Back in 2004, Canon – a company known for their cameras – got together with Toshiba to announce the Next Big Thing in TV technology: SED. Five years later, SED has become the television equivalent of Duke Nukem Forever – a lofty concept that sounded great, but we’ve given up on ever seeing its arrival.
SED – or Surface-conduction Electron-emitter Display – had a lot of hype back in 2004. The technology worked by using a network of tiny cathode ray tubes, with each tube representing one sub-pixel on the screen. It promised the benefits of CRT TVs, like high contrast levels, brightness and fast response times, while offering large, flat screen sizes like an LCD and drawing a lot less power than LCDs as well.
In other words, Canon and Toshiba would smash together plasma, CRT and LCD technologies, and after ditching all the crappy bits of each one, they would be left with SED.
But it was not to be. Originally slated to begin production in 2005, that date got pushed back to 2007. Both companies showed off prototypes at CES in 2006, which were lauded for their amazing picture quality. But then in December of 2006, a company called Applied Nanotech – which holds several patents for SED production – claimed that Canon had violated its licencing agreement by entering a partnership with Toshiba to build SEDs. To counteract the lawsuit, Canon bought out Toshiba’s half of their partnership company.
The court case raged on until December last year, at which point Applied Nanotech decided the legal costs weren’t worth the effort. But by that stage, the economy had changed. The GFC was in full swing, and the chances of SED TVs going into production had reduced to almost zero. Sure, there’s still a chance that one day we’ll all play Duke Nukem Forever on our glorious SED displays, but it’s not a bet I’d be willing to put money on…
History of TV is Giz AU’s month-long look back at the development of the world-changing medium and its influence on our daily lives.
scott white
Tuesday, November 24, 2009 at 12:17 PMSED really was the one that got away. I’m still a CRT man (HD sony 76cm flat widescreen, sure it’s massive but in my setup it actually opens up the room and my couches dont stare straight at a wall which is bad fung shui).
LCD and Plasma just cant compete, SED was the dream, lets hope that Mitsubishi can get their LazerVue up as a viable alternative or we will have to wait for a big enought OLED to play DukeNuke4Eva on.
David Anderton
Tuesday, November 24, 2009 at 1:09 PMWell i think a lot of us have been waiting a lot longer for OLED, if SED is really worthy it will happen… eventually.
f4cti0n
Tuesday, November 24, 2009 at 2:45 PMI remember telling my folks to wait for SED. Good thing they ignored me and got a 60″ plasma instead.
Darcii
Tuesday, November 24, 2009 at 4:00 PMhahahah. I remember telling my mum too to get an SED panel. Plus I love Canon so the thought of a Canon branded screen was sweet.
However as that court case came to be which I followed on Gizmodo I settled happily for one of the early Sharp 1080p sets in ’07 and all is well
SED TV Guy
Wednesday, November 25, 2009 at 8:23 AMGreat summary of SED TV. There are plenty of SED fans out there who are willing to pay a premium for the technology.
However, there has been no indication from Canon when it may eventually come out.
Lukas Kubin
Wednesday, December 30, 2009 at 3:42 AMIt’s another example how all these patent violating cases and the entire patent and licensing system is pure crap and just blocks innovation.