Finally some news about SED displays

Tuesday, September 12, 2006

Just when we thought that the Surface-conduction Electron-emitter Display (SED) technology was about to fade into the background we finally got some news.

Last Friday Canon Chairman Fujio Mitarai revealed that his company and Toshiba intend to start the mass production of SED displays.

The Canon Chairman also added that they plan to do it before the end of the year and that the ultimate goal is to mass-market the products before the 2008 Olympics (held in China).

It must be reported however that this is not the first time that the two companies announce a collaboration to produce SEDs. They did it also in 2004 and moved several times the deadline for the public availability of their displays (decreasing prices of LCD and plasma displays was allegedly one of the reasons).

This time they may be serious though. Canon in fact has a 5-year strategy to increase its sales and profits and SED may be one of their best products to respect their plans.

For this reason, together with Toshiba, they intend to invest heavy in this technology (180 billions of yen). We surely hope that all that money helps bring in our houses the SED display…

For those who ask themselves why we are so happy to hear updates about SED let’s quickly recap what it is all about. This flat display panel technology tries to combine the advantages of CRT television with the reduced size of LCD and plasma displays.

A SED display conceptually works just like a CRT display because it uses electrons emissions to excite a phosphor coating on the display (one emitter per pixel).

This guarantees a better contrast ratio and therefore a better visual experience compared to the LCD and plasma display. Despite their similarity with CRT displays SED are very thin though so they would seem the better technology for home theaters.