The next generation of flat screen displays are going to hit the shops sometime this spring, and they wont be using traditional flat screen technologies such as plasma or LED but an entirely new technology thats been developed during a joint venture between Canon and Toshiba for almost a decade. The new Surface-conduction Electron-emitter Display (SED for short), utilises age old technology used in CRT’s, the inherrent problems with CRT’s have been addressed with this new SED technology. Which means where with CRTs the bigger the screen you want the deeper the display has to be. Now a SED screen can in theory be made anysize and only be a few centermeters deep.
Since the CRT other technologies have been discovered which address the CRTs depth fault, and produce a crisp image with a flat screen. These technologies have their own faults too one of which being the amount of energy converted to heat, another being refresh rate and colour expression.
Like conventional CRTs, SEDs utilize the collision of electrons with a phosphor-coated screen to emit light. Electron emitters, which correspond to an electron gun in a CRT, are distributed in an amount equal to the number of pixels on the display. As these electron emitters are only a few nano meters in length a very high definition screen can be produced, to very big sizes (40″ and bigger) and since SEDs apply the same light emission theory as CRTs, they provide dynamic color expression, a sharp picture, and faster videoresponse than LCDs and plasma display panels (PDPs). Also with canons new inkjet production technologies and screen printing methods the manufacture of large screen panels is now possible at low cost.
This new SED technology is very exciting canon commented that there is a possibility that the technology will be applied to computer monitors and other products in the future, but as of now they are aiming to launch an SED product this spring. If Canon do apply the technology to computer monitors, that would mean that we would have the colour advantages, high definition and high refresh rate of a CRT within the handy space saving confines of a flat screen monitor.
Thankyou to Canon for giveing me permision to use the above graphic and for also answering my questions.
It sounds like the earliest we’ll see SED Tv’s is the second half of 2007. I’m very interested in seeing the initial pricing.