New Technology TV

Toshiba and Canon have partnered to create a new and promising species of HDTV (High Definition Television). Using Canon’s expertise in electron technology and Toshiba’s vast experience in CRT’s (Cathode Ray Tubes) and semiconductors, they hope to have some of the new flat panel displays on the market by late next year. This innovative idea is based on the reliable cathode ray tube systems that have been the backbone of television for decades.

What is radically different now is that the gun responsible for shooting electrons at the screen is replaced by as many electron emitters as the screen has groups of pixels—also known as picture elements. While Plasma HDTV’s and LCD’s are successfully and firmly entrenched technologies and are selling millions of units, SED technology over the next few years has the potential for an enormous impact on the HDTV market.

Throwing away the electron gun allows this design to be much thinner. Instead of televisions that need a depth of three feet for the tube, the SED technology is more in the area of three inches thick. Also, the new sets run much cooler, because they don’t use heat to generate the electrons. And some recent tests in the longevity of SED screens indicate that a 60,000 hour lifespan will not be a problem. In its current configuration, SED works by giving a 10-volt charge to an electrode deposited on one side of a glass film. The electric charge accelerates the electrons across a very tiny gap, causing the florescent material to eject photons, creating the visual display on the flat panel. Since this design is strongly based on the existing CRT technology, SED is in some, non-trivial ways, an already proven technology.

The three letter acronym SED stands for the exotic sounding Surface conduction Electron emitter Display. Toshiba’s hopes for a stunning picture are founded in the extremely high contrast ratios, long life of the system, true colors and thinness of the display. While Toshiba and Canon are banking on the incredible vividness and groundbreaking contrast of light and shadows with this new venture, we will have to wait at least one more year for the commercial release of this new product. Undoubtedly, they will have the newest prototype at next year’s consumer electronics show, slated to be in Las Vegas.

Currently, it is forecast that a 55-inch SED TV would retail in the ten thousand dollar range. That may be one of the main reasons on the delay of this technology reaching the consumer market. Toshiba is partnering with everyone it seems. They have a new initiative with Panasonic (Matsushita Electric) to research, develop and produce huge numbers of Plasma televisions and now this venture with Canon to create the new line of SED’s. They are everywhere at once and poised to be very successful in a number of areas.

Recently, I speculated that every conceivable three letter acronym will someday be taken to name a new form of high-tech television display and it isn’t far from the truth. The number of three letter acronyms, especially those ending in “ed” are everywhere. NED is one of the newest—a nano emissive display. Motorola, at least a half-dozen Japanese companies and a nanotechnology company in Austin, TX have been involved in the laboratory creating a proof of concept model using carbon nanotubes.

They first created a five inch video display that constituted a high-definition 42-inch, 1280 x 720 screen with a sixteen to nine ratio. The original panel was only slightly larger than three millimeters (roughly one-eighth of an inch) thick and used off the shelf CRT phosphor technology. It used the same inexpensive electronics in today’s LCD hi-def televisions and has many of the advantages of the cathode ray tube technology. (A wide viewing angle, broad temperature working variety, fast reaction time, etc.)

The prefix nano stands for 10 to the minus 9th power, or one-billionth of a meter. The term nanotech has been misused by many to denote anything incredibly small, but new devices in the realm of microns are not technically nanotechnology. There is and will continue to be a lot of attention put towards nanotechnology, but mature nanotech is still a decade or even two away, even though we are beginning to receive some of its benefits already.

The nanotube used in this video display is much like its name describes; carbon atoms are arrayed in a sheet that bends back on itself to form a cylindrically shaped tube. The nanotube is similar to the famous Buckyball, named after Buckminster Fuller, who invented the geodesic dome. The nanotube is an allotrope of carbon which just means an alternate crystalline form built of the same element. Other common examples are graphite which is pencil lead, and diamond, it’s all carbon, merely different forms.

One of the big advantages of NED-TV is the lack of “ghosting” images. Even the best LCD and Plasma televisions still have some fast motion artifacts. If the technologies still utilizing some form of the cathode ray tube technology persist and thrive, it will mean that the old CRT technology may never actually die, but live on in a new form. So far, prototypes of NED have been built using smaller sections to build up a 25-inch model and now a 42 inch HD display. The excellent brightness, deep color, very thin screen and lower power requirements indicate that NED is another promising hi-tech solution to better flat panel displays. Motorola announced last year that they could foresee a 40-inch NED display selling in the neighborhood of four-hundred dollars!

Ok, so NED isn’t yet a new acronym for cutting edge HDTV (High Definition Television) Technology. I just threw that one in to keep everyone sharp. Over the last few years, acronyms to identify new ways of bringing hi-def television signals to the masses have been spawning faster than kudzu in a North Georgia cornfield. SED, FED, and OLED are new semiconductor-based technologies that could one day form the basis of all of our High Definition television displays.

They could lead the way to Hi-Def displays that are large, almost paper thin, and portable. While everyone is fully cognizant of the more common terms, such as LCD (Liquid Crystal Display) and Plasma; which fortunately is not an acronym, but a rather a descriptive term of the weird, futuristic, fourth state of matter science going on behind the flat panel, there continue to be new sets of letters, and the latest seem to end in “ed”. Since the attack of the “eds” is all good news for lovers of state-of-the-art technology, I will attempt to elucidate some of the important points in an easy to understand way beginning with OLED.

Surprisingly, OLED is already in use in some smaller video applications such as cell phones and digital camera displays. It could have an extremely bright future in FPD (flat panel display), but its debut into the world of widespread mass production and sales in television is still a year or two off. Samsung has released a prototype 40-inch HDTV using OLED that is extremely thin. In the future, we could see an OLED set that is twice as large and only a fraction of an inch thick! It will even be possible to roll up these extremely thin screens and carry them around!

OLED works by conducting electrons through layers of organic materials that emit light to create the standards of current high definition television. Photons (particles of light) are emitted as electrons are sent from a cathode layer across two or three layers of organic material (the “o” in oled) to the anode layer. The colors of the HDTV are determined by the type of organic material used in the emissive layer and the brightness of the picture seen by the viewer’s eye is controlled by the level of voltage used. The “O” in OLED stands for organic material, which in this case means a carbon based chain of molecules, also known as a polymer.

OLED promises to give us extremely wide screen, HD televisions that could be only a few millimeters thick and use very little electricity. The tiny amounts of electrical power needed to power this type of display can solve the problem of hot operating temperatures in today’s LCD and Plasma sets. Newer generations of HD (High Definition) technologies are constantly being invented. There are already at least six types of OLED technology now in existence. It will be fascinating to view the subsequent forms of flat panel displays using OLED, as they begin to populate our world.