Credit: www.popularmechanics.com (click to enlarge)

A look at the new Sony XEL-1, an 11-inch OLED television.

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The thing that may one day replace plasma and LCD

I took an extended break from blogging, but I have a few excuses beyond the mundane "I've been too busy." First, I spent a good portion of this year's first month getting over temporary pleurisy, an inflammation of the lungs, which is something I didn't know people got in this day and age. Then my boss had a stroke, so I was filling in on his job for a month and a half or so.

But you have my promise that I'll try to be a better blogger (say that last phrase really fast five times).

TVs have been on my mind lately, because I finally retired my 1994 19-inch color television a few weeks ago. My wife and I only own one TV by choice, and we saw no real reason to say goodbye to my trusty old TV, despite the fact we'd lost the remote years ago and actually had to get off the couch to adjust the volume.

Then my brother offered us a 27-inch TV that had been taking up space in his spare room. It also was at least 10 years old, but it was a step up from what we had and it was free (it also had a remote), so we took it.

Now, because my father just got a slick, 42-inch LCD set, he has a HUGE old-style CRT TV to get rid of, so we're taking that off his hands (it has a GREAT remote) and giving the heave-ho to my brother's older, smaller set. So in the space of three weeks, we will have gone through a couple TVs and advanced at least seven years in our home TV technology.

I know having a cathode-ray tube TV still is very "last century," but I feel better after reading a flurry of stories about OLED, which may one day render the brand-new plasma and LCD sets obsolete. First the bad news: Sony's new OLED - organic light emitting diode is what that stands for - is the price of a decent used car and the screen's only 11 inches across. But the picture apparently is unbelievable. Gizmodo, a geek gadget site, also was impressed.

So how fast will OLED roll out to the consumer market? The Sony already is available, and Popular Mechanics says Samsung aims to have OLED TVs with 30- to 40-inch screens on the market by 2010.

For now, I'll just enjoy my not-really-new, but new-to-me tube TV in my living room and wait until I have a relative ready to cast off an LCD set in favor of an OLED a couple years from now.