production, medical and automotive applications.

Global flat-panel display revenue is expected to grow 9.3 percent in 2017 to $110 billion, after two straight years of declines, IHS Markit said in a Monday report. Still, “it would be unrealistic to expect an increase in unit demand next year in view of an overall sluggish global economy outlook,” said the research firm. It’s forecasting a 0.3 percent jump in unit demand, though demand on a display-area basis is expected to grow 6.6 percent. The “rapid rebound” in 2016 panel prices will be the main factor driving revenue growth, IHS said. The increased supply of “premium products” commanding higher average selling prices (ASPs) is helping to push revenue higher, it said. The “demand switch” toward premium products reflects stronger “consumer preferences” for larger-size displays for TVs, desktop monitors and tablets and for Ultra HD displays, it said. The migration toward active-matrix OLED panels for smartphones is another trend that’s driving higher ASPs, said the researcher.

OLED technology supplier Universal Display sees its “proprietary” organic vapor jet printing (OVJP) technology as “a strong option for manufacturing OLED TVs in the future,” CEO Steven Abramson said on a Thursday earnings call. OVJP is “a novel manufacturing printing process” that allows manufacturers to use a gas stream to print “small-molecule” OLED materials onto a substrate, Abramson said. “Panel makers would be able to use the same type of materials that are currently being used in existing vacuum deposition systems, but without the need of a mask set.” OVJP is conducive to producing large OLED TV panels more cost-effectively, he said. “We've been hitting key technical research benchmarks, recently demonstrating the capabilities of print at 4K resolution. We are accelerating our development efforts and working on future commercialization plans.” The commercial launch of OVJP “is still a few years away,” but “we are growing our company for the short, medium and long term and OVJP is part of that strategy,” he said. The company thinks OVJP “will be commercially viable in a few years and we are evaluating the commercialization and partnering options because we do believe it's a strong contender for cost-effective larger-area TV production,” he said.

AU Optronics shipped 9.9 million panels 10 inches and larger for LCD TVs, desktop monitors in September, a 4.9 percent decline from August, the company reported Thursday. Shipments of panels under 10 inches were 13 million units, a 7.3 percent increase from August. For Q3, shipments of panels 10 inches and larger totaled 29.3 million units, a 2.8 percent increase from Q2 and an 11.1 percent increase from Q3 a year earlier. The company shipped just under 38 million panels under 10 inches in Q3, a 10.6 percent decrease from Q2 and a 22 percent decline from Q3 in 2015.

The use of flexible displays in smartphones, tablets and connected wearables is fueling a surge in active-matrix organic light-emitting diode (AMOLED) display volume, said an IHS report. AMOLED display revenue is expected to reach $14.3 billion this year, closing in on low-temperature polysilicon displays (LTPS) at $14.7 billion and surpassing amorphous silicon (a-Si) TFT LCD displays at $14 billion, it said. AMOLED is poised to become the leading next-generation display technology, but a-Si TFT LCD will see decreasing demand, especially for smartphone displays, said IHS. Oppo and Vivo added AMOLED displays to their high-end smartphones in 2016, and Samsung used AMOLED in mid- and high-end Galaxy phones, it said. Apple, meanwhile, stuck with LCD displays, and “lackluster” sales of the iPhone 6S had a negative impact on thin-film transistor (TFT) LCD display revenue, especially LTPS TFT LCD displays, IHS said. Well-publicized battery issues with Samsung’s Galaxy Note7 and stronger than expected iPhone 7 orders in the U.S. could have a negative impact on AMOLED sales, it said. “Our latest forecast shows strong growth for small and medium AMOLED displays in 2016, but the trend may be revised in the fourth quarter, depending on how the market shakes out,” said analyst Hiroshi Hayase.

Panasonic at IFA said it will use “decades" of knowledge in plasma TV picture quality to bring enhancements to the OLED TV panels it sources from LG Display. Demos of a prototype 4K OLED screen at IFA impressed, but Panasonic would give no information on what new tricks it plans for OLED, saying only it will release more information on the subject by winter. Our search through Panasonic patents filed over the past decade unearthed work underway at the company to enhance OLED’s picture quality. Two patents from parent Matsushita (US 2009/0046087 and 2009/0212715) describe how to dim OLEDs, smoothly and without flicker, by driving them with a pulsed voltage, and varying the shape and frequency of the pulse train. A third U.S. filing (2009/0153449) describes advances in OLED screen technology, and related Japanese patents (JP 12359455 and JP 20120014182) name Hitachi and Panasonic as joint applicants. When combined, these patents explain how using thin-film transistors (TFTs) to switch OLED pixels improves light output and makes the screen look brighter. But an unwanted side effect is that TFTs can blur motion because residual picture signals linger in the TFT capacitors so that one picture scan smears into the next, the patents said. Panasonic’s patented solution is to completely quench all the pixels between every scanning line, rather like physically switching off a light, the patents said. The extreme quenching is done by rapidly reversing the voltage after each line scan, they said. The result, they said, is prevention of the blurred edge “phenomenon,” which “greatly improves” motion clarity.