CES 2006 - Day 3: Playstation 3, Quarter-size Hard Drives, SED and lots of TVs
by Anand Lal Shimpi & Manveer Wasson on January 9, 2006 1:25 AM EST- Posted in
- Trade Shows
Canon and Toshiba Demonstrate SED TVs
Canon and Toshiba have been working on yet another display technology called SED (Surface-conduction Electron-emitter Display). The goal of SED is to bring some of the good qualities of CRT displays (response time, brightness, black levels) to a fixed pixel, very thin, low power display.
The technology works very similarly to older CRT displays, except on a much smaller scale. In a CRT display a Cathode Ray Tube (CRT) would shoot electrons at phosphors behind the viewing glass to effectively paint the picture you see on your monitor. In a SED display, individual electron emitters shoot electrons on phosphors behind the viewing screen to create the pixels on your screen.
CRT vs. SED - provided by Canon Technology
How SED Works - provided by Canon Technology
Since a large CRT isn't necessary, SED TVs can be several centimeters thick rather than tens of inches. But with the response time, brightness, color reproduction and black levels comparable to CRT displays, SED technology has the potential to be the best of both worlds.
Like LCD and DLP technologies, SED displays are fixed pixel displays and there are three electron emitters per pixel. The downside to a fixed pixel display of course is that you end up sacrificing quality if you display content isn't at the same resolution as the native resolution of your display. In other words, there should be a 1:1 mapping of content pixels to each group of RGB electron emitters to obtain the absolute best image quality. However, as hardware scalers become more and more powerful the 1:1 pixel mapping problem becomes less important.
About six years ago Canon and Toshiba started working on developing SED technology for consumer TVs, and they are supposed to start shipping the first SED panels later this year. At the show both companies had demos of SED TVs (they looked to be around 30" diagonally). The conditions weren't perfect to truly evaluate the technology since they were in extremely dark rooms and with no other displays available for direct comparison. That being said, the image produced looked very nice. With no other types of TVs in the room we can't really say how it compared to LCD or Plasma TVs (SED's closest competitors), but it did look very good.
One thing we did notice was that the displays looked like they had extremely low refresh rates. You could see the screen refreshing much like a CRT set to 60Hz. Granted the technology is still pre-production so that could explain the issue.
The dark bar across the screen is our camera capturing the visible refresh rate on the display
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Clauzii - Monday, January 9, 2006 - link
Also here - to me it actually looks at it started happening after the last WindowsUpdate I had (4days ago - WMF-Fix?)Also IE6+XP SP2
BladeVenom - Monday, January 9, 2006 - link
Screw Blue-ray discs, Sony can keep their DRM, and rootkits. I think I'll get Samsung's "Hyper DVD." Then I'll just wait till HD-DVD is cracked before I switch to a new format.GTMan - Monday, January 9, 2006 - link
There is a 0.85" drive with a nearly identically sized drive beside it that is 1.8". Number must be wrong. Also one is 4 GB and the other is 80 GB. Maybe that should have been 8 GB.Tanclearas - Monday, January 9, 2006 - link
Ok. What exactly is so great about the iPod interface? I have used it, and many other MP3 players, and fail to see how the iPod interface is so much better than most other players on the market. In fact, I have never understood why people believe the iPod is so different or so much better than a lot of its competitors. It wasn't the first, nor do I think it is "the best". I don't think I've seen any player that I could classify as "the best". Most seem to have all of the appropriate capabilities, with buttons/controls laid out in an effective way.The only thing I can say is that I have indeed used some players that had poor designs or build quality. In that regard, the iPod is better than some players out there, but is Apple building some sort of brand loyalty by secretly including some narcotic drug that gets delivered via the ear buds?
Questar - Monday, January 9, 2006 - link
Define "best".I define best as easiest to use, no manual reading required.
Tanclearas - Tuesday, January 10, 2006 - link
So buttons labelled with the standard icons for Play, Pause, Stop, Skip Forward, Skip Back, Rewind, Fast Forward, and a jog dial or D-Pad for menu navigation are too complicated for you? I've seen several designs like that. Others try to "copy" Apple's circular layout, and that is where many of the poor models that I mentioned fail. In some of those "copies", they use poor quality buttons, or the buttons are just too small.Come to think of it, Apple's touch-sensitive circle is more annoying than helpful.
AnnihilatorX - Monday, January 9, 2006 - link
SED, LED LCD, OLED, PlasmaNot mentioning glassesless 3D displays. Too much is going on
Typo in Last bit:
"some piece of mind to those still holding on to their older analog sets."
piece -> peace
Aquila76 - Monday, January 9, 2006 - link
Rmember when buying a TV was solely size based?'I'd like a 32" TV please.'
'OK, here are some by Samsung, Toshiba, etc.'
Now it's like trying to choose regular, free-range, organic, etc. at the grocery.
I JUST WANT TV AND STEAK PEOPLE!!!!
oneils - Thursday, January 12, 2006 - link
Lol! Since I'm the youngest guy in the office, I inevitably get asked all sorts of techie questions. One of my colleagues asked for advice on purchasing an HDTV. I looked at cnet.com's guide to HDTV and was blown away. Where have a I been these past two-three years? I had no idea how many options there were: plasma; edtv; lcd; crt rear projection; lcd rear projection...and probably a couple I am missing.I had no idea what to tell him, other than to stick to major brands (sony, samsung, panasonic etc...). I no my way around computers (I build my own rigs), but I only have a 36" CRT SDTV and was completely lost when I ventured into HDTV territory.
Aquila76 - Monday, January 9, 2006 - link
Anybody able to use the forums today? I was able to log in, but when I try to go to any forums I've commented in, I get this (both Firefox and IE):Server Error in '/' Application.
Column 'vchlicensekey' does not belong to table qGetLicenses.
Description: An unhandled exception occurred during the execution of the current web request. Please review the stack trace for more information about the error and where it originated in the code.
Exception Details: System.ArgumentException: Column 'vchlicensekey' does not belong to table qGetLicenses.
Source Error:
An unhandled exception was generated during the execution of the current web request. Information regarding the origin and location of the exception can be identified using the exception stack trace below.
Stack Trace:
[ArgumentException: Column 'vchlicensekey' does not belong to table qGetLicenses.]
System.Data.DataRow.get_Item(String columnName) +121
FuseTalk.API.InitialiseKeys() +324
FuseTalk.API..ctor(String c) +237
FuseTalkNet.Forum.Page_Load(Object sender, EventArgs e) +351
System.EventHandler.Invoke(Object sender, EventArgs e) +0
System.Web.UI.Control.OnLoad(EventArgs e) +67
System.Web.UI.Control.LoadRecursive() +35
System.Web.UI.Page.ProcessRequestMain() +750
Version Information: Microsoft .NET Framework Version:1.1.4322.2032; ASP.NET Version:1.1.4322.2032