SED TV Reviews

Happy New Year from SED TV Reviews and here’s wishing all SED TV fans a happier 2007!

More bad news. Full story at Forbes.com
TOKYO (AFX) - Canon Inc and Toshiba Corp may be forced to delay the planned construction of a new factory to make panels for surface-conduction electron-emitter display or SED televisions due to a patent suit in the US.

While the two companies are promoting the SED-related businesses at their joint venture SED Inc., Nano-Proprietary Inc, the US firm which holds a patent related to the SED television technology and signed an agreement licensing Canon to use the technology, has prevented Canon from transferring the license to SED Inc, the paper said.

Canon considers the joint venture a subsidiary because the number of shares they hold surpasses that of Toshiba by a single share, but Nano-Proprietary argued in the suit that the joint venture is not a Canon subsidiary as Toshiba still has a large influence.

Although Canon asked a US district court to recognize the venture as its subsidiary, the court turned down the request in November, the report said.

What a mess. I’d hoped that this could have been worked out by now.

Technorati Tags: SED TV, SED TV, Toshiba, SED

At a year end gathering with the press Atsutoshi Nishida provided the following cheerful holiday news for SED TV fans:
“We will release a product, but it will be pricey.” Atsutoshi Nishida, President of Toshiba Corp. commented so about the “SED (surface-conducting electron-emitter display)” at the company’s year-end press gathering. He said the first shipment of SED products is “slated for fall 2007.”

Just to make sure that any consumer level SED TV fans got the message he added;

Toshiba planned to start shipping SED products in fall 2007, but is now considering focusing on professional users at first, positioning the SED as a “limited, pricey, high-end” product. Nishida said the company’s plan to build an SED volume-production facility in Himeji is “advancing on track.” However, he said that the SED is not “competitive against the LCD TV” in the market for consumer TVs, and that Toshiba is not planning to bring SED to the current retail consumer TV market.

That ties in with the decision not to appear at CES2007. It may not be the reason, but there’s no point displaying something that will not be available to consumers. This move is not a total surprise but definitely a disappointment for those of us following SED television.
Tech On story

Technorati Tags: SED TV, Toshiba, SED television

Well crap! What’s going on with Toshiba, Canon and SED Inc.? The latest news has the SED TV as a no show at CES2007.

With info from ZDnet
“The reason is neither a technical nor business issue, but we are not allowed to disclose details due to confidentiality obligation,” the note read. “Toshiba further believes that the issue will be resolved soon, and then we will be able to come back to the U.S. for a 55-inch SED demo.”

I’m not happy as I was very much looking forward to seeing the SED TV there and providing all kinds of useful info and photos. Also, I’ve never been to Vegas.
One report says it’s due to the lawsuit between Canon and Nano-Proprietary. Whatever the case, there will be thousands of disappointed SED TV fans unable to see it in action. This cannot help advance SED television technology at all. Comments please…

Technorati Tags: Toshiba, Canon, SED Inc., SED TV, CES2007

It’s been a few quiet weeks for SED TV news. Not much going on during the holiday season. Everyone is waiting for news from Toshiba at CES2007 regarding the availability and pricing of SED televisions.

The latest we have is that the SED TV is expected to be released in Japan towards the end of 2007 in a 55″ screen size. Canon has announced that the Canon SED TV will be released in Malaysia in 2007.

The earliest release date for the U.S. still appears to be 2008.

We’ll have all the SED TV news from CES2007 starting January 8th. Until then, Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays!

Technorati Tags: SED TV, Toshiba, CES2007, Canon, Canon SED TV

From Reuters:Sony said today it would establish a joint venture with a technology fund to develop a type of flat panel called field emission display.

Sony said it and Tokyo-based Technology Carve-out Investment Fund (TCI) would invest a total of 2.5 billion yen ($21.7 million) in the venture, which will start operations on Dec. 18 with about 30 employees.

Sony will take a 36.5 percent stake in the venture with TCI investing the remaining 63.5 percent.

Field emission display (FED) technology was invented in the 1970s as a possible alternative to the traditional cathode-ray tube TV but has never been commercialised, losing out to liquid-crystal displays and plasma displays in the flat panel race.

Toshiba Corp. and Canon Inc. are working together on a technology similar to FED called surface-conduction electron-emitter display (SED), aiming to compete with LCD and plasma technology in the fast-growing flat TV market.

FED and SED TV technology can be use to develop flat displays that are bright, consume relatively little electricity and have wide viewing angles, but it remains unclear whether they will ever be commercially viable.

Interesting development. I’d like to follow this one closely to see how they develop FED technology to compete with SED television technology.

Technorati Tags: SED, FED, SED television