SED TV Reviews

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.

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