SED TV Reviews

An excellent SED TV article can be found at the following link:

Digitimes.com

It covers the Nano lawsuit in detail as well as all the news and developments from both Canon and Toshiba over the last couple of months. Very good reading.

Technorati Tags: SED TV, Canon, Toshiba

Quote from the Toshiba SED TV site:

“Sorry, this site has closed

Thank you for using it for a long time. Please continue your favors toward the Toshiba homepage in the future.”

Hopefully we’ll see SED TV back on the Toshiba site again in the future. I just don’t think it will be the near future unfortunately.

Technorati Tags: SED TV

Info from Yahoo Asia News

Canon‘s share price has dropped 0.9% following the announcement that they would buy out Toshiba Corp.’s stake in their joint venture to produce surface-conduction electron-emitter display (SED) televisions and make the new type of ultra-thin flat-panel TV on its own.

Credit Suisse reported that Canon’s move poses greater risk and raises concerns for the company’s earnings for the business year to December 2008 and onwards, while maintaining its “neutral” rating on the stock and target price of 6,500 yen.

The two companies said last March they would launch SED TVs in the last quarter of 2007, delaying the launch by more than a year to improve cost competitiveness in a market known for steep price erosion, which has cast a shadow over the product’s commercial feasibility.

Not a huge drop, but not a vote of confidence either.

Technorati Tags: Canon, Toshiba, surface-conduction electron-emitter display, SED, SED TV

Here is Nano’s reponse to the SED Inc restructuring announced yesterday.
Nano-Proprietary, Inc. Comments on Canon’s Press Release Regarding SED, Inc. Ownership
10:39 a.m. 01/12/2007 Provided By Market Wire

AUSTIN, TX, Jan 12, 2007 (MARKET WIRE via COMTEX) — Nano-Proprietary, Inc. (NNPP) today announced that it is pleased Canon, Inc.(CAJ) and Toshiba Corporation have decided to continue to move forward with their SED TV.

“Restructuring of Canon’s ownership position does not resolve the pending litigation which goes to trial in a few weeks,” said Tom Bijou, Chief Executive Officer of Nano-Proprietary, Inc. “We have terminated Canon’s license as a result of breach of contract. Moreover, our complaint against Canon includes other counts, including fraud unrelated to the ownership of SED. We are, however, willing to enter into a new license agreement with Canon on reasonable terms.”

Ouch! This whole SED TV saga goes from bad to worse to good to bad, all in two weeks. Stay tuned. I’m sure there is more coming.

Technorati Tags: SED Inc, SED TV

Some very good news today for SED TV fans. At first glance, not very good news for Toshiba, but it sounds like Toshiba will still be involved.

Toshiba Inc. and Canon Corp. press release:

TOKYO, January 12, 2007 — Canon Inc. (“Canon”) and Toshiba Corporation (“Toshiba”) today announced an agreement by which Canon will purchase from Toshiba all of Toshiba’s outstanding shares of SED Inc., which was jointly established by both companies. On completion of the purchase, SED Inc. will become a wholly owned subsidiary of Canon, effective January 29, 2007.

The decision was reached following discussions between Canon and Toshiba based on the assumption of prolonged litigation pending against Canon in the United States with respect to SED* technology. As a result of the discussions, it was decided that Canon will carry out the SED panel business independently in order to facilitate the earliest possible launch of a commercial SED television business.

SED television sets are to be introduced in Japan in the fourth quarter of this year as originally scheduled, although Canon will reassess its future mass-production plans for SED panels.

While the decision announced today represents a major change in the relationship between Canon and Toshiba, each company is expected to make every effort for the smooth launch of its television business based on the high image quality achieved by SED technology.

Mr. Kazunori Fukuma, the current president of SED Inc. appointed from Toshiba, will resign from Toshiba, after which he will be hired by Canon and continue to serve as SED Inc. president. Also, plans call for Toshiba engineers on loan to SED Inc., in accordance with the terms of a new agreement to be entered into between SED Inc. and Toshiba, to continue their assignments for the transition period during which Canon will independently establish the SED panel business.

*SED: Surface-conduction Electron-emitter Display, a next-generation flat-panel display jointly developed by Canon and Toshiba.

Overview of SED Inc

Again, this is great news as SED TV development and production can now proceed without a dark cloud hanging over the whole project.

Technorati Tags: Toshiba, Canon, SED TV

Even though the SED TV is not at CES2007, there is still some news. Toshiba is creating a buzz by dropping HD DVD pricing, and really dropping plasma in favour of LCD. However, according to Reuters:

Toshiba said it remains committed to SED and its plan to launch SED TVs in the final quarter of 2007 is unchanged, Toshiba Corporate Senior Vice President Yoshihide Fujii said in an interview with Reuters. Toshiba and Canon are considering delaying or scrapping their plan to build a $1.7 billion SED plant due to the patent dispute with Nano-Proprietary Inc. “I’m sure we will be hitting 3 million in global sales”, Fujii said. “Of that, 2.3 to 2.4 million units will likely be sold in the United States.”
2 million SED TV’s sounds like an awful lot. I’d like more info on those figures.

More from a Businessweek SED TV article:

In recent weeks, Canon and Toshiba have held emergency sessions to consider their options. “It’s as a result of this lawsuit that we are reviewing our plans,” said Canon’s Richard Berger.

Some analysts welcomed the news. In a Jan. 4 report, Merrill Lynch (MER) analyst Ryohei Takahashi noted that a delay, or even cancellation of the new plant, would be positive for Canon because it won’t be affected by near-term losses.

Berger and other officials said the two companies haven’t yet abandoned plans to commercialize SED TVs. But further delays are inevitable. SED is now studying the possibility of small-lot production in July, shipping SED sets to Japanese retailers in late summer. Retailers in the rest of the world won’t get their first batch until early 2008, since SED production isn’t originally scheduled to be full-scale until the last quarter of 2007.

Sounds like they are still on track to deliver by the end of 2007. With the small numbers using current production facilities, I expect most will go to broadcasters and other “pro” users.

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

I’m still bummed out about the SED TV no-show at CES2007. My hotel and flight for tomorrow are cancelled. While I sit here and mope, I’ve gathered a few Toshiba SED TV exerpts from the last few days.

A thorough article from Digitalhome.ca Click to read the rest.

“Does SED have a future?

From a technological standpoint, industry insiders all agree that SED had the potential to gobble up a huge portion of the HDTV market in 2004, 2005 and 2006. The operative words in that last sentence is “had the potential”.

While SED production plans have stalled, plasma and LCD technologies have charged forward in the last three years. Prices for plasma and LCD have plummeted while performance, features and picture quality have increased dramatically.

Note that the picture quality of competitive displays is approaching that of SED. Who knows what will be available when SED finally hits the retail stores.

Like many new technologies, SED held great promise, however, as of January 2007, we think the window of opportunity for SED has come and gone. By 2008 and 2009, Digital Home believes that the quality of 1080p plasma’s will be so good that consumers will see no reason to pay a massive premium for an SED set.

In summary, despite it’s potential for tremendous picture quality, we are skeptical that SED HDTV’s will ever be economically viable.”

From Forbes.com

“One TV set that won’t be found on the show floor is the SED TV from Toshiba–a dazzling new panel that aims to blow plasma and LCD out of the water. The surface-conduction electronic-emitter display, initially announced to be ready by the end of 2006, has been delayed until the end of the year. At least there’s already something to look forward to at CES 2008.” I’ll definitely be looking forward to that.
A bit about the lawsuit from NetworkWorld

“At stake is whether the production joint venture, a company called SED Inc., is a Canon subsidiary. Canon owns 50% of the company plus one share while Toshiba hold the remainder. Because it holds the extra share, Canon believes the company is a subsidiary.

The question is an important one because part of the SED technology being used has been licensed to Canon by Nano Proprietary Inc., a Austin, Texas, based company. Nano Proprietary filed a lawsuit against Canon in Texas in 2005 asserting that SED isn’t a subsidiary. Nano Proprietary argued that Toshiba still has decision-making capability over the unit, so the company doesn’t qualify as a subsidiary.

Note: I’m amazed that this lawsuit doesn’t appear to have been taken too seriously. All the recent disappointments with SED can be traced to this lawsuit.

That would mean the existing patent license doesn’t cover transfer of the technology to SED Inc. and that an additional payment is required. In November the court declined to recognize the company as a Canon subsidiary.

As a result Canon is considering increasing its stake in SED Inc., according to a report in the Saturday morning edition of the Nihon Keizai Shimbun business newspaper. A report in Monday’s Asahi Shimbun said Canon is planning to pull out of joint production plans and that an official announcement is due later in the month.”

Let’s hope that Canon won’t pull out. I’d like to see a settlement, although it seems like there’s been plenty of time for Canon to work that out before these latest embarrassing developments and delays. I still have hope, but more patience will be required.

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