Rumor: ‘Samsung to release 150-inch TV based on microLEDs’

Samsung will reportedly show a television with a 150-inch screen diagonal, which uses microLEDs at the CES electronics fair in Las Vegas in January. Samsung would like to use this screen technology to compete with OLED in the market for high-end TVs.

According to ZDNet’s Korean site, which writes about the plans based on Samsung’s sources, Samsung is initially targeting the home theater market and building on its Cinema Screen, which it unveiled early this year. That is a 408″ screen with a resolution of 4096×2160 pixels. The 150″ TV would have the same resolution.

The challenge for Samsung would be to reduce the grid with microLEDs in such a way that it can be used for screens that fit in the living room. With the current application of LED screens, such as for advertising, the space between the pixels is still relatively large. Screens with micro LEDs do not need a backlight, the LEDs themselves provide light as individual pixels. They share properties with OLEDs, but unlike those LEDs, they do not use organic material but, for example, gallium nitride, describes Flat Panels HD.

MicroLEDs offer several advantages over OLEDs, for example in terms of burn-in and lifespan. In addition, they offer high brightness for HDR playback. Samsung is focusing on the technology as a successor to its LCD technology with quantum dots, which still require backlights and which Samsung markets as QLED.

More manufacturers are interested in microLEDs. Apple has acquired the maker of microLED technologies LuxVue and Oculus has acquired InfiniLED. According to rumors that, among other things, brought Oled information, Samsung is interested in taking over the Taiwanese microled manufacturer PlayNtride.

More information about the technology behind microleds can be found in Yole Development’s presentation on this topic. The presentation discusses, among other things, the difficulty that the minuscule LEDs have to be applied individually to the substrate.