Rumor: Samsung wants to introduce microLED TV in a few weeks

Samsung would like to introduce a microLED TV at CES electronics fair in a few weeks. That claims a South Korean news site. That TV does not seem to be coming out soon, because after CES Samsung would like to decide on investments in microLED.

Samsung would also like to decide on the exact specifications of the TV after CES, ETNews reports. The company will then invest in the production capacity for the new screen technology. It is unknown when the shown TV should be on the market. At the beginning of this year, Samsung said it expected a microLED TV to come out in 2021 at the earliest.

It is not the first time that a microLED TV seems to be coming, because Samsung also said it was working on a microLED TV for consumers for release in 2019. It did not come. Mass production of the screens has yet to get underway, ETNews says. The investments in the factory and in the equipment for mass production should make this possible. Producing a microLED TV for consumers is difficult, because smaller LEDs have to be used than with the large screens that Samsung already makes. They also have to be applied closer to each other on the substrate.

Samsung is focusing on microLEDs, because this image technology can compete with the OLED panels that are now used in televisions by LG, Sony, and Panasonic, among others. MicroLED TVs, like OLED TVs, do not need a backlight, because the pixels generate their own light. Both also have a very high contrast and a perfect black display. Samsung states that microLEDs last longer, suffer less from burn-in and can achieve higher brightness values. The manufacturer showed a prototype of a 75-inch microLED TV at CES this year.

Last year it became clear that Samsung is in any case also working on the production of large OLED panels with quantum dots. These are intended for televisions with screen diagonals of 55 and 65″. The company would combine blue OLEDs with red and green color filters and quantum dots. This differs from the white OLEDs on which LG Display bases its OLED panels for TVs. LG Display owns the patent. This means that Samsung cannot simply make large OLED panels on the basis of that technology.Samsung would perhaps regard the QD-OLED technology as an intermediate step towards TVs based on microLEDs.

MicroLED TV Prototype at CES 2019