The SED technology was - together with OLED - one of the very promising new display technologies. But some complications and a patent lawsuit delayed SED and now Canon has announced that SED is officially dead. They have dropped the plans to bring a SED-TV to the market.
The SED technology is dead
A few years ago the SED (surface cunduction electron emitter display) technology was very hot and was believed to introduce a new standard of picture quality.
SED-TV prototype
Back in the days Toshiba and Canon collaborated on SED and wanted to launch a 50-inch SED-TV. However, a patent lawsuit meant that Toshiba had to leave the joint venture, leaving alone Canon with the SED technology. Canon kept on trying but now Canon has officially killed the SED technology.
According to Canon the decision was taken because it was impossible to lower production costs on SED-TVs to the level of current LCD and plasma-TVs. Also, because the SED technology was delayed the other display technologies improved a lot.
The technology might be sold to a new player but it seems very unlikely. The FED is a pendant to SED and still exists but Sony that is researching in FED has not released the FED-TVs that they talked about some year ago and FED seems pretty dead as well.
SED-TV technology is dead
