With amazingly high contrast ratios and a thickness measuring in the millimeters, OLED TVs certainly look like the future of home theater. However, price is a major hurdle for the technology to overcome. While new technology always comes with a heavy price tag, some are expecting the price of OLED lighting to come down some time in 2011. The recent report predicts that active OLED lighting will become the mainstream in 2011, and its revenue will surpass that of passive LED lighting sometime around 2018.

The report notes OLED lighting production is still in the sampling stage. General Electric, Konica Minolta, and Philips will start mass production in 2010 or 2011. Like any other technology, increased mass production and subsequent decrease in part costs leads to lower prices for the end user.

Hundreds of millions of dollars have been invested in OLED lighting, especially in Europe, the US, and Japan, according to the report. Although OLED displays have been in mass production for about a decade, OLED lighting just started sampling and small volume production. This is due to the fact that OLED displays and OLED lighting face different challenges. It is important to point out that the OLED displays are passive OLED displays. Passive OLED technology is slower than active OLED, with the latter now being used in larger displays like TVs. Passive OLED displays can be found in smaller devices like phones and MIDs. With the price of active OLED tech coming down, expect to see larger OLED TVs on convention showfloors in the near future.