We caught up with LG Display at CES 2023 to better understand what’s behind the meta-technology behind the new OLED TVs, which promise record-breaking brightness of up to 2,100 cd/m².
A field battle is taking place in the halls of CES 2023. That of LG and Samsung, a battle as old as the world between two Korean giants of new technologies. And since the arrival of QD OLED Samsung in 2022, LG and Samsung, but also other TV manufacturers like Panasonic are doing everything to have the brightest OLED screens.
Why is the brightness of the OLED so low?
Indeed, brightness is one of the themes when we talk about OLED. Why ? On an OLED display, each individual pixel can control its brightness. For example, if you have an image with a white circle surrounded by a black background, only the pixels in the white circle will be lit, while the surrounding pixels will be off. This is what OLED is capable of such levels of contrast and color compared to LED technologies.
There is therefore extensive research into the path of light, as it is known that OLED materials prevent this light from propagating around them. A significant portion of the light produced is blocked, it then generates heat.
Why ? This is due to a physical property that states that when light passes from a material with a high refractive index to a material with a low refractive index, a large part of the light is converted to heat. Old physics lessons might come to mind. In summary, the light that travels from one medium (the OLED materials) to another with higher density (the air) and thus much of the light is reflected in the source material.
That means one of the challenges is finding ways to change the angle of the light as it exits the device and enters the air. This is key to improving the amount of light the user sees. And to avoid mixing all the pixels, there must be a light extraction device for each pixel. Given the millions of pixels and sub-pixels in today’s OLED screens, this is a big problem, but not an insurmountable one. A number of materials are now used to create something like a (micro)lens on each pixel.
As with many technologies, scaling laboratory processes to mass production levels is proving difficult. As these materials continue to be refined and integrated into the design and manufacture of OLED displays, panel makers are coming up with better OLED displays and lighting.
What is LG Meta? How does LG manage to improve the brightness of its TVs?
LG presented at CES 2023 its new OLED televisionsincluding the new ones M3. The biggest change concerns the LG OLED evo G3 and M3 series, it’s about “Meta” technology that allows these screens to achieve a record brightness of up to 2,100 cd/m² (candelas per square meter).while the best screens of 2022 barely exceed 1,000 cd/m².
We spoke to LG Display, the company responsible for developing OLED panels from LG Electronics and many other manufacturers. In short, LG Display has applied a layer of microlenses over the organic light-emitting diodes. This reflects the light inside the screen, projecting it towards us, greatly improving the efficiency of light extraction and therefore increasing its brightness.
The manufacturer calls this new technology MLA, or Illuminated metal lens array. To achieve these improvements, OLED panels are manufactured in a novel way to form the shape of a miniature convex lens. As we have already told you, you then only have to calculate the angle of the light that is lost inside the OLED panel, so that it “bounces” in the micro-lenses.
As LG explains, its new LG OLED Meta TVs are not only brighter, but also more energy efficient. What is important to answer European Union energy certification requirements.
That’s not all, as Meta Technology makes greater use of the new sixth-gen processor, Alpha 9 Gen 6. This allows for better voltage stabilization (and better consumption) and of course improves image processing. scale up Etc. When it comes to how this image processing processor works, LG remains quite discreet, you have to imagine a whole bunch of algorithms. For brightness, LG Display calls it the Meta Booster.
So the term “meta” does not refer to a new OLED panel, but to the union of several factors, exactly as it happened. with EX tiles. Technically, an LG OLED Meta TV is the union of an OLED MLA panel (that is, an EVO panel – which uses deuterium as a stabilizer – and the famous lenses) in addition to the new Alpha 9 Gen 6 processor , able to improve screen consumption and apply several improvements in colorimetry and image rendering.
We will have the opportunity to compare LG’s new OLED models with Samsung’s, but also with Panasonic, which uses similar technologies.
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