Tim is having issues with screen burn-in of the status bar on his Android phone and it's OLED screen. How can he avoid it? Leo says it may be possible to avoid it with a custom launcher and rooting your phone. Leo uses Active Launcher. Nova Launcher is another good one. Both have themes, including a clear status bar. The chatroom suggests this article on how to fix screen burn-in.
Charles wants to know the difference between QLED and OLED. Is QLED better? Leo says that it's more marketing. Samsung wants people to think that QLED is as good as OLED, but it's really just another LED technology with backlit LCDs. OLED is a better technology with bolder, more accurate colors and deeper, richer blacks. Is there a risk of burn-in? Leo says that modern OLEDs have solved that problem.
Scott Wilkinson reports that Samsung Display will stop making LCD panels by the end of next year. The parent company, Samsung Electronics, will still make LCD TVs, getting their panels from elsewhere. But what they are going to be doing is focusing solely on QLED, quantum dot LED panels. Scott says that they are LCD TVs with a quantum dot backlight. It takes blue OLED material and passes it through quantum dot material, converting it to blue, red, or green. It's a process called Quantum Dot Conversion, or QDCC. And it'll hit the market next year. Samsung will also be making a QD OLED.
If you are shopping for a decently large TV with a good price tag, check out products from brands TCL and Hisense. They are Chinese companies that are trying to break into the United States market, so their prices are quite affordable. Plus, they often have Roku built-in, which is arguably better than creating their own smart TV software.
Sam joins Leo to talk about the news that Cadillac has designed a gorgeous OLED display system for their Escalade SUV. They're made by LG and consists of three separate displays, including two touch screens. Leo says that one of the problems though with OLED is the burn-in problem. If you're going to have a car for 10-15 years, how are they doing to deal with that? Sam says that LG is probably using pixel shifting to battle the burn-in problem. As for an upcoming electric vehicle by Cadillac, that likely won't happen for at least five years.
Scott joins Leo to talk about all he saw at CES 2020. One of the nifty things he saw was an OLED gaming monitor that was 4K OLED with a variable 360fps refresh rate. 8K TVs were everywhere, including a 292" Wall by Samsung. MicroLEDs are the next generation TV, and while we're a few years away from being affordable, the technology will be the future once they make the production of the MLEDs scalable for production. Another trend was "miniLED." Tens of thousands of dimming zones and LEDs make for more consistent lighting from light to dark. TCL will be offering miniLEDs this year.
CES begins next week and Scott joins Leo for the 16th straight year to talk about what we can expect to see. In fact, they met at CES during the first week of the Tech Guy 16 years ago. What can we expect? Scott says we'll see more 8K displays, which Leo says is rather silly. Just how realistic do we need TVs to get to real life? Scott says that while resolution is one consideration, there is a greater sense of depth, thanks to HDR and video processing. So the depth of field looks more realistic. Upscaling will look much better as well, like going from HD to 8K. Or 4K to 8K.
Sometimes it can be confusing when acronyms are nearly identical. It would be in consumers' best interest to learn the difference between OLED and QLED before browsing for new TVs. OLED stands for "organic light-emitting diode" while QLED stands for "Quantum Dot LED" (according to Samsung). Quantum dots are extremely small semiconductors that backlight a Liquid Crystal Display. Many people think "QLED" was a label intentionally chosen to look similar to "OLED", despite not being the same technology.
Mitch wants to know the difference between OLED and QLED. Leo says there's a huge difference and QLED is just a marketing ploy by Samsung to lure those interested in OLED to their LED TVs. It uses "quantum dot" LEDs, which are very small. OLEDs are organic LEDs, which can be brighter.
Tom purchased a new OLED TV and it brought him to do research into the average diameter of an atomic nucleus and cutting circuit lines. Tom wants to know how production facilities are able to cut circuit lines so small and address the wiring grid within so that they don't overlap one another. Leo tells Tom that the process is called Microlithography, which he explains is similar to the idea of silk screening: Painters paint on a screen of silk and then apply ink to it, and the ink goes through the part of the silk that isn't painted. It's a fascinating process.
