Adam Sampson wrote:
Albert Manfredi writes:

My expectation is that LCDs, which do not need high voltages, should
last fairly well. We'll see.

But LCDs *do* need high voltages, to run the electroluminescent or
cold-cathode backlight that most large displays have -- and, indeed,
backlight PSU problems are an extremely common failure mode on LCD
monitors that are more than a couple of years old. I've seen quite a few
die that way already.

My Dell 2001FP 20" LCD failed twice in four years. The customer service
operative I spoke to said they're only engineered to last three years
now, and it was unreasonable of me to expect to get any more than that
out of a £600 monitor -- suffice it to say that I won't be buying from
them again.


Eventually, LEDs will take over the backlight duties. That will fix
'that' problem. Dell already offers them as an option for some of their
line of laptops.

That said, last week I saw my first OLED display. Major game change.
Sure, it was a tiny 11" Sony TV, selling for (get this!) $2300; but the
image was stunning. Simply amazing!

From no matter what angle, the image looked the same. If you could see
the image at all, it looked the same as head-on, unlike an LCD where you
have to be at the perfect spot for the image to look right.

I'm familiar with professional preview monitors (CRTs) which are not
inexpensive in their own rite. Still no comparison. I said many years
ago in this forum that LEDs would take over the flashlight industry.
That's happened to a great degree. I'll make a similar prediction
concerning these. They're just that good.

---Unless something else comes out that's better and cheaper; you'll
have an OLED TV some day---

jak