$8,000 is steep for a 55-inch TV. But think back to when plasma and LCD TVs first hit the market and look at where we are today. Feel better?

If you do, then you’ll love Michael Kanellos’ post on Forbes today. Granted, he writes that the sets ‘might’ cost $8,000 when they first hit store shelves this year, but it’s a believable MSRP for the ultimate home theater status symbol.

And the growing consensus is that they will show up in stores this year.

OLED’s path to your living room

It’s with a cautious hope that I’ve been watching LG and Samsung this week. While their 55-inch OLED TVs have techie tongues wagging at CES, they had a tougher to pull off a tougher feat: convince us it’s not vaporware. The good news is, according to a growing chorus of skeptical industry watchers, the OLED TVs on display were pre-production models for all intents and purposes. Not prototypes that are never seen again.

That’s a mighty big first step.

But for OLEDs to start greening your TV viewing habits and have a positive impact on energy bills — and make our retinas tingle, let’s not kid ourselves — LG and Samsung have to push the industry toward better, more cost-effective yields.

Kanellos offers this as one of the reasons why OLED TVs are really, truly just over the horizon.

The 55-inch TVs underscore the steady progress on the tool sets required to produce large OLEDs. A good portion of this work is being performed in-house, but third parties have also come up with tool ideas. A start-up called Kateeva (read first story ever on them here) is working on a tool that creates large OLEDs with something akin to ink jet printer nozzles.

Improved manufacturing techniques and a plucky startup to keep things interesting…

Where have we heard this story before?

Image credit: Samsung