These panels were available since a few years ago on Taobao.com (China's eBay if that helps) in small quantities, and there were lots of excitement to make your own “Cinema Display” at 1/3 the price. As a big screen lover, I was also intrigued. So I did some research.
Here's the background story I heard a year or two ago from an anonymous guy claiming he's working in LG's factories in China. I didn't verify if it's true (unless I saw LG's contract with Apple, which means impossible), but it makes a lot of sense to me anyway. You have to judge by yourselves.
These 27" S-IPS (yes, not e-IPS) panels were indeed manufactured for Apple's iMacs and Cinema/Thunderbolt Displays. Apparently Apple has pretty high and tight standard (which they do, if you've ever used authentic ones) about these panels. Once in a while a production run will not meet Apple's expectation for some reason (e.g. color/brightness/contrast uniformity). So Apple rejects the faulty batch, and LG has to find some creative ways to deal with the rejects without losing too much (these are expensive panels) AND not breaking the contract with Apple.
Turned out Apple forbids LG to resell rejected 27" panels to any well-known brands in meaningful quantity. The restriction makes a lot of business sense: you don't want a major brand suddenly floods the market with comparable displays but at less than half of the price of iMacs and Cinema/Thunderbolt Displays. Especially so when you had spent a lot of money to secure the supply of such giant panels.
So what does LG do in the end? They first sort the faulty batch into two categories: the better ones that can be salvaged by LG itself, and the worse ones that have to go somewhere else. LG re-cuts the slightly better ones into smaller panels (24" and below), and re-sells these to its partners as high grade IPS panels, as this is not forbidden by the contract with Apple (only 27" ones are forbidden). And worse ones? They go to various unknown brands in small quantities (again, this is not forbidden by the contract).
My bet is that these Korean panels are from the second category.
>LG re-cuts the slightly better ones into smaller panels (24" and below)
This is news to me, my father sell LCD inspection equipment that is part of the assembly line, if a screen doesn't meet the yield, it's rejected. Panels can't be tested until much later in the assembly line process so you can't just re-cut the glass like wood into smaller bits.
Apple probably doesn't inspect the panel until it's completely put together, which is too late. So there is no way they can just take back a bad batch and re-cut the screen. Most likely, Apple receives a shipment, tests a few panels, if it doesn't meet their yield, they reject the shipment and LG will sell the panels to a 3rd party that has lower standards and the 3rd party will rebrand them.
What Apple forbids and LG does are two completely different things. How would Apple even check? Also, once a shipment is rejected, Apple doesn't have any say, they didn't buy it, so why do they have the power to forbid reselling? Even if Apple does find out, it's not like they can kill the contract, there are only 2-3 players in the LCD business that can meet Apple's standards. AFAIK Apple mainly sources their panels from LG and Samsung. Apple would be at a huge disadvantage in getting a competitive price if they ended their relationship with LG.
Not sure about it now. My conclusion from that research was that the risk of getting into trouble is too high and I don't want to waste my time worrying about a giant box of plastic.
These panels were available since a few years ago on Taobao.com (China's eBay if that helps) in small quantities, and there were lots of excitement to make your own “Cinema Display” at 1/3 the price. As a big screen lover, I was also intrigued. So I did some research.
Here's the background story I heard a year or two ago from an anonymous guy claiming he's working in LG's factories in China. I didn't verify if it's true (unless I saw LG's contract with Apple, which means impossible), but it makes a lot of sense to me anyway. You have to judge by yourselves.
These 27" S-IPS (yes, not e-IPS) panels were indeed manufactured for Apple's iMacs and Cinema/Thunderbolt Displays. Apparently Apple has pretty high and tight standard (which they do, if you've ever used authentic ones) about these panels. Once in a while a production run will not meet Apple's expectation for some reason (e.g. color/brightness/contrast uniformity). So Apple rejects the faulty batch, and LG has to find some creative ways to deal with the rejects without losing too much (these are expensive panels) AND not breaking the contract with Apple.
Turned out Apple forbids LG to resell rejected 27" panels to any well-known brands in meaningful quantity. The restriction makes a lot of business sense: you don't want a major brand suddenly floods the market with comparable displays but at less than half of the price of iMacs and Cinema/Thunderbolt Displays. Especially so when you had spent a lot of money to secure the supply of such giant panels.
So what does LG do in the end? They first sort the faulty batch into two categories: the better ones that can be salvaged by LG itself, and the worse ones that have to go somewhere else. LG re-cuts the slightly better ones into smaller panels (24" and below), and re-sells these to its partners as high grade IPS panels, as this is not forbidden by the contract with Apple (only 27" ones are forbidden). And worse ones? They go to various unknown brands in small quantities (again, this is not forbidden by the contract).
My bet is that these Korean panels are from the second category.