Mon 28 May 2007
Tokyo – Toshiba Corporation announced that the company will postpone the start of sales of SED TVs, which was originally planned for the fourth quarter of 2007.
The decision is based on information provided by Canon Inc., indicating that Canon will not be able to provide SED panels to the original schedule.
The specific timeframe for the launch of SED TVs cannot be indicated at this moment.
Let’s hope this isn’t the last we hear from Toshiba on SED television. Smarthouse reports that this may be the end of SED TV. I really wouldn’t be surprised, the way Canon has dealt with this whole fiasco. Keep your fingers crossed SED TV fans.
Technorati Tags: Toshiba, SED TV, Canon
May 29th, 2007 at 3:41 pm
I wouldn’t worry too much about this news. It could very well be that Canon and Toshiba are playing a hard line with Nano. Let’s wait till the end of 2007 before passing a judgment.
The real question is: is there a market for SED? Do people really care about picture quality, other than the upconversion woes of sdtv to flat screens? When top of the line xbr lcds are connected in many Sony Store showrooms with s-video, you really must wonder.
Hopefully Plasmas will be much nicer in a couple of years, once they’re all 1080p and have the new deeper blacks technologies. Maybe they will make seds irrelevant in the end. And local dimming led lcds with obm (or is that ocm? sorry, forgot the name) promise better viewing angles, response time as well as color reproduction and black levels. We’ll get our higher picture quality thirst quenched soon enough at affordable prices soon enough. Remember how expensive (and truly dreadful) flat screens were just 2-3 years ago.
May 31st, 2007 at 2:43 pm
SED’s aren’t really that far off from Plasmas… The key difference is that Plasmas directly ionize the gas within the sprit or sub pixel, which in turn activates a phosphor coating.
SED’s use a micro-gap low-voltage emitter with a high-voltage accelerator to strike the phosphor coatings.
Seems to me SED’s should be cheaper to produce, and provide larger sprites / pixels within a given screen size v.s. Plasma. All while using less energy and addressing the response issue which requires plasmas to remain dimly lit when commanded “0″ black.
With such minor differences, any forces that would drive Plasma prices down, should drive SED prices down as well. I don’t see how a “magic window” can exist that would require SED’s to be launched soon “or die”.
The only thing killing SED right now, is the amount of invested capital v.s. Products shipped…. Zero.
May 31st, 2007 at 4:22 pm
CONTRAST RATIOS
I am amazed as to how much discussion there is going on regarding contrast ratios and even more amazed is how much misinformation is out there. While most of the misinformation comes from people posting messages commenting on other peoples comments, some of the bad information is actually coming from some well known review sites.
Anyone take a look at those pictures of Pioneer’s new “See Deeper” 20K:1 display?
Read the comments?
Over 90% of the comments are from people with no clue and only make things worse by spreading idocracy.
They look at a digitized picture of a display, on their display, then pass judgment on it because they don’t know how to properly interpret what they are seeing, or what the author is trying to show them.
It is about as absurd as posting a thumbnail picture of a 1080p TV next to a 480i set and commenting on the resolution.
I hope this clears things up for some people. Maybe you guys can read this, and repost it in your own words pretending you too know everything about everything.
The average human eye can differentiate aprox 700 luminance “shades” or differences
Each distinguishable change in shade is considered a “Just noticeable difference” or JND.
The three colors that make up all viewable colors on a typical display are Red, Green, and Blue.
“True Color” provides for 256 different driving levels of each sprite (sub pixel.)
256 x 256 x 256 = ~16.8m (or 16.8 million possible colors)
To make things simple, we will deal with grayscale. Black = all 0. White = All 255
A perfect monitor would increase in luminance equally with increase in driving level (along the gamma curve.)
A monitor that crushes the blacks would result in no noticeable increase in brightness across the first few steps in driving levels.
A monitor that crushes the whites would stop increasing in brightness at the top end (…..253,254,255.)
As you can imagine, the more crush you have, the bigger the differences need to be to make up the middle ground (or vise versa)
Some people would view this as good, stating how they can now better see the difference in say driving level 149, v.s. driving level 150.
In actuallity, they should be able to see this difference, but it should be just as noticable or subltle as the difference between level 1 and 2.
Displays of a given brightness, the better the contrast ratio, the darker the blacks extend.
Displays of a given black-level, the better the contrast ratio, the brighter or more intense the display becomes.
Why does good contrast matter?
Imagine a poor black level… so poor, that with all the lights off, the TV glows dark gray.
Any colors in this darker range are going to be saturated with that same gray.
Dark reds are going to look……. you guessed it, gray.
Not only that but any movie with black borders… the boarders are going to glow as well.
Deeper blacks = deeper more pure colors.
Now; to throw in a curve ball… Reasons why Contrast ratios can be misleading are:
Contrast ratios are best measured in a dark room.
That’s all well and good to show off the displays typical theater experience, it falls short when it comes to daytime viewing.
Why?
Imagine a theater screen… What color is it? ….. white.
Add ambient light and a theater screen is going to lose contrast ratio A LOT FASTER then a typical TV screen would.
Even TV screens can vary drastically in how well they filter ambient light from the screen.
A display that is both bright, and exhibits an excellent contrast ratio, while suppressing ambient light would be the desired display of choice.
The wider the contrast ratio and brighter the display, the bigger each jump in driving level will become, and thus the more detail you will be able to see / distinguish.
I know this only scratches the surface, but I felt there were too many people itching.
-Andy
May 31st, 2007 at 4:38 pm
I want a TV that looks like a black hole in a bright room
Too bad no specifications currently exists for a displays ability to absorb or re-direct ambient light.
June 1st, 2007 at 8:22 am
Thanks for the excellent explanations Andy. I can safely say that we all appreciate your well written comments.
June 2nd, 2007 at 11:14 pm
Let’s remember that you will never get perfect blacks from any phosphor based display, simply because phosphors reflect light. In a dark room though, since there is ahrdly any ambiant light (except for the TV itself), the unstimulated phosphors will look a lot more black.
That’s why in a brightly lit room, LED LCD with local dimming will give you better blacks. It’s a whole different story in a dark room though.
July 4th, 2007 at 6:56 am
Andy thanks for your comments very interesting reading. I have absolutely nothing to add which is of any use at all — but thanks anyway.