Toshiba Forced To Pull Plug On SED at CES

By Mike McGann
Posted Friday, December 22, 2006

SED — the so-called “flat” CRT — will not be making it’s U.S. debut at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas in January, say officials from Toshiba, one of the two companies developing the technology, not because of tech issues, but rather legal ones.

SED, or Surface Conduction Electron Emitter Display, was first shown this fall in Japan by Toshiba and partner Canon, which have been working on the technology since the late 1990s. But Canon is tied in litigation with Nano-Proprietary, which originally licensed some of the technology to Canon. Negotiations are ongoing to settle the suit, but because of the issue about intellectual property, showing the display in the U.S. could violate confidentially agreements. That led to pulling the plug on showing the TV at CES.

Toshiba promises a U.S. debut of the technology, which the company claims to be selling a consumer version of in 2007 — the same 55-inch TV shown in Japan earlier — once the legal issues are resolved.

Like Organic Light Emiting Diode displays, SED is seen as being the future of flatscreen displays, in part because of better picture performance than current plasma or LCD screens and in part because it is thought both technologies will ultimately have a price advantage in the marketplace.

While a flat screen like plasma, SED works in a very different way, more like a traditional cathode ray tube. Instead of a single electron gun lighting up millions of phosphors, as in a normal CRT tube, each pixel has it’s own emitter built into it. Because of this, when dark, each pixel is truly off — and that creates a much more distinct range of gray, enhancing detail and providing a more film-like picture than current plasma and LCD screens. In addition, there is none of the lag seen with either of the other two display technologies, which sometimes cause ghosting during scenes of high-contrast movement.

Assuming SED does make its debut this year, the first screens will still be very pricey and will cater exclusively to video enthusiasts looking for the best in flatscreen performance. With large-scale production in place, it is thought that SED will have higher yields (the amount of usable screens per fabrication run) and ultimately be cheaper to produce than plasma and LCD some years from now.