Samsung will release a 17-inch organic light-emitting diode (OLED) display in 2005. OLED technology consumes less power than LCD and is thinner and lighter. To date, OLED has shown up in much smaller formats for cell phones, car radio screens and digital cameras.

Seiko Epson has built a 40-inch organic electroluminescence (OEL) display and plans to start marketing the display in 2007. The technology is “printed” onto a substrate using an inkjet printer.

Sony hopes to demonstrate a new high definition projector technology at next year’s World Exposition in Aichi, Japan. The new technology can display HDTV on movie theater screens.

Older technology is advancing rapidly as well, setting up an incredible battle for dominance in the next few years. Samsung will release this July a 46-inch LCD HDTV. Video quality is best represented by the response time for the individual pixels in a monitor. Samsung’s LCD HDTV will have an amazing response time of 12 milliseconds (most computer LCD monitors have response times in excess of 24 milliseconds).

The two most important trends shaping future display technology are the move away from semiconductor technology to plastic technologies, and the development of technology to “print” these displays. Both trends will lead to cheaper production processes and flexible screens that will show up on everything from cereal boxes to Ultra HDTV wall screens by 2010.