Sony Betting Big On OLED Monitors

In the staid broadcast monitor business, all eyes—from competing manufacturers to end users—are on Sony, which just shipped the first of its high-end OLED broadcast monitors to U.S. buyers from its plant in Nagoya, Japan.

Sony first demonstrated the organic light-emitting diode technology at the HPA conference in the form of a high-end production monitor priced at $26,000. Then, at NAB, it unveiled a cheaper PVM line targeted to broadcast stations and priced competitively between $4,100 and $6,100.

For Sony, the marketing of OLED monitors is a huge risk in a still shaky global economy — perhaps the biggest one it’s taken since it stopped making broadcast CRT displays in 2003 and switched over to LCD panels. That move came in the face of considerable resistance from broadcasters, many of whom still believe CRTs are superior.

Gary Mandle, product manager for professional monitors at Sony, acknowledges that his company is betting its broadcast monitor future on OLED. “That’s pretty safe to say,” he says. “We’ve spent a lot of time and money on this. We feel OLED has a clear advantage over other technologies.”

The word “commodity” is often used with the current generation of LCD broadcast monitors. The most popular LCD models are 17-inch and 24-inch sizes with prices ranging from $1,800 to $6,000.

Brands and models are differentiated mainly by features such as input and outputs, ability to handle different formats and whether they have built-in conveniences like waveform monitors, vector scopes, audio monitoring, closed-captions and other add-ons. Picture quality among the models is pretty close.

Many TV stations still use older CRT displays and are holding out on replacing them until a move to HD makes it imperative. Major vendors like Sony and Panasonic often package monitors with other gear they sell.

“If the station or network bought Panasonic P2 equipment, then Panasonic is No. 1 with monitors,” says Rick Albert, VP of sales for Panasonic’s Professional Display Solutions. “If they bought Sony XDCAM, then Sony is usually No. 1.”

Other players in the market are JVC, TVLogic, Ikegami, Autocue, Marshall and Boland.

Panasonic’s Steve Cooperman, who specializes in product marketing of broadcast equipment, says his company has surpassed Sony in selling displays to broadcasters over the past five years. “I’m sure Sony is trying to take that back with OLED.”

Yes, they are, agrees Mandle. The PVM monitors use the same OLED panels as the far more expensive BVM models, he says.

“The difference in viewing them is uniformity. The viewing angle will not be quite as good in the PVM and you might have a dead pixel on the PVM. But that’s pretty much it,” he says. “The other big difference between the two is monitor stability. This is done with a lot of processing in the BVM, but not in the PVM.”

The capabilities of the BVM are geared more toward the cinema market like 2K display, wider cinema color gamut and a lot of cinema-specific functions, he says. “Most of these don’t make any difference to a broadcaster.”

When comparing an OLED display with an comparably priced LCD, the broadcaster will see “a significant difference,” Mandle says. “The first thing they will notice is the black level. The actual output of the PVM panel when it goes to zero is zero. No light comes out. You can’t do that in an LCD.

“In the PVM, you will still see picture detail in the very dark regions. You won’t see that detail in the LCD. In camera shadings and graphics, this will offer a much better idea of what can be made.”

Mandle says talk that OLED monitors don’t last long enough for professional use is unfounded. “Early OLEDs lasted only about 1,000 hours,” he says. “We focused on that and now have a life as long as CRT displays—which is about 30,000 hours. On the BVM models, we offer a three-year warranty and a two-year warranty on the PVMs. If it breaks, we fix it.”

Wes Donahue, regional sales manager of TVLogic, says that the entire monitor industry will eventually follow Sony into OLEDs. “The image is as good as it can get with an organic OLED,” he says. “But OLED is very much a work in progress and Sony is betting everything on it. They are betting it is now good enough for broadcasters.”

Everybody is waiting to see what Sony actually delivers, Donahue says. “I’m sure what we saw at NAB are the best they can now deliver. What they will deliver this summer is another story.”

TVLogic, he says, makes one 15-inch OLED model, using a Sony display, and it’s priced at $6,150. However, it uses a different technology from Sony’s models. It is among 30 models in the TVLogic line from 4.3 inches to 56 inches, mostly LCDs.

One differentiator of TVLogic’s monitor line is that it is the only one in which each model can be matched through auto-calibration. The company sells a $1,000 software package for a PC that can be used with probes ranging from $300 to $7,000. “Every monitor in a facility can be matched,” he says.

Ikegami makes 9-, 17- and 24-inch model LCDs for broadcasters, and doesn’t agree that LCDs are a commodity product.

What distinguishes Ikegami LCDs? “The engine board that produces the color reproduction and also the functionality that we build in in terms of on-screen displays — the waveform, the vector scope, the audio-level metering, the time-code readout and markers that you can draw with a mouse,” says Alan Kreil, Ikegami’s VP and director of engineering. “Mainly it comes down to a price/performance ratio. We are very strong there.”

At Autocue, sales manager Paddy Taylor says his company makes high-quality displays but sells them at about 20%-25% less than Sony or Panasonic. “At the end of the day a monitor is a monitor on one level,” he says. “But it’s about the quality of the display. We don’t produce cheap or bargain basement monitors, but we are considerably cheaper than the major competition.”

JVC, a maker of broadcast monitors for 30 years, sells all LCD models now in sizes from 9 to 24 inches. It’s new “G” series handles 3G for 1080p and has 10-bit processing for more precise gamma correction. Prices range from $1,875 to $4,195.

“We are seeing fewer and fewer television stations still using CRT displays,” says JVC engineering GM Edgar Shane. “The transition is moving now and it’s all related to the transition to high-definition.”

When the manufacturers speak of the TV station market, they often mean larger stations — network affiliates in top markets. However, smaller stations see the broadcast monitor situation in a different light.

Joey Gill, chief engineer of WPSD Paducah, Ky. (DMA 80), has been at the station for more than a quarter century. “We recently re-did our monitor wall,” he says. “I went to Wal-Mart and bought 22 Insignia 20-inch LCD monitors [for $200 each]. Darn, if they didn’t match. We don’t use them for quality control or for evaluation of HD cameras, but the directors who are punching the shows are tickled to death.”

In master control, WPSD continues to use a vintage Ikegami CRT SD monitor. For HD, WPSD uses two Sony computer monitors fed by an Evertz 1080i-to-DVI adapter.

Sony’s Mandle says he understands that some TV stations can’t afford broadcast quality equipment. But, he says, judging HD signals on computer monitors ignores most of the information in the image — ranging from noise levels, color, gamma, scanning and raster size. “You are not even seeing data errors,” he says. “It’s not telling you much about the signal.

“If you can’t afford to purchase the professional level gear at a small station, then you just have to accept the problems that come with it,” he says. “If your competitor has good monitoring, his pictures will be better than yours and your audience will go in that direction. That’s just the way it is.”