SED is a hot new technology coming down the pike from Toshiba and Canon. For more on SED, see my SED archives. Below is a link to a video of a SED display. Which, come to think of it, is pretty worthless. Because you’ll be viewing it on a CRT or LCD display, thus tossing out all the SEDness of the video. Hmmm….

But anyway.

SED is a promising new technology. Well, actually, it’s a mixture of old and new technologies. It uses a screen of phosphors like a CRT display. And like a CRT, particles are shot at the screen to make it glow. But unlike a CRT, which uses one gun for that purpose, a SED display uses thousands of tiny micro-emitters. Given all that, it means that a SED display will have all the advantages and disadvantages of a CRT display, except for size. A SED display can be much larger than a CRT, measured diagonally. And a SED display is much thinner than a CRT. Like a plasma or LCD display, SED displays will be very thin.

So what are the advantages of a CRT? Wonderful black levels, depth of image, colour, etc. What are the disadvantages? Brightness and burn-in, really. The brightness I can deal with - I don’t need my televisions to be torch bright anyway. The burn-in, on the other hand, is an issue. I currently have a CRT rear projection HDTV, and after less than a year of use for both 4:3 material (using gray bars) and widescreen HDTV and DVD viewing, I already had burn-in of those gray bars. So I had to switch to one of the set’s zoom modes to watch 4:3 material. Not the optimum solution. So I decided, for myself, that my next display technology would have to be immune to burn-in. And that would rule out SED.

Don’t weap for me. I’ll live.

Oooh! I almost forgot. Price. It’s almost an assured fact that SED panels will be more expensive than equivalent-sized plasma brethern. It’s a new technology and production costs will be high at first. These will be great displays, but you’ll have to pay dearly for them.

So personally, SED is not an option for me. At least until all television programming is widescreen. And who knows when that day will come.

HD Beat - SED TV demo in Flash

My friend Steve wants to buy an HDTV. Unfortunately, he just bought a house, so buying an HDTV might not be such a good idea right now. But that’s a good excuse for him to wait to see what SED will bring. SED is being developed by Toshiba and Canon. SED combines the picture quality benefits of CRT with the flatness of plasma or LCD. The only major problem I see with SED is screen burn-in.

From Engadget, the SED prototype display at CES looked wonderful:

The SED display sets were 32-inches showing a 720p pic, but the production units later this year will be 55-inches in full 1080p. Even with the the 720p source material during the 12-minute presentation, the SED picture rivaled, or even exceeded some of the 1080p displays we scanned this week. The demo highlighted features like brightness, contrast, depth and color. Probably the best way to describe something this visual is to think back to when you first saw HDTV. Remember the impact it had on you and the jump you saw in picture quality? That’s what SED feels like; it’s like making the jump from SDTV to HDTV all over again. It’s that good.

All indications point towards these displays being quite expensive. Steve better start saving!

Engadget - SED up close and personal

Canon will be launching a 55″ SED HDTV in the Japanese market next year, and probably the year after that in North America and Europe, as mentioned in an article by Computer act!ve.

Computer act!ve seems to be a little confused about what SED and TV technology in general. They seem to think that in a side-by-side comparison, using the default settings is a good thing. So when an SED is compared with a plasma and LCD, all using their default settings, it’s no surprise to me that the SED comes out on top. “The SED image was considerably brighter and more colourful than the Plasma and LCD sets, with very wide viewing angles and black levels as deep as Plasma.” Who knows what the default settings are? They could be crap! But I have a feeling that, even had they all been calibrated properly, the SED would still come out on top.

Also, they said that “no mention was made of screen-burn”. Just a little thinking would provide the answer there: yes, SED will suffer from burn-in. It uses phosphors just like current CRTs do. And they are susceptible to burn-in.

No matter. It’s still a great new technology that bears watching. (Get it?)

Computer act!ve - Canon to launch 55in high-def TV

The movie industry is setting up “MovieLabs”, a $30 million research effort to “develop effective anti-copying technologies”. Over at the Freedom to Tinker site, they think this is a prime example of someone shooting themselves in the foot. Because it seems to imply that the movie industry actually believes it can be done. Whoa!

Freedom to Tinker - Movie Studios Form DRM Lab

I’ve been talking about Toshiba and Canon’s SED efforts on and off for a while now. It’s a great technology that I think everyone will lust for once it becomes available. Over at PC WORLD they have a nice little diagram showing off how SED works, and have a shot of two Canon prototype SED displays in operation (though from a bad angle). SED is coming!

PC WORLD - Canon Plans HDTV Flat-Screen Displays

Sharp is adding two new LCD displays to its Aquos lineup. They are the 1920 x 1080 57V “LC-57GE2″ and the 37V “LC-37GE2″. Which I guess means they’re 57″ and 37″ in size. The 57 incher will have a response time of 4 ms while the 37″ has a response time of 6 ms. Great stuff for LCD, and this will help greatly when watching sports.

Newlaunches.com - Sharp AQUOS 57/37V with fastest response time
I4U - New Sharp Aquos LC-57GE2 1080p LCD HDTV

Toshiba showed off their SED displays at the recent IFA Berlin 2005 show. These sets are very flat like plasma, but have a phosphor screen like a CRT. Instead of having one gun to shoot all those electrons, a SED display has an electron emitter for each pixel. Therefore, SED displays can be thin like plasmas, but offer the picture quality of CRTs.

And not only that, Toshiba’s first model will be sized at 50″ and will have a resolution of 1920 x 1080p. Hopefully by the time this set is released to market, people will have perfected 1080p HDMI inputs!

DigiTimes - First Toshiba SED TVs to have 50-inch diagonals

Applied Nanotech, along with six Japanese display component manufacturers, has created a 25″ carbon nanotube display. With only a resolution of 280 x 200, it is still just a proof of concept.

“This proof of concept is a critical achievement in that the processes, including printing-like processes, used in creating the display will allow manufacturers to dramatically reduce the capital investment needed to produce CNT TVs,” said Dr. Zvi Yaniv, Chief Executive Officer of Applied Nanotech.

If you go to Nano-Proprietary and click on “Demonstrations” you’ll see a sample. It looks quite bad. The article points out a lack of ghosting, but frankly, the video looks so bad that I can’t tell either way.

What’s up with that?

ArriveNet - Nano-Proprietary, Inc. Completes 25-Inch Color Proof of Concept
Nano-Proprietary - Demonstrations

Canon and Toshiba have begun trial production of SED displays. Canon and Toshiba hope to start selling SED displays in the first half of next year. Consumers should enjoy their relative thinness (like plasma) and picture quality (like CRT). On the way to mass market availability, these panels need to be produced, and a test production was to have started recently in Hiratsuka City. Initially about 3000 panels will be made per month on a test basis, though they could eventually be sold.

IT world - Canon, Toshiba to start SED production this week

And in other SED news, Canon will acquire an NEC subsidiary for in-house production of SED panels, Tech-On! reports. The subsidiary is Anelva Corp., which manufactures vacuum apparatuses. This looks like a move by Canon to be an SED player. Canon and Toshiba are allies in the SED space, but it looked like Toshiba was in the driver’s seat. Maybe Canon thinks that it should be a larger player as well.

Tech-On! - Canon to Acquire NEC Subsidiary for in-House Production of SED Panels

SED (Surface conduction Electron emitter Displays) is that great new flat-panel technology that promises a flat plasma-like form factor and a great CRT-like image. Mass production is expected to start January 2007.

And now Canon is investing $188 million in a SED research facility “to develop production technology for surface conduction electron emitter displays”.

I’m guessing here, but I think that means that Canon’s trying to figure out how to make SED displays. That’s always a good first step on the way to selling them.

Reuters - Canon to invest $188 mln on new panel R&D center

I’ve previously posted that Toshiba and Canon will begin mass production of SED displays in January of next year. [Edit: that post was wrong. It’s 2007. Sometimes I think it’s 2006 already!] In a mid-term business plan briefing, President Atsutoshi Nishida confirmed these plans the January 2007 date. He said that Toshiba plans “nurture [SED and HD-DVD] products into our core businesses in order to secure growth”.

This is great news for such a promising technology. SED displays promise to be thin like LCD and plasma, but to have a picture quality like CRT.

Link: Toshiba - Briefing on Strategies for Growth (PDF File)
Link: SignOnSanDiego.com - Toshiba aims for 4% operating margin in 2007/08

HDTVExpert has a great article about emerging LCD and other display technologies at the SID 2005 show. It seems that there’s a lot of experimentation going on with how to wring the most performance out of the venerable LCD technology. LED and hybrid backlight technologies, polarizing films, screen sizes up to 82″, and resolutions of 1920×1080 were all in evidence.

OLED also made an appearance, but SED was a no-show. Personally, from what I’ve heard, SED likes like quite a technology to watch. LCOS technology also made an appearance at the show.

Check it out:

Link: HDTVExpert - SID 2005: LCD’s Full Metal Jacket

Toshiba has selected a site for manufacturing of its advanced SED (surface-conduction electron-emitter display) displays - Himeji Operations, its production facility in Hyogo prefecture, western Japan. You’ll remember that SED displays offer the best of the plasma and CRT worlds, providing the thin form factor of plasma displays and the picture quality of CRTs. Read the rest of this entry »

[Update 11may05: Motorola claims that this could lead to $400 NED (Nano Emissive Display) at a screen size of 42″.]
[Update: more details over at PhysOrg.com]

TI makes the DLP chips that drive many of the fixed-pixel displays you can buy today. TI is a semi-conductor company that didn’t have a big name for itself in consumer electronics before DLP came along.

Motorola is trying to do almost the same thing with its new nanotube display technology. “Motorola has built a working prototype of a new colour display that uses numerous tiny filaments called carbon nanotubes…” Instead of using a single gun to emit electrons, like in a CRT display, the nanotubes replace the gun and are lines up like soldiers. In this way it resembles SED technology. But the company doesn’t plan to make the displays, but rather to license the technology. Unlike SED, however, this technology is at least two years away from being on the market.

Link: ZDNet UK - Nanotech display shown off by Motorola
Link: Chicago Sun Times - Big Screens a Growth Industry for Motorola

Surface-conduction Electron-emitter Display, or SED, is a technology I’ve talked about before. It’s getting closer and closer to being available in stores, which is a good thing. Something I didn’t previously know is that SED sets will probably be more expensive than plasma sets, which isn’t such a good thing. Personally, I think that plasma televisions are way too expensive for what you get, image quality wise. For me personally, the flat form factor is not enough enough of a draw to overcome the price and poor image quality (with respect to CRT). SED is going to give the convenience of a flat panel display and the quality of a CRT, but at a cost.

Link: Computerworld - Toshiba to Start SED Production in August

On the display quality front, Toshiba and Canon have shown an SED panel with a contrast ratio of 100,000:1. It looks like SED will be the quality leader when released to the public.

Link: Tech-On - SED Panel Contrast Ratio Boosted to 100,000:1

[Update: according to DigiTimes, Toshiba and Canon plan to start producing displays in August, with products hitting the market in March]

Toshiba and Canon are working on another next-generation flat panel display type. It’s called SED which stands for “surface-conduction electron-emitter display”. Remember those old-fashioned CRTs? Look great, but big and bulky? Well, an SED is much like a CRT except that where the CRT had one (or three) guns at the back of the display shooting electrons at the phosphorous screen, an SED has “guns” called “electron-emitters” for every pixel. And they’re a lot closer to the pixel too, so that the screen can be much thinner. SED displays have all the display-quality advantages of CRT, and the convenience advantages of LCD and plasma. If Toshiba and Canon can make this work, this would be a good thing for consumers. We’ll see soon, because Toshiba wants to launch an SED television this year.

Links:

Canon Press Release
c|net article
PC World article