Canon Abandons SED TV Hopes

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Posted by Soulskill on Friday August 20, 2010 @07:37AM from the upgrade-path-delayed dept.

angry tapir writes "Canon has decided to liquidate a subsidiary developing a flat-panel display technology called SED, effectively bringing to an end once high hopes that the screens would replace LCD panels and plasma displays in living room TVs. Development of SED (surface-condition electron-emitter display) screens began in 1986 at Canon and was joined in 1999 by Toshiba. SEDs combine elements of both CRT (cathode ray tube) and LCD (liquid crystal display) technologies. As with CRTs, electrons hit a phosphor-coated screen to emit light. But instead of being shot from an electron gun, electrons are drawn out of an emitter through a slit that is only a few nanometers wide. The result is a picture that is as bright as a CRT and does not suffer a time lag sometimes seen on LCD panels with rapidly moving images."

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The Man screws us again. by grub · 2010-08-20 07:37 · Score: 4, Funny

Ah, that's too bad. I was looking forward to trying out 's/commercial//g'.
At least you'll still get your basic viewing stats with AWK TV.

--
Trolling is a art,
1. Re:The Man screws us again. by mysidia · 2010-08-20 07:58 · Score: 1
  
  gsub(/commercial/,"",$0)
Damn... by mcgrew · 2010-08-20 07:39 · Score: 3, Informative

This display sounded good until I read TFA. Bottom line: they cost too much.

In 2007, Canon said it would further delay commercialization as it sought to bring down production costs. It was to be the last announcement on the technology until this week, when Canon said it would bring development back to its central labs.
Work is expected to continue on SED for use in specialist displays but its days as a living-room technology appear over.

--
Free Martian Whores!
1. Re:Damn... by socrplayr813 · 2010-08-20 08:36 · Score: 1
  
  What's stopping this technology from becoming a consumer product later? If those specialist displays work out, they may come down in cost as technology changes....
  
  --
  The confidence of ignorance will always overcome the indecision of knowledge.
2. Re:Damn... by Myrv · 2010-08-20 09:01 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  Personally I believe it was the delay from the license lawsuit that really killed it. The first couple of generations of LCD and Plasma's screens weren't cheap to produce either. But while the SED technology was mired in litigation the LCD and Plasma manufactures sold screens and used the money to develop better and cheaper manufacturing processes. Once the SED litigation was cleared up it was too late. They had missed the ramp up stage. The had an expensive new technology competing against a cheap mature one. The stupid thing is the biggest loser in the whole ordeal is probably Nano Proprietary, the ones who started the litigation in the first place. If they had just let the joint venture build the damn things they would be collecting royalty checks today. Instead they sued their only revenue source out of existence.
3. Re:Damn... by lxs · 2010-08-20 09:08 · Score: 2, Insightful
  
  Pretty soon OLED technology can do everything SED could do while being cheaper to manufacture and using less power to run. Using SED in consumer products will be like using nixie tubes in digital wrist watches. Highly impractical.
4. Re:Damn... by Cyberax · 2010-08-20 12:54 · Score: 1
  
  It seems, focus has shifted to mobile devices with desktop displays as an afterthought.
  My Samsung Galaxy has OLED screen which is VERY nice. I only wish I could buy a real notebook with such screen.
5. Re:Damn... by rtb61 · 2010-08-20 15:22 · Score: 1
  
  OLED has run into another competitive problem, LED-LCD. Add an additional layer to a LCD display, a LED behind each pixel (technically groups of three) and you get very high contrast and energy efficiency. Plain white LEDs are a lot easier than some of the other light frequencies and the hassles of trying to extend the life of OLEDs. As a benefit you just have to redesign existing production facilities to add fabrication of the additional layers
  
  --
  Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
6. Re:Damn... by hairyfeet · 2010-08-20 20:38 · Score: 1
  
  Not to mention how many actual consumers experience any "time lag" with modern LCDs? I have what most here would consider a bottom of the line Dell 21 inch (gift from a client so I'm not complaining) and use it for everything from gaming to my TV, and frankly even on this low end of the totem pole I can't remember the screen ever acting laggy. Hell in a fast pace shooter I'm sure I'm more laggy than it could ever be sadly. (curse you aging!)
  So my guess is when considering the high cost of bringing this tech to market, the high per unit cost, and finally having a couple of focus groups that probably told them most folks are quite happy with their LCDs, just made this a non starter. Just like holographic burners and persistent RAM, this one was "just around the corner" only I'm sure they just found one hurdle after another trying to get around that last bend. I really wish they would figure out the holo-discs though. It would be nice to store 200-500Gb in the same space I store 4.7 now and have it last as long as my DVDs have while costing less than a buck a disc. Man that would be sweet!
  
  --
  ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
how thick are the TV's? by alen · 2010-08-20 07:41 · Score: 2, Interesting

CCFL LCD's are a few inches thick. someone i know just bought a 47" LED LCD TV and it's 1" thick at most. they junked a 150 pound CRT flat screen monster that broke. no one wants a big TV anymore
1. Re:how thick are the TV's? by mcgrew · 2010-08-20 07:52 · Score: 1
  
  no one wants a big TV anymore
  I do. The bigger the better. However, I don't want another heavy one; my 42 inch flat screen CRT weighs 214 pounds. At least I know nobody's going to steal it.
  
  --
  Free Martian Whores!
2. Re:how thick are the TV's? by Rakishi · 2010-08-20 08:01 · Score: 2, Insightful
  
  It's a flat panel technology like everything else that's being worked on.
3. Re:how thick are the TV's? by aztektum · 2010-08-20 08:02 · Score: 1
  
  Some demos units were as thick as plasma or LCDs from the era when they were being shown off as if they still had a future.
  
  --
  :: aztek ::
  No sig for you!!
4. Re:how thick are the TV's? by DocSavage64109 · 2010-08-20 08:05 · Score: 1
  
  Well, I doubt my old 720p 52" Plasma weighs 100 lbs, but it would still be tough for someone to walk off with. Though granted, even a team of hardcore thieves wouldn't bother with a 42" crt.
5. Re:how thick are the TV's? by Amouth · 2010-08-20 08:06 · Score: 1
  
  you COMPLETELY missed the point of SED screens// i recommend reading up on them..
  
  --
  '...if only "Jumping to a Conclusion" was an event in the Olympics.'
6. Re:how thick are the TV's? by Dashiva+Dan · 2010-08-20 08:09 · Score: 1
  
  They still do have a future (from the article):
  
  Work is expected to continue on SED for use in specialist displays but its days as a living-room technology appear over.
  And I guess that means there is still the possibility they'll find a way to make them viable for the consumer market.
  
  --
  "lt;dr" is the correct response to most of my posts.
7. Re:how thick are the TV's? by TooMuchToDo · 2010-08-20 08:39 · Score: 2, Interesting
  
  The LED LCD TVs along with Corning's new Gorilla glass (so there is no border/bezel around the edge of the TV, the picture can fill the entire screen size) are going to be awesome. Sturdy, extremely-scratch resistant, and light weight.
8. Re:how thick are the TV's? by Shadow+of+Eternity · 2010-08-20 08:59 · Score: 2, Insightful
  
  Shame that all those of us with a decent set of eyes will have to suffer the same laggy, blurry nausea inducing inferior display technology only now it's wrapped in a tougher shell. At least I can finally go back to cleaning it normally.
  Whatever happened to a mere 22" doing 2048x1536 @85hz with no lag? What happened to the days when anything over 17" could do resolutions that left that 1080P bullshit in the dust?
  
  --
  A bullet may have your name on it but splash damage is addressed "To whom it may concern."
9. Re:how thick are the TV's? by Surt · 2010-08-20 09:27 · Score: 2, Informative
  
  Good news: the 3d tidal wave is forcing all of the LCD makers to switch to 120 or 240 hz.
  And after that, the next differentiator is going to be resolution again, e.g., you'll get sets with 2160P advertised as 'twice as smooth as HD' etc.
  
  --
  "Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
10. Re:how thick are the TV's? by Anonymous Coward · 2010-08-20 10:28 · Score: 1, Interesting
  
  I'm not sure 2160p will offer too many benefits over 1080p. It'll be a while before source media is anything greater than 1080p since the bandwidth/disc capacity to broadcast/distribute that isn't there yet. TVs can upscale, but 1080p BluRay already looks crystal clear at a reasonable viewing distance, so you don't get the same level of benefit that upscaled DVD gets.
  The things that I see becoming differentiators are:
  - AMOLED (3D is supposedly actually watchable on these screens)
  - wireless connections (LG already offers TVs with a separate box to hook everything into which you can put anywhere in the room)
  - size/thinness/weight (lighter TVs could mean adhesive wall mounts)
  - viewing angle, brightness (while still maintaining black levels)
  - eventually OLET TVs.
11. Re:how thick are the TV's? by sexconker · 2010-08-20 10:28 · Score: 1
  
  That's a shitty idea - how many people have a flat black wall behind their TV?
  The bezel is very fucking useful to anyone who wants to view the screen. There's a reason we put pictures in frames. A solid border around an image makes it much more viewable.
12. Re:how thick are the TV's? by sexconker · 2010-08-20 10:30 · Score: 2, Insightful
  
  So, the resolution and frame rate will be comparable to what high end displays had over a decade ago, yet the image quality, color accuracy, black levels, etc. will still be shit?
  And I'll still have to deal with dead pixels?
  And I'll still have to deal with shitty shitty shitty processing delays?
  And I'll still be unable to physically drive my display at various resolutions?
13. Re:how thick are the TV's? by nschubach · 2010-08-20 11:12 · Score: 2, Informative
  
  And I'll still be unable to physically drive my display at various resolutions?
  If I understand SED properly... that's no different. There's still a matrix of emitters, but they are driving less screen space... like 1 emitter per pixel.
  
  --
  Every time I start to have faith in humanity, I ruin it by driving to work between 7 and 8 am.
14. Re:how thick are the TV's? by Shadow+of+Eternity · 2010-08-20 11:24 · Score: 2, Informative
  
  SED was basically a CRT with something smaller than a linear tube.
  
  --
  A bullet may have your name on it but splash damage is addressed "To whom it may concern."
15. Re:how thick are the TV's? by Surt · 2010-08-20 11:48 · Score: 1
  
  2160 will offer huge advantages to PCs, where the source material is generated, and to marketing, where it's 'twice as good!'. And since it is relatively cheap to do, you'll likely see it before a lot of those other things.
  
  --
  "Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
16. Re:how thick are the TV's? by Anonymous Coward · 2010-08-20 12:40 · Score: 1, Informative
  
  And I'll still have to deal with dead pixels?
  As opposed to ghosts from screen burn in? Or how about the huge power draw of a CRT? Or what about buying a new $400 lamp for your "big screen" every 2000 hours?
  
  And I'll still have to deal with shitty shitty shitty processing delays?
  When is the last time you used an LCD? 1995? That hasn't been a problem in a very long time. I guess you probably think that viewing angles are still an issue with LCDs too?
  
  And I'll still be unable to physically drive my display at various resolutions?
  And be unable to physically damage your display by using non standard modes. Here's a brilliant idea that I'm sure nobody's thought of before, why don't you run the LCD at native resolution and SCALE the contents of the screen?
17. Re:how thick are the TV's? by mattack2 · 2010-08-20 13:04 · Score: 1
  
  Corning's new Gorilla glass
  I'm not sure if you mean that there's a new VARIETY of Gorilla Glass, but the glass was invented in 1962. I don't see when that trademarked name was taken out, however.
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gorilla_glass#Gorilla_Glass
18. Re:how thick are the TV's? by the+eric+conspiracy · 2010-08-20 14:24 · Score: 1
  
  Yes bigger is better - this nostalgia for CRTs is misplaced in my opinion. Very few people have screens large enough to show off 1080p properly at the distances they are used at. I know some claim that they have super eyes etc. but that's not the norm, and as you get older those eyes lose performance.
  One of the things on my list of things that pisses me off is that I can't get an reasonable flat panel greater than 65". The only non-projector setups above that size are DLPs now, and while I have room for 80+ inches, the color wheels, poor viewing angles and light fall off in the corners.
  Vizio what demoing a 72" local dimming LCD however that seems to have not made it to market, at least in the US. It was supposed to be decently priced too.
  Damn them to hell for not bringing it out.
19. Re:how thick are the TV's? by Dunderland1 · 2010-08-20 19:57 · Score: 1
  
  SEDs use about the same amount of power as an LCD does.
20. Re:how thick are the TV's? by Idiomatick · 2010-08-21 17:00 · Score: 1
  
  You can still frame it if you wish... Why is the option bad? One awesome thing about no bezel means you could line up two screens and tada you now have and even bigger screen! I'd love that for a regular 3 monitor setup.
21. Re:how thick are the TV's? by Gizzmonic · 2010-08-22 13:16 · Score: 1
  
  Oh, you can get a plasma TV bigger than 65 inches. Check Panasonic's website. You can expect to pay $15,000 for it, though...
  
  --
  (-1, Raw and Uncut is the only way to read)
22. Re:how thick are the TV's? by mcgrew · 2010-08-23 03:03 · Score: 1
  
  I didn't know anyone was nostalguc for CRTs. They're too thick and too heavy.
  as you get older those eyes lose performance
  When you hit your 40s your focusing lenses get hard, but most older folks can see distances as well as they did when they were young; you need reading glasses because the eye won't focus. Your night vision deteriorates some, but that won't affect TV viewing.
  
  --
  Free Martian Whores!
Canon cannot compete in TV market by adosch · 2010-08-20 07:48 · Score: 2, Insightful

Canon just flat out cannot compete in that market with something that will cost too much. Look at the ridiculous amount of effort put up by the kingpin companies like Samsung, Visio, Sony, ect. Their campaigns filled with all the goody-TV-jargon ooze, not to mention anyone with even a remotely hapless budget can afford a 42"+ LCD TV now from them is flat out hard to stand next to.
FTFA, it's unfortunate that SED TV won't survive. But I see it no different that the VHS-vs-Betamax, BlueRay-vs-HDDVD market flame-wars that have taken place of recent memory. Some things that had potential to be better than their rival product sometimes just don't survive or make it.
Crap by A+Friendly+Troll · 2010-08-20 07:59 · Score: 3, Insightful

Let us pray that big OLED screens with enough longevity become a reality in a couple of years, because the LCD tech just isn't that good.
This is bad news... Very, very bad news.
1. Re:Crap by Eponymous+Coward · 2010-08-20 08:28 · Score: 2, Insightful
  
  the LCD tech just isn't that good
  It might not be great, but it's good enough for most people.
  You can say the same thing about MP3s and DVDs. Not great, but good enough.
2. Re:Crap by A+Friendly+Troll · 2010-08-20 08:42 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  It's only good enough for most people because they haven't seen better. Case in point: TN panels. If you've never seen an IPS, you have no idea that vertical gamma shift and low colour reproduction aren't normal. If you've never seen a CRT or a plasma, as is the case with newer generations, you have no idea that the gray background, instead of black, isn't normal.
  Thankfully, IPS panels have come down in price so they are affordable, but the black level is still waaaaaaaaay over what classic phosphor display tech gives you. I've had my LCD for a year, and I still get pissed off by the damn thing glowing grey when the screen saver kicks in.
  mp3 usually *is* good enough, and most of the time you can't discern it from the original if it has a high bitrate, but that isn't the case with something like LCD vs. SED; it would be more like 64 kbps compared to lossless audio.
  OLED is our only hope for quality displays now, and it's not progressing as fast as it should.
3. Re:Crap by Haeleth · 2010-08-20 09:43 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  It might not be great, but it's good enough for most people.
  You can say the same thing about MP3s and DVDs. Not great, but good enough.
  And before those, cassette tapes and VHS were "good enough". Black-and-white TV was "good enough". Phonographs were "good enough". Believe it or not, people once lived perfectly happy lives with just books and whatever music they could sing and play themselves!
  I would argue that "good enough" is not good enough. If you settle for "good enough", you are rejecting the very concept of progress. If on the other hand you believe that progress is both possible and desirable, then there can be no such thing as "good enough"; there is only "the best we've managed so far", and that is only tolerable until we figure out how to do better.
4. Re:Crap by aztracker1 · 2010-08-20 09:43 · Score: 2, Interesting
  
  I still miss my old 22" CRT in terms of display acuracy... I've yet to see any LCD that compares to it in that regard. Of course, I don't miss the strain of the 80 pound behemoth on my desk... and appreciate having the space back... I don't do too much graphics work anymore, mostly programming, so don't miss it *that* much... but have to agree, seeing IPS panels come down in price, and OLED on the horizon gives some hope... I wasn't familiar with SED until this article though.
  
  --
  Michael J. Ryan - tracker1.info
5. Re:Crap by PCM2 · 2010-08-20 10:13 · Score: 2, Interesting
  
  I've had my LCD for a year, and I still get pissed off by the damn thing glowing grey when the screen saver kicks in.
  I just bought a 22" LED-backlit panel and the blacks are very black. The glow of the black screen is not completely imperceptible in a darkened room, but it is hard to detect. As with all technologies, things improve over time.
  
  --
  Breakfast served all day!
6. Re:Crap by A+Friendly+Troll · 2010-08-20 10:26 · Score: 2, Informative
  
  I just bought a 22" LED-backlit panel and the blacks are very black.
  
  Only because your monitor is cheating and turning off the edge LEDs completely when it detects a black screen.
  Try this: open your image editing program, create a fully black images, and add a couple of white pixels to it. Then display it full screen and see what happens. There are two possible scenarios:
  1) You find out that your blacks aren't as black as you thought
  2) The monitor decides to disregard those white pixels and turn off the LEDs anyway
7. Re:Crap by PCM2 · 2010-08-20 10:48 · Score: 1
  
  Only because your monitor is cheating and turning off the edge LEDs completely when it detects a black screen.
  Either that, or the blacks are very black.
  I love how you're going to sit there and tell me I'm wrong about the screen I'm typing on this very minute. But hey -- hate your monitor all you want.
  
  --
  Breakfast served all day!
8. Re:Crap by thegarbz · 2010-08-20 11:45 · Score: 2, Informative
  
  I still miss my old 22" CRT in terms of display acuracy... I've yet to see any LCD that compares to it in that regard.
  
  See this is exactly what the GP was talking about. 99% of displays on the market won't out perform it do to cheap technology. Go have a look at NEC's spectraview series of monitors, or the high end monitors from Eizo and you'll never miss your old CRT again. These monitors have wide gamuts, perfect viewing angles, and internal colour lookup tables to ensure the data displayed is simply right.
9. Re:Crap by PCM2 · 2010-08-20 12:56 · Score: 1
  
  No, he's right about that one. Most LED displays are edge-lit, at least so far. Monitors don't generally use the area-dimming technology you see in some high-end TVs.
  
  --
  Breakfast served all day!
10. Re:Crap by Anonymous Coward · 2010-08-20 13:04 · Score: 1, Insightful
  
  You assume that it's because they haven't seen better. I'd like to suggest that perhaps it's simply because most people just don't care that much about these things, even if they had seen better and that "good enough" really is good enough.
  That movie I just watched and that game that I just played looked fine. I was too busy enjoying them to be sitting around nitpicking at how black the blacks were.
11. Re:Crap by mattack2 · 2010-08-20 13:10 · Score: 2, Informative
  
  I still get pissed off by the damn thing glowing grey when the screen saver kicks in
  If you have your computer actually power down the screen, you'll save energy AND hopefully lower your blood pressure at the same time.
12. Re:Crap by mattack2 · 2010-08-20 13:21 · Score: 1
  
  and VHS were "good enough".
  But, just like with MP3s, some of these "good enough" issues deal with issues *besides* the absolute best picture/sound quality. For example, being able to carry around far more music (or podcasts, in my case) at one time on the same sized device outweighs the degradation in quality. Also, like others have mentioned, many people *can't* tell the difference. So for them, the "higher quality" isn't higher, it's just more wasteful.
  While I definitely appreciate the higher video quality of DVDs (and will eventually use Blu-rays, likely after I get a PS3), for me, the *other* benefits (no rewinding, no degradation simply by USING them, less easily broken) are at LEAST as important as the video quality improvement.
13. Re:Crap by damnfuct · 2010-08-20 15:07 · Score: 1
  
  Stating mp3 is probably a bad choice on their behalf; A more accurate comparison would be to say that LCDs are like GIF compared to PNG
14. Re:Crap by A+Friendly+Troll · 2010-08-20 22:24 · Score: 1
  
  Go have a look at NEC's spectraview series of monitors, or the high end monitors from Eizo and you'll never miss your old CRT again. These monitors have wide gamuts, perfect viewing angles, and internal colour lookup tables to ensure the data displayed is simply right.
  Wide gamut is BAD. You DO NOT WANT wide gamut, as it fucks up the colours really bad and lowers the dynamic range.
  This is yet another victory for marketing. Somehow they've managed to convince people that wide gamut is a good thing, when it's just about the worst thing ever to have happened to display tech...
15. Re:Crap by A+Friendly+Troll · 2010-08-20 22:27 · Score: 1
  
  Are you too scared to try what I said? ;)
  Or maybe your other monitor is a piece of crap?
16. Re:Crap by owlstead · 2010-08-20 22:53 · Score: 1
  
  Besides that, pictures are not normally completely black. My screen has high contrast and deep blacks, but I have to tweak it a bit before watching "the dark knight" - the picture becomes rather indiscernible.
17. Re:Crap by thegarbz · 2010-08-20 23:40 · Score: 1
  
  Thanks for that lovely bit of insight. You have just shown all of slashdot that you have absolutely no idea how colour management works. The only people who think wide gamuts are marketing ploys and bad are those who don't know how to setup their computers, and pick software which is capable of using the colour profiles windows has lovingly supplied via an API since the 90s. Firefox is one such application, making my internet look right despite the 107% NTSC gamut coverage of my monitor.
18. Re:Crap by PCM2 · 2010-08-21 08:09 · Score: 1
  
  I know my monitor isn't turning off the LEDs completely because it has two dead pixels.
  I still think it's hilarious that you can sit there and tell me what my monitor looks like.
  It seems to me there are two basic concepts at work here: A.) Your belief that all LCD monitors look like shit; and B.) My general enjoyment of the reasonable color and rich blacks of my LCD monitor. Who's likely to convince whom? Like I said, hate your monitor all you want. I hated my old one.
  
  --
  Breakfast served all day!
19. Re:Crap by Idiomatick · 2010-08-21 17:02 · Score: 1
  
  With high quality Mp3s many people will fail a blind comparing it to a better codec. Better TV tech is fairly obvious and I'm sure less people would fail a blind test where screens jump in resolution 100%.
20. Re:Crap by A+Friendly+Troll · 2010-08-22 07:27 · Score: 1
  
  You don't understand how it works.
  Wide gamut would be great *IF* there were more than 8 bits per channel, but there aren't.
  Imagine that you have a monitor that covers 4975396134% of NTSC. Pure red on such a monitor is eye-scorchingly red; in fact, it's so red that Satan himself enjoys it. 0 is lack of red, 255 is unbelievably red, as mentioned.
  To get what's currently pure red on a sRGB monitor, you need to pick the value of 1. Everything above 1 is "too red".
  So, you're stuck with 0 on your 10984081% gamut monitor for current sRGB red values of 0..127 and 1 for current values of 128..255.
  You have lost dynamic range.
  Once we get 10 or 12-bit processing paths - bring it on. Just not right now.
21. Re:Crap by A+Friendly+Troll · 2010-08-22 07:29 · Score: 1
  
  Give me the model name of your monitor, and I'll find out what its black point is when calibrated to the standard 120 cd/m2.
22. Re:Crap by thegarbz · 2010-08-22 12:28 · Score: 1
  
  You can harp on about bits and dynamic range all you want, and really you are absolutely right to some extent. But you're missing two critical points.
  
  1. If you need a screen that absolutely perfectly can display every single visible colour within bounds that it is capable of displaying producing absolutely zero banding on any of the channels than great more power to you. Yet the majority of the world has proven that quite frankly unless you're examining xrays, MRIs or doing research in the field of colour people don't desire perfectly smooth gradients. *People* want pretty colours and 1000000:1 contrast ratios, which is why a lot of the TVs laid out in stores look like oversaturated garbage with dynamic contrast ratio bouncing the brightness around as it sees fit.
  
  2. For further proof of this just look at what 99% of the displays out there are capable of. TN film panels with a whole 6bits, SIX FUCKING BITS of dynamic range. Yet many people think they are wonderful (makes me throw up a little just typing this).
  
  I like that you mashed made up numbers in the above post to prove your point, but while the principle is right do some actual maths and look at the size of the sRGB gamut processed with 6bits, and then the size of the NTSC or AdobeRGB gamuts with 8bits, and come back and tell me which has the lower dynamic range. I'll give you a hint, a wide gamut PVA or IPS panel looks better than a standard gamut TN film panel for a very good reason.
  
  Since I have not yet seen a wide gamut TN film panel (is it even possible to make?) monitors with wide gamut advertised should none the less be far better than 99% of the garbage out there. It seems both of us understand how it works, just that one of us has looked into the matter a bit more deeply than the other ;)
23. Re:Crap by gullevek · 2010-08-22 19:40 · Score: 1
  
  10bit is doable with display port and proper graphics cards. But this is more or less only on high end machines.
  And Joe average won't see the difference anyway.
  
  --
  "Freiheit ist immer auch die Freiheit des Andersdenkenden" - Rosa Luxemburg, 1871 - 1919
24. Re:Crap by A+Friendly+Troll · 2010-08-24 06:28 · Score: 1
  
  Oh yes, wide gamut TN panels do exist... They should be classified as an atrocity against mankind :(
25. Re:Crap by thegarbz · 2010-08-24 09:26 · Score: 1
  
  They should be classified as an atrocity against mankind :(
  Amen to that!
Shame by Pojut · 2010-08-20 08:03 · Score: 1

'Tis a shame...I remember reading about this tech back in the mid to late '90s...seemed promising. Oh well -_-;;

--
Living With a Nerd
1. Re:Shame by Twinbee · 2010-08-20 09:52 · Score: 1
  
  Don't worry - OLED will be better, much better.
  
  --
  Why OpalCalc is the best Windows calc
High end monitors by djlemma · 2010-08-20 08:04 · Score: 3, Interesting

I wonder if a company like Eizo that makes high end monitors for medical purposes and professional image editing would buy out the technology. They already seem to have some success at selling relatively small LCD monitors at extremely high prices due to their color accuracy and brightness, so maybe this technology would be another step in the right direction for them. My understanding is that the expensive technology Eizo uses doesn't actually fare well on moving pictures, so this CRT-type thing might be significantly better, assuming that the color gamut is similar to their current offerings......
1. Re:High end monitors by The+Grim+Reefer2 · 2010-08-20 08:27 · Score: 1
  
  I think Barco would have a better shot at it than Eizo. The last time I checked they were in much better financial shape, and are much more diversified than Eizo.
Couldn't release it as high end consumer product? by Ironhandx · 2010-08-20 08:08 · Score: 2, Interesting

I mean, if they did all that work to turn it into a TV at all they could have released it to compete against Plasma TVs. If I could get CRT quality in LCD weight and size I'd be all over that. $5000 for a 36" TV that does that? Yes please.
Fire Hazard by lobiusmoop · 2010-08-20 08:09 · Score: 2, Funny

I though 'SED' stood for smoke emitting diode. Probably would give a nice bright image I guess, but not for very long.

--
"I bless every day that I continue to live, for every day is pure profit."
1. Re:Fire Hazard by oldhack · 2010-08-20 08:43 · Score: 1
  
  I converted many a diodes into this SED. The lab was just about to ban me.
  
  --
  Fuck systemd. Fuck Redhat. Fuck Soylent, too. Wait, scratch the last one.
2. Re:Fire Hazard by blueturffan · 2010-08-20 09:34 · Score: 2, Funny
  
  I have a bit of experience with SEDs, LERs (light-emitting resistors) and DEDs (dark emitting diodes).
Market law by OpenSourced · 2010-08-20 08:11 · Score: 1

Dura lex SED lex

--
Rome taught me patience and assiduous application to detail. Virtues which temper the boldness of great, general views.
Well cry me a river... by Twinbee · 2010-08-20 08:39 · Score: 2, Insightful

Honestly, this isn't as nearly as sad as it appears, because its 'rival', OLED surpasses SED in almost every area. In fact, it could well be in EVERY area. Does anyone have any information on how SED could have been even slightly better?
OLED, when it comes of age, really is the panacea/holy grail/goal/best of all worlds when it comes to display tech (and possibly most types of lighting too).

--
Why OpalCalc is the best Windows calc
1. Re:Well cry me a river... by Ungrounded+Lightning · 2010-08-20 08:55 · Score: 1
  
  Does anyone have any information on how SED could have been even slightly better?
  High acceleration voltage to produce secondary electrons up the column. Per-pixel logic. via multiple control elements or even discrete SCEE-based vacuum amplifiers. (Don't recall if those were built in already.)
  Of course the former isn't necessary with (O)LED-based screens and the latter can be done with the same semiconductor technology at a more convenient voltage. LEDs can be fantastically efficient and work at low voltages, so electron-bombarded phosphors in a vacuum have a problem.
  Pity, though. I've been wishing these puppies would come to market too, for a long time. Phosphor and vacuum have a long life and flurescent die is inherently flirting with its own destruction. So if there isn't a lifetime issue with the emitters (say, positive ion bombardment) these had the potential for far better long-term reliability.
  Also: I was hoping SCEE could lead to a renaissance of vacuum tube technology - at integration scales approaching those of semiconductors and inherently high speed and easy scaling for power. There's some stuff that vacuum tech STILL does better than semiconductors, while eliminating the heater power and scaling down to where semiconductor-style voltages would do the actual job could enable still more.
  Think of the potential reliability of a purely glass-and-metal structure in a hard vacuum...
  
  --
  Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
2. Re:Well cry me a river... by regular_gonzalez · 2010-08-20 15:07 · Score: 1
  
  Lifespan is one area that immediately springs to mind. Granted, they're making advances in OLED lifespan but it's still well below SED's "indefinite" (i.e., comparable to lcd or crt) life.
  
  --
  Due to circumstances beyond my control, I am master of my fate and captain of my soul.
3. Re:Well cry me a river... by owlstead · 2010-08-20 23:45 · Score: 1
  
  There is no such thing as panacea etc. when it comes to something as complex as display tech. I don't see it being used for eBook readers, just to think of just one example. It is about finding the right number of ingredients for the use of a display. Of course, when it comes off age, it will probably remove most if not all of the other active matrix technologies - TV's - in the museum. I still remember the small TV screens from Sony on the display stand - they blew everything away except for the display size. Note that that was more than *10* years ago though.
  Personally I cannot wait to *remove* more screen brightness from my computer monitor, I would rather want fast color digital paper displays to succeed.
4. Re:Well cry me a river... by Twinbee · 2010-08-30 11:43 · Score: 1
  
  Displays aren't like music which can offer many orders of magnitude of quality. OLEDs may not be a panacea, but further improvements are diminishing returns. They're so close, and will be almost perfect in say 10-20 years.
  
  Personally I cannot wait to *remove* more screen brightness from my computer monitor
  When I updated the light in our living room from 20w to 1000w halogen floodlight (to imitate daylight), the brightness of the screen is better brighter. It's just when there's a dark background that the bright screen appears overly bright. In any case, OLEDs offer far more than just brighter screens (which can be made darker anyway).
  
  --
  Why OpalCalc is the best Windows calc
5. Re:Well cry me a river... by Twinbee · 2010-08-30 11:49 · Score: 1
  
  Think of the potential reliability of a purely glass-and-metal structure in a hard vacuum...
  I would tend to think that thin, flexible OLEDs would have better reliability still (once they get the blue OLED lifetime issues sorted). They're also solid state, which has to count for something. Glass/metal/vacuum sounds heavy/bulky too...?
  
  --
  Why OpalCalc is the best Windows calc
I wonder if patent EXPIRATION was involved, too? by Ungrounded+Lightning · 2010-08-20 09:00 · Score: 1

It was a patent troll that shot down this technology.
I wonder if patent expiration might have been involved, too. The project started 24 years ago. Perhaps, after all the delays, all the fundamental patents would be toast by the time production ramped. So the PHBs might think that even if they got it competitive now they'd be vulnerable to instant generic clones.

--
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Why not LED? by mcrbids · 2010-08-20 09:09 · Score: 1, Interesting

Have you seen an LED screen recently?
I bought a laptop with an LED screen and I have to be very clear - it's obviously a sharper, better, higher contrast screen. The white is very white and very bright, and the blacks are deep and dark. Sitting next to the LCD screen (I run dual head) the difference is glaring.
LCD is sharper (to me) than CRT, and LED is brighter/more contrast than LCD. Best of both worlds?

--
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
1. Re:Why not LED? by A+Friendly+Troll · 2010-08-20 09:17 · Score: 3, Informative
  
  There is no such thing as a "LED screen". What you are talking about is LED-backlit LCD panels. They pretty much do nothing important compared to regular CCFL backlighting, apart from having somewhat lower power consumption and more correct colour temperature. Everything else is more or less the same, including the black level and the contrast.
2. Re:Why not LED? by annex1 · 2010-08-20 09:25 · Score: 2, Informative
  
  Not entirely true. LED backlights are controllable and switch off in banks. This is significant because the backlighting can turn off in areas where there is very dark "black", increasing the contrast ratio quite a bit. With a CCFL backlight it is always on, so you have a backlight bleeding through the dark areas on-screen.
3. Re:Why not LED? by A+Friendly+Troll · 2010-08-20 10:07 · Score: 1
  
  Not entirely true. LED backlights are controllable and switch off in banks. This is significant because the backlighting can turn off in areas where there is very dark "black", increasing the contrast ratio quite a bit. With a CCFL backlight it is always on, so you have a backlight bleeding through the dark areas on-screen.
  Yes and no.
  As far as I know, there isn't a single computer monitor that allows local area dimming, as LEDs are scattered around the edge of the panel and a diffuser takes care of distributing the brightness around the entire surface of the panel (which, coincidentally, allows for just as bad "backlight bleeding" as is the case with CCFLs).
  There likely won't be such monitors, either, for two reasons:
  1) The LEDs come on small panels which are attached together. They might come from different batches, which also means they might have slightly different colour temperature and brightness. On a TV, that is acceptable and you won't really notice it. On a computer display, it would drive you insane very quickly. Imagine a solid grey background that is actually a bit yellowish up there and over there, a bit pinkish right there, and tints to green on those three areas. QC might handle that, but you'd have to pay through your nose for it.
  2) Blooming. Imagine three LED-backlit quadrants; the left is entirely black (and gets turned off), the middle contains your terminal window and is mostly black, except for bright text (so the quadrant is fully on), and the right one is just like the left. You will be looking at black-grey-black, and not only that, but light from the central quadrant will bloom over to the neighbouring ones. This is already an issue on some TVs when they display static content that usually comes from a computer or a console. While you can really dim the quadrant and not turn it off entirely, that is again something that mostly only works on TV material, which contains much less localized high-contrast areas, and tends to display dynamic content.
  Look at your screen right now. Imagine it's divided into a 4x3 grid. Which quadrants could you turn off, if any? Which ones could you partially dim? If your desktop is anything like mine, the answer is "none of them".
4. Re:Why not LED? by Prune · 2010-08-20 11:15 · Score: 1
  
  Parent wrote: "As far as I know, there isn't a single computer monitor that allows local area dimming"
  Shows what you know. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BrightSide_Technologies_Inc.
  While Brightside's showcase product at SIGGRAPH etc. was a large screen TV, the original prototype addressable LED backlit HDR display (developed in the comp. sci. graphics dept. at UBC so I got to play around with it) was a computer monitor.
  As for blooming, it turned out to be a minor issue because, while the human eye has a very high dynamic range overall, locally over a small arc of the visual field its dynamic range is much lower. This way the LED backlight array could simply be powered by a low-passed version of the image.
  
  --
  "Politicians and diapers must be changed often, and for the same reason."
5. Re:Why not LED? by Prune · 2010-08-20 11:16 · Score: 1
  
  Looks like /. formatted the period out of the link I posted. The correct URL includes a period at the end of 'Inc.'--http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BrightSide_Technologies_Inc.
  
  --
  "Politicians and diapers must be changed often, and for the same reason."
6. Re:Why not LED? by A+Friendly+Troll · 2010-08-20 22:31 · Score: 1
  
  That's a prototype, it doesn't count ;)
  Also, it used an entirely different (and commercially non-viable) method of backlighting. You get serious blooming issues when you can only turn off a quadrant of many LED panels instead of individual ones.
7. Re:Why not LED? by owlstead · 2010-08-20 23:38 · Score: 1
  
  Very small correction: there are certainly no consumer LED screens, but the large, annoying, things that burn your eyes out with Snickers commercials when you go e.g. to the Sziget festival are certainly LED screens.
8. Re:Why not LED? by subreality · 2010-08-20 23:54 · Score: 2, Informative
  
  -1, Wrong
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OLED
  They're rare and expensive for anything more than portable devices, but LED displays certainly do exist, and the contrast is much better than with LCDs.
Stop that. by Petersko · 2010-08-20 09:19 · Score: 1

"The result is a picture that is as bright as a CRT and does not suffer a time lag sometimes seen on LCD panels with rapidly moving images."

Why are you trying to upsell me to something that you don't have stock?
pity by Anonymous Coward · 2010-08-20 09:38 · Score: 1, Interesting

Having seen a SED TV working up close, it's a pity they have not got this out as even LCD, OLED, plamsa etc all did not have the accurate color representation of CRT - In fact reference monitors were the initial target
But seeing one up close, the colors and resolution was just amazing - most people don't realise how "compressed" the color space is on most content and displays
But hey just like Token Ring, FDDI, ATM etc being technically better than ethernet, cost and being good enough often wins out
Re:Our last hope... by plonk420 · 2010-08-20 10:42 · Score: 1

interesting, one of my coworkers experiences the same migranes, too.
Re:Couldn't release it as high end consumer produc by regular_gonzalez · 2010-08-20 12:19 · Score: 1

I'd guess the number of consumers who would pay a 500%+ markup for a television with, arguably, marginally better iq than a plasma is vanishingly small.

--
Due to circumstances beyond my control, I am master of my fate and captain of my soul.
Shame by cjb110 · 2010-08-22 00:12 · Score: 1

A shame this, as a lot of the earlier reviews of the SED technology picture quality had it just about equalling CRT, but it was firmly beating Plasma, and obviously LCD was a distant 4th.
Oh well, maybe OLED can be ramped up in size and down in cost, as that doesn't do too bad in the PQ stakes.

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----- I refuse to have an argument with an unarmed person
Nixie tubes in wrist watches. by Delusion_ · 2010-08-23 02:59 · Score: 1

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Nixie_Wozniak.jpg
Practical? No.
Badass? Profoundly.