Official SED, Info, Discussion, Etc Thread!!! - Page 8  

An investment of $2 Billion into SED Inc. leads me to believe this will be a lot more than just a "demo" product.
This doesn't matter. All that matters is what do you want, and what can you afford?
OK, I stand corrected... per the article above: "SED is being positioned as a replacement for PDP (plasma display panels) display."

How many plasma owners have just read the words replacement for PDP and are ripping their shirts and shouting blasphemy? As for black level performance of SED I've heard alot of subjective or anecdotal tributes to it being better than anything but CRT, but I've heard no one "Guarantee it with hard earned money". Is it a true demonstrable fact? Can SXRD beat out every Plasma display in terms of black level performance? If it can then SED will have a price measuring stick--I don't think timing is critical for SED--I do think performance and price absolutely are--SED has to have the best performance--if it does then it has some leeway with price but the longer it waits the lower that price will have to go.

SED has some potential advantages over even CRTs in black level.

CRTs have great black levels because the phosphors can be almost instantaneously turned completely off. CRTs arent a light-valve tech like LCD or an always-on tech like plasma. So CRT already has great balck levels and if SED equaled them that would be great, BUT you can also have bleed over of the electron beam to adjacent phospors(particularly on aperature grille sets) and reflected light from inside the tube escaping in areas inappropriate for the image on CRTs. SED eliminates the communal tube and encapsulates each triad of each pixel in its own area with its own emitter. When a pixel is off its completely off, bleed over and interior reflected light is theoretically impossible.

SED may beat even the CRT at inky black.

(has to be a dark room in front of the set of course.)

ss

If Sony merged with Toshiba and called the SED set SXRD would more peole buy it?

I doubt it, SXRD = D-ILA = LCoS to me. I view RP techs as a stopgap until larger direct view alternatives come along. SED is a whole seperate ball game. I dont care whose name is on the SED unit, Toshiba or Sony, as long as it works.

I did invest in front projection tech, but hopefully large RPTVs will have large direct-view alternatives soon.

ss

I was absolutely amazed to see $200 Billion as the investment for SED Inc. Turns out that is in Yen (?) ... it is actually $1.9B ... quite a lot really, but much more believable.

Is optivity some kind of synonym for "non-objectivity"? Or is it just "selective reading"?

"An investment of $200 Billion into SED Inc. leads me to believe this will be a lot more than just a "demo" product."

You need to go back and read what I wrote. I didn't say they were building this only as a demo. The only screen any human being has ever seen, however, is indeed nothing but a demo. Not a single production model has been built; not even close. If I was not clear on this, I'm sorry. Never mind your math issue above, but the $2 billion-ish investment has not been made. I can announce a lot of things and not do them.

In Taiwan already, $10 billion in announced LCD plants are not under construction.

"
This doesn't matter. All that matters is what do you want, and what can you afford?"

That's not all that matters, nor has it ever been. No one can sustain a flat-panel TVs business that includes primary, sole-source mfg. on a niche. They need to get to some kind of critical mass.

"OK, I stand corrected... per the article above: "SED is being positioned as a replacement for PDP (plasma display panels) display.""

Yeah, and that's hysterical too. Panasonic alone will supply more PDPs in 2006 than the goal for SED in 2010. These guys talk up a storm, but have delivered nothing so far except a prototype that's far smaller than what they intend to produce, a beautiful spec sheet, and countless broken promises on deliver dates.

Again, if you read the last 3 years of threads of this, you'll see I love the technology in concept. But I am a lot less blinded than most of you about what can still go wrong. And given that none of us are even going to get a bite at the apple for two years on this thing, I find it unfathomable that people post about this in dozens of threads a month -- like it matters.

The same nonsense went on over OLED in 2001-2003 and that technology is farther away from replacing PDP and LCD in the market than it was then. Sure, SED is exciting, but absent some actual milestone, my current interest in it here at AVS is (a) myth debunking (b) temperance the irrational exuberance and (c) encouraging people not to wait for it. Anyone that can afford it in 2007, need not wait for it now because they can easily buy and replace.

Most people who are on the fence about spending the money won't be able to afford SED until 2008-2010. Surely no one here can encourage a friend to wait 3-5 years to partake of HDTV>

Sorry, my mistake:

"Last September, the companies announced they will invest 200 billion (US$1.9 billion) to form a joint venture called SED Inc. that will mass-produce the TVs."

I guess I should have had that 2nd cup of coffee this morning before making my ~$198 Billion mistake.:eek: This is why I'll never be a Corporate CEO.

Had I not incurred a negative WAF today, I would have "pulled the trigger" on a TH-50PX50U from CC. Provided the WAF becomes positive tomorrow, the deal will be done with pics to follow. I'm basically a reasonable, logical and "objective" individual... I like Plasma TVs and realize I won't be able to afford that "elusive" SED panel for at least another 3-4-5 years.

For all intents and purposes at least to the vast majority of the tv buying public, SED is nothing more than 'vapour ware' at this point in time. While like Mark, (Rogo), I am excited by the potential, there is no way that I am prepared to wait another 3-5 years for Toshiba/Canon to bring to market a > 60" SED for a reasonable price. If a > 60" SED were to be shown at some trade show 2 years for now, my guess would be that it would occupy the same niche as the current ultra large Samsung and LG PDP panels; ie. made to customer order only and for a huge expense.
My money will go to the first PDP manufacturer, (well Panny or Pio anyway), who bring a 1080p panel to market in a > 60" size. I will not be prepared to wait an additional 2-5 years for something that at present only exists in a 36" size, and with less than 30K hours of 'life'.
Bish

It was interesting that during the panel discussion yesterday at the Home Theatre Expo, Peter Putnam opined that as far as he was concerned, SED was DOA. While it is great in theory, it has no chance without a bigger player than Toshiba supporting it . PDP and LCD were being supported by the big boys with ever expanding production and dropping prices with no prduction model on the market for SED and none in the forseeable future. Also, given the likely high price for SED when it does come out, he thought it highly unlikely that it will ever be more than a niche product, even if that. While the other panelists were not as pessimistic, they were of the opinon that it will be only a niche product.

I believe Sony has spent 199 billion dollars advertising some technologies that are both not as great as they say and some others that are awful--maybe some of you Sherlock Holmes types out there can figure out which ones they are!

[ego alert]
You don't suppose it's possible that having followed this industry for 5 years now, I might actually have some idea what the hell I'm talking about, do you?

[/ego alert]

Thanks, JWhip, for this report. Very interesting stuff.

Mark

The thought was the the other major players were already commited to other products and and had spent considerable money in PDP and LCD planrts and would not be interested in competing against themselves with another technology.

Maybe this article has something to do with that thinking.

For some strange reason I think you dislike LCD and Sony. In which case all I can say is that for some situations LCD is a perfectly viable display technology. This is why most computer monitors sold today are LCD. Also why are you posting against Sony when they have no relation to this thread at all?

"
There is always room at the top.

Toyota, Honda, and Nissan are not competing with Lexus, Acura, and Infiniti, if you get my drift."

Except it's not the same thing. The only reason Lexus, Acura and Infiniti exist is because gigantic auto companies could afford to make those niche brand.

The TV business -- at the core mfg. level -- doesn't work that way. It's too capital intensive and too competitive to build a unique, niche flat panel. If SED is a niche product at the single-digit percentage level, it will never get economies of scale, get progressively more expensive on a relative basis over time, and be abandoned by at least Toshiba, if not both partners.

It's nice for people to keep drawing analogies to niche brands in other industries, but those analogies are flawed in that they ignore the realities of what it takes to make money in flat-panel displays.

And while it's nice to say, "But today's Brand X plasma is 2-3x as much as Brand Y, so SED can be much more expensive..." it just isn't true. It's especially not true if the initial price premium is 20-30% and then in year 3 it's 100% as competitors get cheaper.

I'm not saying this is the fate, but the SED partners set a 30%-of-the-market goal for a reason... 3-5% is fated to equal 0%. I'm sure they have a magic number for production at which they'll become profitable and can really sustain and grow the business while reducing costs. It's a lot more than 100,000-250,000 displays a year... But with a premium-priced, sole-source strategy, they'll never get to whatever the point is.

The promise remains real, the challenge at least as great.

rogo
Is OLED and SED at a similar stage of development not counting the size of the display? Which one of the two technologies stand a better chance of surviving in the economical sense.

OLED is going to survive for certain, Mattias. Whether it gets huge or not -- in diagonals -- is dependent on whether truly cheap OLED mfg. moves out of the "press release-ware" stage to reality. There is endless hype about "printing" OLEDs using ink-jet like techniques. It's all a definite maybe.

SED is a dual-company, single-entity technology with nifty attributes and a million maybes. It will almost definitely ship, but whether it "makes it" or not is up in the air -- no matter what the AVS fans of the technology wish were true.

Here are some more details on the manufacturing schedule and location. The Pilot production starting this August will be done at a Canon facility while the mass production will begin in January 2007 at the Toshiba facility. Output is expected to reach 70,000 panels per month by the end of 2007.

Toshiba to make SED panels at Himeji plant

It would be nice if Toshiba would quit screwing around with HD-DVD and devote its resources to SED, instead. I'd like to see a 7x" SED by Q4 2007 at the latest.

Wait... scratch that. I'd like to see a 7x" SED right friggin' now!!!

So their original timeline persists or not? Sounds like good news if true. Still a long way off.

ss

2 1/2 years is a long time to wait.....

And we still have to wait for them to figure out their "Ferrari" prices.

I wonder if we'll see any other CNT related products hit the market any time soon.

I doubt you will see anything else hit the market sooner. At least Canon and Toshiba are serious about what it takes to introduce a new flat-panel display tech to market, not just introduce it to colleagues at a white-paper conference (or trade-show attendees).

Who's more serious: Canon and Toshiba with SED or Brillain with anything?

100 000 : 1 contrast ratio!
That's quite amazing.
That would mean 16.5 stops with film.
Enough for (3x)16bit colors with linear gamma.
Doesn't feel so nice to buy these lcd's with about 500:1 CR anymore...

I still haven't found any of those 50" 1080p PDP's that SED can't compete with. Where might they be?