Sony Not to be Counted Out – Shows Off 55-Inch Crystal LED HDTV at CES 2012

Sony, not to be out-done, unveiled it’s own version of new, more efficient TV technology called “Crystal LED”. Recently it was announced that Sony had abandoned the OLED market (which LG and Samsung have both embraced, each demonstrating 55-inch models at CES 2012). While Sony is actually still dabbling in OLED technology, they claim that on larger displays, OLED is far more costly due to the increased likelihood of manufacturing errors and are more prone to damage from humidity, whereas their Crystal LEDs are more stable and durable. To make their 55-inch display, Sony packed 2 million red, green and blue (for a total of 6 million) microscopic LEDs directly on the display, meaning, like the OLED displays, no backlight is required. This allows for thinner (Samsung’s Super OLED is only 0.3-inches thick), lighter and more power efficient TVs, while picture quality becomes more “true-to-life”. Also, similar to OLED displays, the response time is much faster (Sony claims an increase of 10 times), meaning motion blur will pretty much be a thing of the past. The downside to Sony’s Crystal LED displays, is they will not be available for quite some time, while Samsung and LG will have their OLED televisions available in a matter of months. For those who may not have known, currently available LED TVs are essentially LCD TVs which use LEDs as backlights.