Nano Magic Inc. (NMGX)

[Ubertino]

SED. Is. The. Freakin'. Future.


Matt Casamassina: Editor-in-Chief, IGN GameCube/Revolution
The best tech at the Consumer Electronics Show 2006 was Toshiba/Canon's SED television. The companies jointly debuted the new type of display, which is neither plasma nor LCD, at the big event, and everyone who saw it was pretty well amazed. On the first day of CES I found myself huddled together with a dozen others in a dark room that was illuminated only by three brightly lit 42" SEDs. The TVs, by the way, look exactly like the one below. A pretty spiffy design, actually. Note that these are prototypes:

I was prepared to be underwhelmed, to be honest. I had already seen so much at CES that was either "blah" or, worse, "meh." But to my surprise, I was astonished at the perfect picture these babies generate.

A really quickie TV breakdown. CRTs -- the big, boxy televisions of yesteryear -- are even by today's standards favored amongst videophiles because they have the best contrast ratios, which translates to deeper blacks and more vivid, realistic colors. Plasmas and LCDs lose about 200 pounds of physical TV, which is nice, but they have up until recently really lacked where contrast ratios and response times are concerned. To be specific, blacks on LCDs and plasmas tend to look almost gray and refresh rates -- especially on the latter -- can create a ghosting, blurring effect, which is bad. SED is a merging of CRT picture quality with plasma/LCD design -- what I like to call the very best of both worlds.


The SED display


The prototype SED displays on-hand at CES 2006 were absolutely spectacular. I'm going to separate individual words with periods in order to stress a point. Pay attention now because I hardly ever do this. SED. Is. The. Freakin'. Future.

Consider that my 50" Panasonic plasma -- which, by the way, I adore -- has a contrast ratio of 3000:1. Today's cutting-edge flat panels have upped the ratio to 4000:1. SEDs, by comparison, sport a contrast ratio of 100,000: 1. Not a typo. One-hundred thousand to one. The result? Blacks so deep that they look even better than any CRT I've seen. Toshiba/Canon showed us video designed to demonstrate the way in which SED handles grayscale situations. Even in dark environments, it's entirely possible to make out different degrees of blackness -- which is something that is rarely possible on LCD or plasma. For instance, a boat floated through a lake in darkness. Everything was black, but I could still clearly see the lake shimmering and reflecting, just as I could make out the boat. Faintly and realistically. I may as well have been there. Demonstrations showing off SED brightness, color and motion particulars were every bit as impressive.

I should note that every IGN editor I made watch the demo walked out of the room convinced that SED is the best thing ever. And it will be. This is serious tech and it's not going away. It's not a fad. It's not a niche. It's going to be big. Toshiba and Canon believe so strongly in SED that they have together invested nearly $4 billion into the next-generation display type. That's a lot of cash for a product that hasn't even hit retailers yet. The companies earlier this year formed SED, Inc. and have established a factory in western Japan to produce the TVs.

Neither Toshiba nor Canon would commit to a release time frame or price structure for SED at CES 2006. That said, the companies did note that SED sets will be available before the end of the year and reports abound suggest that the tech will be competitively priced against plasma and LCD.

Although the prototype displays I saw at CES were only 42" in size and running in 720p, the final sets will start at 55" and support 1080p. Hurray. If ever there was a TV to match the PS3, this will be it.

http://gear.ign.com/articles/680/680784p1.html