CES no-show: OLED TVs

It almost went without saying: CES 2009 was going to be flooded with OLED televisions, what with Sony wowing everyone a full year ago with its 11-inch OLED TV marvel, the downright gorgeous but proposterously expensive ($2,500) XEL-1.

In the year that passed, what happened? Well, not much: Sony's commercial OLED arsenal still consists of the one product, and though it had some larger screens on display in its booth as "technology demonstrations," none are entering production any time soon. (Sony also showed a tiny, flexible OLED screen, carefully protected under what looked like more bulletproof glass than the stuff covering the Mona Lisa.

Same kind of story at Samsung, with a selection of pint-sized, 14-inch OLED televisions with absurdly thin screens and one larger unit (31 inches, I believe) bolted to the wall. Neither is on sale.

And meanwhile, the Sony XEL-1 still costs $2,500 (though occasionally you see it on sale for less).

OLED is by all accounts the Next Big Thing in TV tech, so what's going on here? Gizmodo shrwedly posits that the economy has nothing to do with it -- though it's hard to argue that Sony's massive decline in fortunes recently isn't causing it to rethink its R&D schedule at least a bit -- but rather suggests simply that the technology simply hasn't advanced on schedule as expected. Gizmodo further suggests that, based on conversations with vendors, we won't see mainstream OLED TVs until at least 2011.

That's sad, because once you see an OLED TV in action, you immediately wish you had one: The colors are downright gorgeous, with rich blacks and sparkling hues you just don't see even on the best LCDs and plasmas. And of course, the thinness is legendary. The XEL-1's screen is 3mm thick, so slim that it doesn't even look real. Let's get it together, people!