Recently Sony announced it would launch a very flat OLED TV. The Sony XEL-1 will become the first TV on the market using the new OLED technology which is said to be superior in picture quality and energy consumption compared to current technology such as plasma and LCD. The XEL-1 will only have a screen diagonal of 11 inches and will cost about $2500. However you pay for the novelty.

For that price it's normal to expect to enjoy your TV for a long time and currently the best known drawback for OLED is the lifetime of the screen. A research firm has tested if the life expectancy that Sony claims is viable.

During their research in which they ran two of the units for 1000 hours they noticed a drop in brightness which would, if they extrapolated the data would take 17000 hours for the display to lose half its brightness. Sony claims this should be 30000 hours, almost two times more. 30000 hours however would be about 10 years of normal use for consumers.