No SED high-def TVs likely in 2007 as Toshiba and Canon fight lawsuit

by Alex Zaharov-Reutt

Friday, 05 January 2007

Until we see proof that Laser TVs will be on display at CES, it looks like Plasma and LCD TVs will continue to rule the high-def TV roost, with continuing competition from DLP, LCoS and high-def CRTs. The other great hope to beat plasma and LCD, the SED is under lawsuit attack!

Yes, it’s the lost episode of Star Wars only massive companies fighting patent and other battles ever get to see: Attack of the Lawsuits! Now it’s Toshiba and Canon who are in a 50/50 joint venture to produce SED televisions, or ‘Surface-condition Electron-emitter Display’, promising incredible contrast of up to 100,000:1 (instead of the 3000:1 contrast ratio seen on a plethora of competing TV screens), much lower power consumption and more.

Toshiba and Canon started work on constructing a manufacturing plant in Japan to start pumping out screens for sale in 2007, but an unresolved lawsuit is said to have put a stop to construction, with the new target being a 2008 delivery of the SED technology, just in time for the August 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing.

Unfortunately for Canon and Toshiba, the competing technologies of plasma, LCD, DLP and LCoS keep on getting cheaper, with the threat of Laser TVs (as seen in this previous iTWire article) also an uncomfirmed challenger for the end of 2007/into 2008 timeframe. If the Laser TV makes it out into the marketplace at that time, it will prove a massive distraction to SED TVs marketing plans, and that doesn’t count whatever advances the other TV technologies will have by then, too.

So, what is the lawsuit that is causing all of the problems for SED TVs? It’s one from a company called Nano-Proprietary, and one of its subsidiaries called Applied Nanotech. They are claiming that Canon gave away secrets to Toshiba regarding ‘electron emissions from carbon nanotubes’.

Clearly, it’s been a big enough issue to halt SED production, with Canon and Toshiba deciding not to display SED televisions at next week’s CES, despite having demo’d them at CES 2006.

Everyone wants a piece of the increasingly popular and still lucrative big-screen TV market, with big flat-screen TVs overtaking and outselling digital cameras in 2006 as the Christmas gadget of choice, after digital cameras ruled the sales numbers roost in 2003-2005, beating mp3 players (like iPods and others) on a 2 to 1 basis.

But with the world increasingly litigious and patent-crazy, we’re seeing the results of ‘Attack of the Lawsuits’ take their toll. If only ‘Revenge of the Very Annoyed Consumer’ would come out to give us all a happy ending!

Visit IGN and Marketwatch for more information.

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