Canon’s inability to bring down production costs was stated as the main reason for stopping further SED TV work.

As any regular visitor here knows, the legal troubles of the past few years were probably also a major factor in crippling what could have been the best flat panel display available so far.

Canon may continue to develop the technology for image diagnostic and other commercial uses but we won’t see a 50″ SED in stores in the future.

This will be it for this site, but please visit my OLED TV site at http://www.all-oled-tv-reviews.com, and if all the planets line up properly, http://www.fed-tv-reviews.com

Thanks to all the regular readers and commentors here. Your participation and enthusiasm over the years has been appreciated.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Any appearance of the Canon SED TV at CES 2010 would qualify as a miracle. The only news this year has been the issue of a couple of SED TV related patents by Canon and rumors that SED technology will emerge in the professional broadcast monitor field.

Who knows what 2020 will bring. OLED TV is still not quite there in the consumer market. FED TV production never got off the ground despite lots of promise.

Here’s a clip from the past…

Click here to view the embedded video.

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Canon also aims to return to a trend of increasing profits each year in 2010, he said in an interview on Monday.

Canon last month posted a 72 percent fall in quarterly operating profit, also hit by sluggish demand for office machines and a firmer yen, but raised its full-year forecast by 6 percent to reflect more aggressive restructuring steps and a stronger-than-expected demand for high-end digital cameras.

The restructuring moves included cutting 700 jobs at its chip-making equipment business and absorbing Canon Marketing Japan Inc’s chip stepper sales and maintenance operations.

Osawa also said Canon plans to continue development of surface-conduction electron-emitter display (SED) technology despite sharp falls in LCD prices, although more time will be needed for a commercial launch.

SED TVs were once seen as promising next-generation flat displays, but steep price falls in LCD and plasma panels have raised concerns over the viability of the commercially untested technology. “I believe SEDs have technological competitiveness. But LCD prices have fallen at a much quicker clip than we had anticipated,” Owasa said.

“When it comes to costs and technological expertise for commercial production, we need some time to catch up.”

Full story at Reuters.com

Patent 20090108727

and:

Patent 20090111350

These patents cover “electron-emitting device, electron source, image display apparatus and manufacturing method of electron emitting device”.

This is welcome news after a long period of quiet for SED TV. I’ll keep my fingers crossed to see something at CES 2010.

Thanks to oled-display.net

“I was asked on more than one occasion about the chances of Canon’s SED making a comeback, something I would not have bet money on after the Nano Technologies licensing debacle. However, a source within Canon told me at the show that the SED is still very much alive as a pro monitor technology. Indeed, a Canon SED engineer from Japan was quietly making the rounds in the Las Vegas Convention Center to scope out the competition.”

If SED is produced as a broadcast monitor there remains the possibility that a SED TV could be forthcoming when times are better.

From Displaydaily.com

Sony stated that the reason was trouble obtaining financing for production. Not acquiring Pioneer’s plasma plant last year really threw a wrench into their spokes.

The big question for SED TV fans is whether or not this is a good thing for SED TV technology.

FED is gone for now, Pioneer Kuro is no more, OLED TV in any decent screen size won’t be here for a LONG time.

What will Canon and SED Inc. do next?

However, Pioneer was losing money at a tremendous rate, and rather than enter into a planned deal with Panasonic, they’ve decided to give up TV production entirely.

This lessens competition for SED TV technology when it does appear, but considering the state of things right now, that’s going to be at least another year or two.

I was really hoping that Canon would pull everything together and have one on display. Even just their latest prototype to keep the interest up.

However, as my friend “Rocky” keeps telling me, nothing before its time. If SED Inc doesn’t have a consumer ready model available there’s not much point in showing one at CES.

At least they’ll avoid the type of hype surrounding the latest OLED TV displays at CES. Bigger, better, amazing. All true, but you sure can’t buy any of them yet. Or likely anytime soon.

I had the opportunity to review the Sony XEL-1 and it really is just a concept TV for early adopters.

Also, with CES attendance down 22% this year and the economy everywhere in the toilet, it’s not likely to be the best time to introduce the next flat panel TV technology to an under-enthusiastic market. If you’re reading this I don’t mean you!

Perhaps 2010 will be the year we see SED TV appear to oohs and ahhs, a good screen size and a reasonably high price.

Applied Nanotech announced today that they will not appeal the court decision that ruled against them and for Canon in July of this year. That decision (click here for pdf copy) cleared the way for Canon to use the Nano-Proprietary (Applied Nanotech) SED technology for Canon SED TVs.

“Nasdaq-listed Applied Nanotech, which had sued the Japanese company for illegally sublicensing its patents, told the Financial Times that it had decided not to appeal to the US Supreme Court. “It would probably be a futile effort,” said Douglas Baker, Applied Nanotech’s chief financial officer.”

However, Canon President Tsuneji Uchida told the Financial Times that due to the current economic situation “new display products are not introduced much because people would laugh at them.”

The promise of SED TV has so far been unfulfilled. Despite rave reviews from all who were able to view the SED TV at various trade shows, the legal difficulties with Nano kept the set from further development and ultimately, the consumer market.

With OLED TV and FED TV fast approaching the consumer electronics market, it remains to be seen if SED TV can overcome the last few years of enforced isolation from the market.

However, as one of this blog’s readers is so persistent in pointing out, and rightfully so, neither OLED or FED TV manufacturers have displayed anything approaching the screen sizes that Canon has with SED TV. The much publicized difficulties with manufacturing large sized OLED displays have yet to be overcome. FED displays will only be available in a 32″ size as broadcast monitors starting in 2009.

Can or will Canon show up at CES 2009 with the SED TV? I, like many others, was very disappointed two years ago when they pulled out of CES 2007 at literally the last minute. I cancelled my trip and hoped to see the SED TV in 2008. That didn’t happen and we’ll know shortly whether the Canon (SED Inc) SED TV will be on display in Las Vega in January.

With information from www.ft.com Check out the full story there.

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Technorati Tags: Canon, SED TV, Applied Nanotech, CES 2009