14 DAY TRIAL // Nowadays, the best-known display technology is, undoubtedly, LCD (liquid crystal display) mostly because it is the most widely available and affordable. There are, of course, other technologies with benefits in terms of image clarity, sharpness and lifetime, such as OLED and AMOLED. SED was also seen as a promising candidate back in 1999, but it appears that Canon's plans to turn it into a viable alternative to LCD have met with failure.
SED stands for surface-conduction electron-emitter display. This technology enabled the creation of panels with a contrast ratio of 100,000:1 while being as thin as plasma or LCD screens. Believing in the potential of this type of display, Canon and Toshiba joined forced in 2004, hoping they would be able to mass-produce it in a timely fashion. Despite their plans, they were faced with two factors that ultimately led to SED's demise.
One of the issues that plagued the duo's efforts was the lawsuit filed by Applied Nano Tech, a US company. This lawsuit significantly impacted upon the research and development efforts, though the final straw was a completely different impediment entirely. What signed the death sentence was the ultimate inability of either company to come up with a cost-effective means to mass produce SED displays, or at least make them cheap enough for the extra cost to be offset by the benefit in power efficiency and image quality. This situation persists even now, after Canon turned the joint venture into a wholly owned unit.
It was Nikkei that first got wind of this decision on Canon's part, though not all news is completely dire. While it is quite clear that consumer-oriented, or even business-aimed monitors or HDTVs of any size will never make it to market, the concept may still empower certain sorts of commercial products, like image diagnostic equipment.