EggXpert

This new technology could replace every single visual presenter you see. It might even become the new light source that will make light bulbs disappear. Most people know about Sony’s OLED TV panels that were displayed at the CES 2008 Convention this year and/or have seen pictures of Samsung’s OLED TVs. Did you know that some products already have OLED displays including some digital cameras, watches, mp3 players, and other small screen devices. But how many know what it can do and if it’s worth looking into?

How does it work?

According to oled-info.com, OLED is made by placing a series of organic films between two conductors, when an electrical current is applied, viola, light is emitted. A quote by Kodak gives a better example:

“OLED displays stack up several thin layers of materials. They operate on the attraction between positively and negatively charged particles. When voltage is applied, one layer becomes negatively charged relative to another transparent layer. As energy passes from the negatively charged (cathode) layer to the other (anode) layer, it stimulates organic material between the two, which emits light visible through an outermost layer of glass."

And what’s nice about this, is it does not require a back light like LCD do; which brings me to the next part or the pros and cons of OLED.

Pros

Incredibly Thin- Sony shows their OLED screens being 3mm thick at the thinnest point where Samsung showed a panel 1.8mm thick at the 2006 Korea Electronics show.

Unparalleled Contrast Ratio- currently being able to produce up to a 1,000,000:1 (that’s right 1 million to 1) contrast ratio, these OLED can produce extremely deep blacks. (I myself haven’t found a comparing picture between the OLED TVs and Pioneer’s new Kuro TVs.)

Smooth movement- being able to spontaneously control the light emitted from the organic material layer, fast-moving action is said to be smoother.

High peak brightness reproduces picture glow- Sony boasts this on their website that their Super Top Emission technology creates light emission from the organic materials and has a high peak of brightness which causes light flow such as sun reflection and fireworks. Rumors around the internet show that OLED will be the new light source. Apparently the US Department of Energy (DOE) offers up to $7.5 million for being able to efficiently use this technology to create a more permanent light source.

Vivid Colors-OLED can produce high-purity colors that are more vivid than plasma and LCD TVs that are out today. Granted news about newer technology in that field could change that.

Low Power Consumption- this is probably why the US DOE is offering a $7.5 million reward, but because no back light is required, OLED can be powered at very low voltages. Oh did I also mention that the resolution can go up to 1920x1080 and possibly higher with further research? And these displays can be placed on a flexible material. Just imagine putting your TV in a mail tube when you need to move it. Plus a 178º viewing angle means that you don’t need to rearrange your home theatre around at all.

Cons

I can’t find any online possibly because there is a lot of promise but I can only imagine that it will be expensive for the first couple of years. Sony’s 11” OLED TV is going for $2,499.99 on their website. But remember how expensive the HD Plasma was when they first came out? Also these displays right now require a box input which isn’t a big deal but if you are looking for just the display with an HDMI connection you might be waiting.

Rumors

Sony boasts about a blazing fast response time and other sights show a response time of 0.01ms but no official timing could be found.

Also a post on Engadget says that researchers are adapting a spreadable, self-powered OLED. Researchers from Sumitomo Chemical and Mitsubishi Chemical are saying that OLED can be “painted” on almost any surface and will be able to power itself with solar panels inside the concoction; while keeping the thickness 100nm. They say to look for prototypes within the next 2 years.

Apparently there is enough research that by 2013 over 2.7 million units will be sold generating almost $1.4 billion in revenue. See graph.

Conclusion

Now that you have some info on OLED we would like to hear feedback from you on what you think about it. If you’re more of a visual person, check out some of the YouTube videos as well, just search for ‘OLED’ and a lot of videos will come up.

We hope to hear from you on our forum soon!

Website Sources:

http://www.sonystyle.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/CategoryDisplay?catalogID=10551&storeId=10151&langId=-1&identifier=S_BrandShowcase_OLED&SR=nav:electronics:tv_hm_ent:our_technologies:oled:ss

http://www.oled-display.net/oled-television

http://reviews.cnet.com/4520-6449_7-6741419-1.html

http://www.oled-info.com/introduction

http://stage.soundandvisionmag.com/features/2732/display-tech-smackdown.html

http://www.engadget.com/2008/05/15/researchers-tout-spreadable-self-powered-oleds/

http://www.cesweb.org/default.asp

You Already Know, Now Share it!

Have you been impressed by the great prices, fast shipping and customer service at Newegg.com? Now is the time to share your positive experiences and win terrific prizes by entering Newegg's First Video Contest. Dedicated to providing our online community even more chances to interact and share, Newegg recently launched a nation-wide talent search asking you, our customers, to step forward and tell us why you love Newegg. Create and send us an original commercial that features your passion for our site and showcases your video talents! We are looking for short 30 seconds to 1 minute submissions and have prepared a great list of prizes for the best entries. The winner of the contest will also have the chance to see their commercial aired of cable TV.**

Please visit the link below for details and to submit your videos. We look forward to hearing from you!

Take me to the Video Contest page!



** TV airing contingent on whether Newegg.com, in its sole and absolute discretion, decides to broadcast the winning commercial.

* Edit:  Date has been extended to May 25, or until 1000 entries have been submitted. *

In recent news, Toshiba announced in a February 19, 2008 press release that the company will be pulling out of HD-DVD -

"TOKYO--Toshiba Corporation today announced that it has undertaken a thorough review of its overall strategy for HD DVD and has decided it will no longer develop, manufacture and market HD DVD players and recorders. This decision has been made following recent major changes in the market. Toshiba will continue, however, to provide full product support and after-sales service for all owners of Toshiba HD DVD products...

" 'We carefully assessed the long-term impact of continuing the so-called 'next-generation format war' and concluded that a swift decision will best help the market develop,' said Atsutoshi Nishida, President and CEO of Toshiba Corporation...

"Toshiba will begin to reduce shipments of HD DVD players and recorders to retail channels, aiming for cessation of these businesses by the end of March 2008. Toshiba also plans to end volume production of HD DVD disk drives for such applications as PCs and games in the same timeframe...

"This decision will not impact on Toshiba's commitment to standard DVD, and the company will continue to market conventional DVD players and recorders."

You can read the entire press release here: Toshiba Announces Discontinuation of HD DVD Businesses

Whether this is a sign of Blu-ray's impending world domination or simply reduces by one the number of HD competitors ready to wage war against conventional DVD format is yet to be seen. Please follow the links below for further discussion -

Forum: Good Bye HD-DVD
Blog: DVD Format War OVER!!! Toshiba Quits

DIGITAL TV

In other news, analog TV broadcasts (rabbit ears and antennas) in the United States will end next year - midnight, February 17, 2009. The nation will switch overnight to digital broadcasting only. In order to keep watching television a year from now, you may need to take action; here are your options, according to the official government site dedicated to making sure all Americans get the high quality, patriotic broadcasting that you deserve -

"Congress created the TV Converter Box Coupon Program for households wishing to keep using their analog TV sets after February 17, 2009. The Program allows U.S. households to obtain up to two coupons, each worth $40, that can be applied toward the cost of eligible converter boxes.

A TV connected to cable, satellite or other pay TV service does not require a TV converter box from this program.

Consumers have a variety of options. Options to explore include:

1. Keep your existing analog TV and purchase a TV converter box. A converter box plugs into your TV and will keep it working after Feb. 17, 2009, or
2. Connect to cable, satellite or other pay service, or
3. Purchase a television with a digital tuner."

For more details, the latest information, and a nifty countdown timer, please bookmark and refer to the dedicated government site: https://www.dtv2009.gov/

Remember, if you do not fulfill one of the above requirements, chances are you will not be able to watch television in your own home! The U.S. government is making the cost of the switch as easy as possible for consumers, so don't forget. Otherwise, you may be left out in the dark.

From March 22nd to March 23rd, the LANmaniacs and other local LANs in southern California are teaming up to host a 50 man LAN party in Reseda, CA (map). The event will run from 10AM on Saturday 03/22/08 to 6PM on Sunday 03/23/08. The cost of one seat is $10.00. There are a total of 50 seats available, and nearly half of them have already been taken, so click here to sign up and reserve yours!

Game servers will include Call of Duty United Offensive, Quake III Arena, Battlefield 2, and Savage.

Among others, EggXpert fraggers kfn00b and CheapAsianGamerGuy (Uber) are expected to be in the thick of the action. If any of our Staff make it over, we plan on bringing some free Newegg gear and swag to give away too =)

• Please visit the following site for more information and details: 50 MAN LAN
• EggXpert discussion thread: 50 MAN LAN - SOCAL (March 22, 2008)

See you there!

During volfann's current leave of absence, the powers to give and take the Venny award are now in the hands of freshly minted Uber GmsCool.

But first - what is the Venny? The Venture Award is named after a legendary EggXpert forum troll who was well-known for his unique sense of humor. As a result, the Venny was originally conceived by the users for the users to reward other witty forum posts and clever one-liners reminiscent of the retired Venture. Every month, 1-3 users are chosen by GmsCool and given a new badge to acknowledge their own special idea of fun and mayhem. For more information and a list of previous winners, please visit this blog.

In February 2008, we had three winners. They are (in no particular order) -

• cyberburn311 (click here for post)
• sjr (click here for post)
• kunzy (click here for post)

If you see a deserving post that resulted in either a fried and waterlogged keyboard or occasion for a new set of pants, please send GmsCool a Private Message with a link to said post; your nominations are greatly valued. And congratulations to sjr for his third win (out of the four times the award has been handed out thus far).

As you may recall, there was a variety of issues with our Cyber Monday PayPal promotion this past Thanksgiving. In case you do not recall, allow us to provide a quick summary for your benefit:

The promotion was a 20% discount (up to a maximum of $50 per customer) from any Newegg order billed with PayPal between 11/26/07 and 11/28/07, or until the allocated promo funds were consumed; unfortunately, the deal proved popular enough to expire on the very first day, November 26th, with some shoppers continuing to place orders without realizing it had already ended. This deal was subsequently extended to cover PayPal orders made up until 5:30 PM PST on 11/26/07.

As of January 31st, all customers who qualified per the above resolution should have received their refunds from PayPal. The credits should be received no later than Friday, February 8th. If you do not receive your refund by then, please contact Newegg Customer Service so that we can look into it on your behalf.

Written by Alchemist   (Eggxpert)
 (Michael Haywood) 

Since the internet’s introduction to the public, the problem has always been how to move files from one person to another – whether that file is a document, music, video, or application. The files that used to take days now take seconds. It seems no matter what speeds our Internet Service Providers give us, we find a way to use up all the available bandwidth.

Here is a brief look back to where we started and where we are going.

BBS – Bulletin Board Systems were the main way files were transferred in the beginning. Users would use modems to dial in (Telnet) to private or public BBS across the country.
BBS hosts a wide variety of files but, due to dial up modem speeds, many files were simply too large to transfer.

During off peak times, BBS would connect to other BBS across the county to transfer e-mail and files.  Most downloads of this time were limited to documents, photos, and small .wav files. When the internet began to take off, BBS slowly died and were no longer maintained. A few BBS are still kept up and running for posterity and keeping the old tradition alive.

IRC – Internet Relay Chat started out as just that, a chat program for users to communicate across the world. It was not until IRC applications began to include a DCC (Direct Client to Client) protocol that file sharing began to take over IRC. Soon after, users began writing and sharing scripts that ran an “F-serv”, short for file servers.

F-serv’s scripts gave remote users access to the files that were shared and the ability to download them. The file size was still limited due to dial up modem being the primary connection but isdn was becoming more popular. As speeds increased, so did the file sizes. Small videos and large resolutions photos were being made available along with the music mp3 to some degree. While IRC is still popular for chat, its days of hosting files are gone.

Direct Connect – Direct Connect (later known as DC++) was like IRC with a really nice graphical interface. Instead of using dos like commands to download files, users could connect and download files with just a few clicks. With cable modems and dsl, files sizes continued to grow larger and larger.

Entire music cds in mp3 and full length movies in lossy compression like divx could be downloaded by users in only a few hours. However, Direct Connect’s great features and limitless networks were its biggest flaw. Since many networks could not communicate with each other, users would spend hours looking for a server that even had the file they wanted. Several networks eventually added cross searches but it was still a little too late.

Kazaa – Kazaa and hacked version K-Lite was either one of the best or worst things that ever hit the MPAA and RIAA, depending on how you look at it. For the first time, users had fast connections and a program that allowed the almost limitless downloading of any photo, video, or music that they could think of. Full songs in high quality mp3 could be downloaded in under 10 seconds and burned to a CD. Users no longer had to pay $20 for a CD with the one song they wanted to hear.

Millions of users around the world connected to the network, sharing their files and downloading others. As the rate of usage increased, Kazaa’s parent company began to add spyware into the program to help turn a profit. As users began to notice, K-Lite was created by a group of people who cracked the code of Kazaa’s program.

Artists’ profits fell, and the RIAA fought back by suing Kazaa’s parent company.
Attempts were made to save the company, using up all the revenue created by the ad sales through the client program. Their efforts failed in the end, but this conflict did force the music companies to rethink their price structure and offer users online purchase of songs for a reasonable fee.

Although the official network has been shut down for more than a year, the network is still alive in the form of user networks to a very limited degree.

Bittorrent – Anyone that has been on the net in the last year has been exposed to the torrent file. Torrents are everywhere. Unlike file sharing in the past, users need to install a small program that does noting until you download a small torrent file. That little file contains all the information needed to connect to the proper server and search for users who are hosting and downloading the file. Thanks to the combination of internet connection speeds approaching 15Mbps in some areas and huge terabyte hard drives, the problem has turned from how to download it to how to store all this data.

So where does this leave us to go?  Who knows!

Now that networks are beginning to offer television shows online for free viewing, movie rental companies offering streaming media direct to the television, and cable companies increasing on demand type channels, users having to download files might become a thing of the past. One thing remains true, though: people want to view media – just not pay a whole week’s check to see a movie or save two weeks to buy a cd.

E-Mail
Alchemists@hotmail.com

What can be done with your old equipment?