August 2006
Monthly Archive
Wed 30 Aug 2006
Posted by SED TV Guy under
SED TV1 Comment
An SED television article from March 2006
SED draws on the past for flat TVs of future
Hardware could become industry standard
TED KRITSONIS
Special to The Globe and Mail
Toshiba Corp. and Canon Inc. are aiming to steamroll the flat-panel TV industry with a new technology called semiconductor electron-emitter display, otherwise known as SED. “The goal is for SED to become the industry standard,” says Robert Gumiela, senior marketing director for television at Toshiba of Canada Ltd.
The pair is drawing on Canon’s inkjet printing technology to create electron-emitters, and Toshiba’s experience in cathode-ray tube (CRT), flat-panel and semiconductor technologies. Canon has dabbled with SED technology since the 1980s, but it was only when the company began collaborating with Toshiba in 1999 that development took off. They formed a joint venture called SED Inc. in October, 2004. Now the pair is gearing up to take SED hardware to consumers.
Unlike LCD and plasma flat screens that use relatively new display technology, SED takes a page from the past. It uses the collision of electrons with a phosphor-coated screen to emit light, much like CRTs have done for decades. But instead of one electron gun, SED displays have millions of tiny electron-emitters aimed at a panel behind the screen.
Toshiba and Canon say one of the benefits of this approach is that the beam isn’t coming from one central source, eliminating the deflection issues that limit the size of traditional CRTs. With SED screens, the emitters are close to the part of the screen they’re illuminating, allowing manufacturers to build screens that are 40-plus inches in size, yet only a few centimetres thick. Moreover, the picture at a 1080i resolution is said to have as much as a 100,000-to-1 contrast ratio, which easily surpasses any big screens currently on the market.
“The simplicity of the technology — though highly sophisticated — is utilizing so many emitters allows you to achieve a variety of colours along with the purity of black,” Mr. Gumiela says. “People don’t really know that from a technical standpoint, it is the grey-scale reproduction of a TV that determines how well it reproduces colour.”
Based on what they see as the “superior performance” of the SED screen technology, Mr. Gumiela says both companies are targeting a 30-to-35-per-cent share of the flat-panel television business by 2010, when factories are expected to be running at full production capacity.
Full story (with subscription) at: The Globe and Mail
I think that share estimate is very optimistic considering the delays announced since March.
Technorati Tags: SED television, SED Inc, SED
Sun 13 Aug 2006
Posted by SED TV Guy under
SED TV1 Comment
From Tech-On:
This was from March but it’s some SED TV info I hadn’t read yet from a Toshiba VP.
“”We may have a long term perspective regarding the surface-conduction electron-emitter display (SED).” At the “Global FPD Partners Conference (GFPC 2006)” event held in Okinawa, Japan, from February 28 to March 3, 2006, Toshiba’s TV business head, Yoshihide Fujii, Senior Vice President of Toshiba Corp. and President of the Digital Media Network Company, indicated his view that there is no hurry to launch the SED TV onto the market. Fujii said, “There will be no other TV devices beyond the PDP, LCD, organic EL and SED panels in the market over the next ten years,” and insisted the company can fully launch the SED TV after establishing a volume production line at its Himeji Operations”
More at the link above.
Technorati Tags: surface-conduction electron-emitter display, SED TV
Tue 8 Aug 2006
Posted by SED TV Guy under
SED TVNo Comments
According to an article in pcwelt.de, Toshiba has announced more specific plans for the SED TV production site at Himeji. I couldn’t find a date on this but it appears to be recent. Please comment if you know anything more accurate. Some details are below, check the link for the whole story.
“Toshiba Corp. and Canon Inc. are investing ?180 billion (US$1.7 billion) to build a factory that will make panels for a new type of flat-panel TV based on SED (surface-conduction electron-emitter display) technology, Toshiba said Tuesday.”
“SED TVs can produce pictures as bright as those of CRT TVs and without the slight time delay sometimes seen on LCD TVs, according to proponents of SED. The technology also uses up to a third less power than plasma panels, according to Toshiba and Canon, which have been developing the technology since the 1990s.
It marks the second major investment the companies have made in the new TV technology. Last September, they said they would spend ‘200 billion to form a joint venture called SED Inc. that will mass produce the TVs.
SED Inc. will run the new factory, which will increase production to more than 70,000 panels per month by the end of December 2007, Mochida said.
Toshiba produced CRT TVs at Himeji until it closed that operation last September, she said. The site currently has 1,300 workers making a variety of TV components, she said.
The first SED TVs should go on sale before the end of March. Toshiba has yet to announce screen sizes and prices, but the TVs are likely to sell at a premium to plasma TVs of the same size, the company has said.”
Technorati Tags: SED TV, SED, surface-conduction electron-emitter display