These have been available in Japan since last November for 200000 yen (£900) and are available to buy in some larger electronic stores.

It's not quite there yet. The device still is to bulky. Perhaps if they manage to put it into the usual 49cm form factor and add a DVB-S tuner it might be usable. But so far you have a device which will just take up space. It's impossible to put up something in top of it, forcing you to have it as the top-most piece of your equipment.

Market? I mean exactly how many wealthy, but very very stupid, style-obsessed people are there out there?

At least there's an obvious PH angle.....

As long as it deliverys on what it say's it does.....

7 years ago, folks were paying £6/7k on 40" plasmas, and I knew people who bought them. In a few short years, the price will come down to sub £1k for a decent sized screen and let's face it, it's so thin you aren't going to NEED a 50" version for the sitting room are you, it'll find more niche allplications early on it the bedroom and kitchen for example where you don't need big screen sizes.

The same can be said of people who buy the latest size hard disk when it launches, who spend £500+ on a graphics card etc. early adopters always pay the price to fund the development, then the price comes down, it's the way of the world.

Quote: "Market? I mean exactly how many wealthy, but very very stupid, style-obsessed people are there out there?"

Stick an Apple logo on it and it'd sell by the shitload!

Or rather replace it with a slightly smaller roundish black-and-green CRT, drop the price to $1500, put a "Windows Vista Compatible" sticker on it and say it's going to improve a lot in the next few releases and get colours any year now and anyway everyone is going to buy it so it'll be the next standard so you'd better get one as well... and every one of the "man I'm such a uniquely cool and cynical guy and won't go for the stupid Apple fanboy thing because I want value for my money" herd who didn't go for the OLED version (i.e. 99% of the population) will flock to it.

What we REALLY want from a flat screen TV.....

1 It needs to hang on the wall like a picture, possible inside a picture frame so your living room doesn't look like an office reception.

2 It mustn't have a spaghetti of wires hanging down from it, it's a pain to run them in conduit inside the wall, and as just about every device in your living room needs to be attached it would need to be very thick conduit as well.

so I'm thinking it needs to be as thin as possible and have a ribbon cable that can be stuck to the wall and painted over running to the box where you plug all the devices in.

Make it so

How does a story about a Sony TV incite an Apple-vs-Vista argument?

"...so your living room doesn't look like an office reception."

Yup.

I'm keeping an eye on projectors, but I guess that could just end up making my living room look like a lecture hall....

"I'm keeping an eye on projectors"

I think the problem there is the noise of an industrial fan blowing jet engine hot-air two feet above your head.

Then there is the ultra expensive light bulb that burns out every 5000 hours of the kids leaving it switched on all day.

And the cables again.

And the arm ache from using the remote control over your shoulder.

But if the technology moves on then perhaps one day it could provide an alternative to the Dentists waiting room look, and playing video games and films on a very big screen would be most agreeable.

Actually some of the newer projectors are tiny and near silent... I just need to convince the other half that it's a better idea than a TV when ours breaks...

The cables are always (until wide band wireless takes off at any rate) going to be a pain. The only way you can get around it is to do what my brother in law did: when he extended his house he build all wiring into the wall. TV, Speakers etc have no visible wries, looks great. Of course you can no longer re-arrange the living room as electronics have to remain in the same place :)

I thought there were still significant problems with the lifetime of OLEDs - has that been sorted now??

I'm holding out for the huge flat screen too. We were told as chem ug's that it would be ~20yrs before OLED screens would be a commercial reality. Its only been 5 so i'm quite impressed.

The main problem with the OLED concept is finding a molecule/polymer that emits clean blue light (i.e. not yellow as well). Organic molecules which emit blue light will be inherently prone to decompose as blue light indicates a higher frequency transition (than red or green) and thus is more unstable. Therefore such molecules should also possess a low turn on voltage to increase the lifetime. As to whether this has been fully resolved... there are many researchers in universities and industry still devoting their lives to this so i'm guessing not. Unlike, say CRT tech which uses a pretty standard formula to generate RGB

"Skinny, init?"

er NO! Look at that base stand. Seems Sony hid all in there....

Ever since the giant NASDAQ LED display went up in Times Square New York in late 1999, the home version LED display has been expected to come to market. Energy consumption, long component life and video output are supposed to be its strong points.