[chambeaj]

SED dead as Toshiba and Canon concede defeat

http://avzombie.com/blog/2007/05/25/...oncede-defeat/

It was meant to be the display technology to beat them all, but SED is now dead in the water. Proponents Toshiba and Canon have conceded to the inevitable and issued a statement confirming that SED will not become a commercial proposition anytime soon. Canon says that it is now unable to produce SED panels “to the original schedule” and Toshiba has concluded that rapid price erosion in the flat-panel market makes SED production uneconomic: “The prices of flat panels are declining more rapidly than expected,” it declared in a statement.
Despite being critically lauded, SED has been beset with problems, and most recently was dealt a body blow in its legal wrangle with Nano Technology, which forced Toshiba to walk away from its partnership with Canon.
The news will not come as a surprise to Philips’ head of Product Marketing and Strategy for flat TV, Danny Tack. Back in June 2006, he predicted the system’s demise: “Too many PDP factories have been built, too much money has been invested. And even more has been invested in LCD,” he said. “Put the same content on plasma, LCD and SED next to each other, and I would think SED will give the best performance. It’s a great technology, but there have been many good technologies that have never survived.”

[Tempest]

Funny ya know, I was just about to post a query asking when we're going to see SED finally appear in the shops.

Are you sure this is a NEW press release, as I'm sure a year ago, I read almost exactly the same thing, and they were saying they were going to delay lauch whilst they worked out how to get priced down due to LCD's dropping in price so fast.

[Tejstar]

Oh well, it seemed that it was inevitable for a while. WIth the advances in Plasma and LCD technology hopefully we will get something close to what SED promised all along.

[simond83]

Down, but by no means dead!!

http://investing.reuters.co.uk/news/...storyID=nT6212

Despite the delay, however, both companies said they have no intentions of abandoning plans to offer SED TVs.

"We still plan to offer SED TVs as soon as we secure panel supplies," a Toshiba spokeswoman said.

There's far to much time, money and effort in this to just walk away now. The timeline looks like this;

-Canon appeal decision and loose.....again
-Deal reached with Nano Pro. to use the technology
-Production starts

Si

[neilneil]

So have Nano technologies killed it then by splitting up the two major developers. One developer cannot carry the batton on it's own especially against plummeting prices in other flat pannel screens.

Did Nano want a slice of the proffits or were they just miffed that Canon had shared the Tech?

It kind of reminds me about when GIF picture files were very popular then all of a sudden somone claimed that it was based on their technology and wanted payment for the use of the GIF file format. GIF then fell out of use very quickly but was replaced by the better jpeg format.

-Neil

[Lesmond]

Compuserve had the copyright for GIF back in the day, and started asking money for software producers if they wanted to use the format in their applications, such as Photoshop.

But I don't think that was the reason for people to choose JPEG over GIF, as one is a 24bit lossy format and the other is an 8bit lossless format. Its like comparing Apples to Oranges.

[AML]

It would be sad to not to see SED come out. I dont mind waiting as long as it actually comes out.

The other point is the price range for SED. If its too expensive compared to LCD and plasmas then it wont do well.

There probably wont be as much proffit for Canon and Toshiba due to falling prices, but if the format takes off they might be able to make a market for themselves and then start to make proffits.

I guess we can only wait and hope we see something in the near future.

But if they leave it too long its possible that other technologies like OLED may over take SED and then really kill SED off.

Sony has a lot more marketing power than Canon and Toshiba when it comes to new technologies.

I cant wait

[mw01908]

I wish that would hurry up and bring this screen out. I want a new flat TV that looks as good as CRT. I am having trouble bringing myself to buy an LCD, they look like overpriced rubbish picturewise.

[Stephen Neal]

Originally Posted by Lesmond

Compuserve had the copyright for GIF back in the day, and started asking money for software producers if they wanted to use the format in their applications, such as Photoshop.

But I don't think that was the reason for people to choose JPEG over GIF, as one is a 24bit lossy format and the other is an 8bit lossless format. Its like comparing Apples to Oranges.

Yep - JPEG (lossy compression, high bit depths, quality / file size trade-off) solved a slightly different problem to GIF (8 bit lossless compression) - and JPEG became popular as digital cameras started to become widespread, and colour displays started running in 16bit or 24bit colour, rather than 8bit.

PNG is the replacement for GIF that has fewer copyright issues AIUI.