It has probably happened to most of you. You’re sitting there with all your friends watching the big game, and you get up to grab some snacks. You come back with a Mr. Pibb in one hand and Red Vines in the other, only to find that the friend you never really liked has commandeered your spot. Frustrated, you go to the next available seat; you know, that steel chair over there in the corner of the room, as far away from the TV and the rest of the action as possible. Aside from the pain developing in your lower back and the cobwebs you’re still trying to wipe off your face, it’s actually quite nice over there. At least you can enjoy your crazy delicious snacks and not have to worry about having your friends hear you fart up a storm. But wait, there’s another problem… you can’t see the TV. You can make out some of the announcer’s ramble, and you caught a quick glance through heads and shoulders at a pretty hot cheerleader, but beyond the momentary lapses in obstructions, that 22” CRT TV you bought with your birthday money is just not cutting it. Then you get an idea: Elevate the TV so that everyone can see it easily. Oh wait, it weighs like 60 lbs and the only thing that doesn’t have food or magazines all over it is Barbie’s dream house. I bet you’re wishing you had invested in a bigger TV right now.

The thing about TVs these days is that they usually have to be big. Unfortunately, the bigger the TV gets, the more it weighs. If you’ve ever tried to move a big traditional CRT TV, you know it’s not easy. That’s where LCD TVs come in. Not only do they get to pretty decent sizes, but they are light and thin enough to mount high up on a wall or sit safely on a shelf or elevated surface that a fat CRT wouldn’t fit. It seems perfect. Now you can sit in the corner and see the TV if that jerk friend of yours takes your seat again, right? Not really, LCD TVs have their disadvantages. Chances are that not only won’t you be able to see a skewed version of the big game, but half of your friends will be left partially in the dark as well. This is due to something called a viewing angle, a characteristic with which the LCD monitor is inferior to all other display types. Enter: Plasma. Here you have a display that is still a lot thinner than a CRT, has a really good viewing angle, an amazingly sharp image with high contrast ratio, and a super cool name. Perfect. Well, if perfect means mounting a display that is at least as heavy as two huge sheets of glass on your wall and not saving any money on electricity doing so, then yeah, Plasma displays are perfect. Technologies like Plasma and LCD have their downfalls, and those disadvantages have come under fire recently with the emergence of new technologies promising to usurp the current thin-screen champs.

By now you’ve all probably heard about something called an OLED and how it is the next best thing since mashed potatoes. Sure, OLEDs are showing a lot of promise and sure, they might even take over the world some day, but there are some problems with these displays that are not very easy to work around. OLEDs are made out of organic materials that are susceptible to damage from all sorts of things, including small traces water. When’s the last time your old CRT stopped working because of a little bit of home cleaning? However, the fragile nature of the OLED construction is far from the most worrisome problem with the technology. The organic materials that contain the light-emitting molecules have a pretty short life span, approximately 1000 hours. Now assuming, conservatively assuming, you keep your TV on for three hours a day. This means that your OLED will likely “burn out” in less than a year. Raise your hand if you want to go buy a new TV every year.

So we have our cathode ray tubes (CRTs) that are way too big and heavy and use too much power. We have our LCD screens with terrible viewing angles, poor contrast ratios, black levels, and even worse response times. We have Plasma screens that still weigh a lot and use quite a bit of power as well. Then we have OLEDs, with their (for now) short lifespan and fragile construct. There’s GOT to be a better way!