Canon-Toshiba Joint Venture On SED Collapses

An anonymous reader writes "SED (Surface-conduction Electron-emitter Display) displays were supposed to be the brightest, most energy-efficient TVs to hit the market, so Canon and Toshiba created a joint venture in 2004 to capitalize on the emerging technology. The resulting entity, SED Inc., was sued in 2005 by Nano-Proprietary, the company that licensed SED technology to Canon in 1999. Nano-Proprietary says that the deal it signed with Canon doesn't extend to Toshiba. Rather than continue to fight the lawsuit and delay SED even further, Canon has now decided to buy out Toshiba's stake in SED Inc." Canon says that SED TVs will be delivered on time in Q4 of this year, but volume manufacturing (which Toshiba was supposed to handle) is being rethought.

Re:Anyone seen one?

[Jeffrey Baker]

The picture is hugely better than LCD and roughly as good as a really good plasma (e.g. Pioneer PureVision).

Re:Anyone seen one?

[Anonymous Coward]

The premise behind it is the same premise as a CRT, only instead of having one electron gun, they use [insert nanotechnology buzzwords here] to make lots of them. Since the beam doesn't have to be bent all the way across the picture, the tube no longer needs to be as deep as before. Because of the CRT-type design, it doesn't have the backlight problems lcds and plasmas have, nor the angle viewing issues. Depending on the phosphor design, it will probably have the burn in issues-CRTs had.

Re:Anyone seen one?

[Jeffrey Baker]

Plasmas don't have a backlight and they don't have problems with viewing angle. The light is produced by an excited phosphor, just like in a CRT or SED.

Explains a lot

[scdeimos]

SED's were supposed to be in mass production and shipping in Japan in early 2006. I can see now why they haven't been actively marketed, and have even been pulled from US trade shows [macnn.com].

I want one now but...

[e144539]

A few months ago, I was wondering what happened to this tech, so I went searching. Turns out it has been in development for about 20 years, and it was first estimated to be out in the late 90's.

I'm too lazy to look for a link..
Well, Wikipedia should say something about it...

Yep!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surface-conduction_el ectron-emitter_display#History [wikipedia.org]

Re:Anyone seen one?

[nacturation]

Has anyone seen one of these? How do they compare to the top of the line LCD and Plasma screens? Is the picture hugely better, or are the main benefits in the power saving?

I think the power savings is a side-effect. Check out this glowing review:

http://gear.ign.com/articles/679/679235p1.html [ign.com]

Contrast ratios were 10,000:1 for the prototype and they claim it'll be 100,000:1 in the production version. And at a supposed 1 ms response time. Even if the contrast claim is off by a factor of 5, it's still way more than any display on the market today.
 

Re:Explains a lot

[donaldm]

I was hoping that SED would be the driving force in bringing down the costs of LCD and Plasma and competing competitively with them especially after all the hype.

There is a new/old (started early 1970's) technology called FED (Field Emission Display) which is being developed by Sony and they already are demoing 26in and 30in versions at 1080p, although they do need to demo much larger ones to be taken seriously.

However FED like SED may not be acceptable if the overall costs are not significantly cheaper than LCD and Plasma. Still this technology may force further cuts in the flat panel market, which IMHO can only be good for the consumer. If you don't have a HDTV yet and are contemplating buying one, a six months wait may save you a considerable amount of money.

Re:Anyone seen one?

[eis271828]

CRTs have more resolutions because of their analog nature. They naturally have smooth blurring at many resolutions. LCDs and other fixed-pixel technologies control each pixel exactly. All smoothing would have to be done algorithmically (see various image processing topics such as Gaussian blurring/smoothing), which increases expense and isn't always the best solution - think text display. I would say a better solution to reducing resolution would be to increase text size or use the accessibility tools such as the magnifying glass.

Actually... Even they are better then you think...

[Fallen Kell]

Last displayed models had contrast in the millions, not tens of thousands... The reason, black is pretty much true black, i.e. no light emitted, only extremely limited bleed from pixels directly next to them due to the way the technology creates the light in the first place. LCD's have a backlight that can never really be gotten rid of until a per pixel backlight is created (or a per pixel block, i.e. every block of 4 or 16 pixels have their own controllable backlight).

The color space I believe is 24 bits, not the 10 bits that the best LCD have. This will really show itself when displaying colors in the magenta range.

I should be possible to place a refresh rate of 120Hz, but I do not know if they will do this. I think the limiting factor will be that they want to use the power savings of the set as a selling point, and having a refresh rate 2x the speed of the competition would mean you need to use almost 2x the power since that would mean sending 2x as many electrons through the nanotube guns of the emitters.

Viewing angles I believe are the same as for CRT based displays. It is essentially the same idea as a CRT, with the difference being that instead of a single gun that has magnets shape the electron gun waveform output to scan across the entire screen, the SED displays have 3 guns for each pixel (one for each of the sub-pixel colors). They still use an electron to excite a phosphor to emit a photon. The only difference is that the electrons are now being channeled and aimed using a nano-tube structure.

So it is truly the best of all worlds in terms of TV display technology, thin as a plasma, weight as a LCD, contrast and color space of the best CRTs, viewing angles of CRTs, resolution of LCDs/CRTs, and better power usage then any of them. Technically, it has the potential to blow away everything. But we all know that technology alone will not win the war. Cost considerations, usability, and reliability will all play a major role (as well as the ability to manufacture).

Re:Anyone seen one?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's way more than any LCD display in the market, but not CRT displays.

Re:Anyone seen one?

[Gadget_Guy]

And if you don't mind the burn, your good to go.

Your information is out of date. Modern plasma sets do not suffer from burn-in. I used to be paranoid about what I had on my TV, but now I realise that I do not have to worry.

I leave DVD menus on for hours (accidentally), play games, watch 4x3 shows galore, leave it paused for ages and there is no sign of any image retention. I have even left very bright setup menus from my PVR on overnight on several occasions. Every so often I put a few test images on screen to check that the colours are consistent across the screen. There has never been the slightest problem found.

I have a mid-range Panasonic, so can't vouch for the quality at the cheapie end of the market.

Side-by-side showdown

[D4C5CE]

Check out this glowing review: http://gear.ign.com/articles/679/679235p1.html [ign.com]

...and this side-by-side comparison against plasma and LCD, along with images explaining how this is actually a kind of "flat-screen CRT with millions of ray-guns": http://www.behardware.com/art/imprimer/593/ [behardware.com]

Nano-P says lawsuit is still on:

[guidryp]

http://www.webwire.com/ViewPressRel.asp?aId=26219 [webwire.com]

"Restructuring of Canon's ownership position does not resolve the pending litigation which goes to trial in a few weeks," said Tom Bijou, Chief Executive Officer of Nano-Proprietary, Inc. "We have terminated Canon's license as a result of breach of contract. Moreover, our complaint against Canon includes other counts, including fraud unrelated to the ownership of SED. We are, however, willing to enter into a new license agreement with Canon on reasonable terms."

From all I have found, the fraud appears to be related to the inclusion of Toshiba without Nano-P knowledge, now that it is a wholly owned Canon venture that has yet to deliver a product, that seems rather scurrilous. It looks like an attempt to renegotiate (extort) for more money now that Canon is getting close to a real product. SED may wither on the vine if this keeps up. With years of development, I would be certain Canon has it's own IP portfolio that would pretty much eliminate anyone else going forward. This is already going to be in a niche product over the price point of most. Don't hold your breath on these. I am thinking Toshiba was happy to get out.