SED Television

There is not a great deal to report about SED television at the moment as it is still in development and according to recent press releases the first sets are not due to hit the market till Q4 2007 at the earliest. The following is what we do know at the present time. As more information becomes available we will bring it straight to you.

LATEST NEWS: 55in SED TV's on display at the CEATEC 2006 trade show for the first time.

SED (Surface conduction Electron emitter Display) technology is not new, in fact SED television has been under development by Canon, and more recently by their partner Toshiba, since 1984. The technology is there, the struggle is to bring down manufacturing and production costs so that SED displays are competitive with competing technologies such as Plasma and LCD displays.

The goal or the prize is worth chasing as it promises to marry the best features of all the current display technologies into one package and throw in a few of its own for good measure.

When the anticipated full scale production of 70,000 units a month hits its stride towards the end of 2007, SED televisions should incorporate the picture quality, sharp resolution and fast response times of traditional CRT tube TVs with the size, weight and form factor of Plasma and LCD displays, while all the time keeping power consumption extremely low.

Unfortunately for Canon and Toshiba, they will be chasing a moving target as the Plasma and LCD manufacturers will no doubt continue to develop their products at the astonishing rate that they have over the last decade.

So, how does all this SED stuff work.

Well, instead of having one big electron gun, as we do in a typical CRT television, shooting out a stream of electrons that zap the phosphors on a TV screen causing them to emit light, in SED technology, each pixel has 3 of its own microscopic electron emitters, each lighting up the red, green and blue phosphors within the individual pixel. In a SED TV with a resolution of 1920 x 1080 pixels, the resolution the first SED displays are expected to appear at, that will be a total of 6,220,800 emitters. The electron emitters, a thin film of Palladium Oxide, can be positioned just millimeters from the phospher coated pixels resulting in the slim form factor.

That's it in a nutshell, pretty easy to visualize, a lot harder to implement.

By the way, I hope you appreciate the technical language, shooting, zapping!!

Canon & Toshiba

The main movers and shakers in SED TV, in fact the only movers and shakers as they are not licensing their technology to other companies, are Canon & Toshiba. Follow the latest developments from their SED departments on the Canon website here and here and from Toshiba here.

Canon & Toshiba SED Press Releases