Canon Abandons SED TV Hopes

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."

Comments

The Man screws us again.

[grub]

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.

Damn...

[mcgrew]

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.

Re:Damn...

[Myrv]

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.

Crap

[A Friendly Troll]

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.

Re:Crap

[A Friendly Troll]

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.

Re:Crap

[Haeleth]

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.

High end monitors

[djlemma]

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......

Re:Why not LED?

[A Friendly Troll]

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.