OLED is one of the display technologies that we'll be talking about for some time, as it's been touted as one of the technologies that will supplant current display technologies.

OLED stands for organic light emitting diode. The benefits of OLED over LCD are that OLED requires no backlight, requires far less power than LCD or plasma to function and costs significantly less to produce. OLED also enjoys a very fast response time, about 0.01 ms or less. OLED is essentially printed on a polymer carrier, and because OLED requires no backlight the resulting display is very thin. This makes OLED especially suited for smaller displays where space is limited. With OLED, Dick Tracy-esque wristwatches with color televisions embedded in them are possible. The reason OLED has not taken the market by storm so far is that OLED has a relatively short life span. Manufacturers have been working to replace the chemical component of OLED with a phosphorescent one, in order to create a display that has a life span on par with technologies currently in the market.

Sony has announced their first OLED display, an 11 inch model, for sale in Japan this December. Hopefully it won't be long before OLED displays are available in home theater-friendly sizes.