LG’s famed 55″ OLED will start shipping in late April, costing about $8,000. The LG 55EM9600 debuted at CES and is the largest OLED to ship so far. OLED offers better blacks (and also, whiter whites) than LCD technology and less power usage due to its structure, which is basically a 100 percent solid-state compound of very thin organic molecules that generate light (and color) just by applying electricity to them. The amount of electricity is amazing as it typically uses about 40 percent of an LCD’s power usage. In addition, the structure needed to generate an image for OLED is about 50 percent less than that needed for LCD (see the chart below from Kodak).

The LG 55EM9600 will weigh only 16 pounds (really!) and is less than a half-inch thick. It’s 3D capable, is native 1080p and will be spec’d to have a 100,000,000:1 contrast ratio — 50 times that of the best LCD.

Here are all the details that exist so far on the 55EM9600: http://www.lg.com/us/oled/index.jsp