As usual, CES brought more questions around TVs than it answered. Yes, we have a feel for
what we’re going to see this year, but what’s marketing hype, and what is actual technology?
What is QNED, OD-Zero, and where do QDEL and QD-OLED fit in the mix? Let’s talk about that.
Welcome back everyone, I’m Caleb Denison and today I want to explore where we are currently at with
TV technology, what it means, and where we are going in the future. It involves a lot of acronyms
which, even if you are vaguely familiar with them, are hard to keep track of and understand.
I’m going to spell it all out as clearly as I can so that by the end of this video, you will
be the most TV tech-savvy person on your block. Maybe even in your neighborhood. Let’s get to it.
Real quick, though, Do you think all these acronyms for TV tech are getting out of
control and why is your answer not yes! Leave me a comment down below and while you’re at it,
I would appreciate you hitting the like and subscribe buttons because it really helps
us make the best videos we can for you. Once again, I thank you. Ok, let’s go.
I’m betting many of you are already familiar with mini-LED and micro-LED and how they are different,
but just in case, here’s a quick refresher: mini-LED is a new-ish backlighting technology.
In many ways, it is similar to the LED backlighting we’ve had for years
in that it provides all the light for an LCD panel to work with. Mini-LED works with
much smaller LED lights and lots more of them, allowing for more precise control to minimize
halo around bright objects on dark backgrounds and provide better shadow detail and peak brightness.
Micro-LED is different in that it involves no LCD panel or backlights at all. In some
ways it is similar to OLED in that tiny LEDs provide emissive red, green, and blue
pixels. Like OLED, micro-LED displays can provide perfect black levels and zero halo,
but unlike OLED they are not susceptible to burn-in and they can get extremely bright.
micro-LED is also outrageously expensive and currently, Samsung is the only player
trying to put micro-LED in people’s homes. Sony is bringing its Crystal LED display tech to the U.S.,
but that appears to be a commercial play, Samsung is the only one targeting consumers.
Speaking of Sasung, let’s talk about NEO QLED. QLED, as you may know, is a conventional LED
backlit LCD TV display that uses Quantum Dots to expand color and brightness. So,
what’s the NEO part? It’s essentially Samsung branding of mini-LED backlight tech that we
just talked about. Samsung has some other proprietary tricks going into these TVs,
but when you think NEO,QLED, think next-gen mini-LED tech.
We’re seeing a similar move from LG this year. You may have heard that LG’s latest
for LCD-based televisions is QNED mini-LED. Unlike Samsung, LG is clearly stating that
QNED is mini-LED-based display technology. That part is pretty straightforward, but
what gets confusing is that QNED is an established acronym for an
entirely different kind of display that has nothing to do with mini-LED backlights.
So, what is QNED supposed to be? I’m going to explain exactly that in just a moment but first,
there’s one more mini-LED technology coming this year: TCL’s OD-Zero
OD-Zero is what TCL is calling its next-generation of mini-LED backlight technology which reduces the
number of layers involved in the panel to offer an extremely thin profile. Now, it appears that
at least Samsung has something similar going on in at least some of its NEO QLED TVs, but TCL,
given it has been churning out mini-LED TVs for a couple of years ahead of its competition,
probably has something special up its sleeve. So, while we don’t know which TCL models will
get OD-Zero, we do know that TCL will be making some of its TVs look very special indeed.
OK, back to QNED. QNED, according to what was established before LG started using QNED as a
marketing badge -- probably intended as Quantum Nano-cell Emitting Diode?
has historically stood for Quantum Nano Emitting Diode and the technology involves something called
nanorod LEDs. To understand how this works, it helps to understand why OLED TVs -- despite
offering beautiful picture quality -- are not especially efficient and fall far from
being perfect. OLED TVs use a blue OLED material which is then swung to white using a yellow OLED
material. That white light can then be converted to red green and blue using a color filter.
QNED would use nanorod LEDs -- a slick and tiny cylindrical housing for little LEDs to produce
that blue light at a subpixel level, with quantum dots using that blue light to make
red and green pixels. This would mean OLED quality black levels and color accuracy but with much
higher brightness and no burn-in potential because no organic compounds are used. It’s kind of a best
of both worlds version of OLED and QLED, with none of the drawbacks of either. There is, however, a
competing tv technology in development that keeps OLED around and will likely come before true QNED.
That brings us to the next TV tech acronym on this list: QD-OLED. As the name suggests,
there is a sort of blend here between quantum dots and OLED. Here’s how it works:
Remember what I just said about how OLED TVs work? They start with a Blue OLED light source,
convert that to white using a yellow OLED material, and then use a color filter to get
red green and blue out of that white light. It’s the white subpixel strategy upon which
LG Display’s OLEDs have worked, and it’s part of the reason burn-in can be a problem
and why brightness has been limited for HDR.
QD-OLED still uses a Blue OLED light source, but it kicks the yellow OLED and color filter to the
curb. Instead, it uses quantum dots to convert the blue light into red and green, so you have red,
green, and blue pixels. A true RGB OLED.. Since there is no color filter involved,
up 70 percent of the light lost to that color filter is reclaimed, meaning you keep the perfect
blacks of OLED, but now this OLED-based display gets way brighter and increases
color volume. It might -- and I say MIGHT very intentionally -- also eliminate burn-in. Now,
we don’t have a QD-OLED display to show you because there isn’t one we’ve been shown yet,
but it is possible this tech could be shown off in 2022, and that’s very exciting. It
could be the stepping stone we need to get to a true QNED TV, which right now, sounds like the
most viable alternative to micro-LED that we talked about at the beginning of this video,
bringing us full circle on where TV tech is today, and where it may be in the future.
Will there be more acronyms to digest? Almost certainly. But for now,
you know more about TV tech than most of the folks you know. So, go ahead,
tell your friends, and let’s all be excited for what the future holds.
Thanks as always for watching everyone. Please, did you find this video helpful?
Did it clear up any confusion? Please let me know in the comments and if it did,
slap that like button and hit subscribe so we can continue to bring explainers like this to you
in the future. And since you’re here, there’s two other videos I think you’ll like.