Only $75,000??
Does that include the Korean booth-babes??
Screw plasma and LCD flat panels - they are the "version 1.0" of this young, emergining and maturing market. I'm waiting until Christmas 2006 for my new CNT FED (Carbon Nanotube Field Emission Display) screen! In the meantime, I'll stick with my old, crappy Mitsubishi 27-inch CRT for now, as painful as it is to watch movies on it at times, especially with my nice sound setup. Sure, the CNT FED's could be even more expensive when they initially come to market, but from the research I've done (read up on what Samsung has been doing), it'll be worth the wait in terms of image quality, power consumption, and weight.
A little dated, but a great intro for those new to CNT FEDs:
http://www.nano-lab.com/fortune.html
http://www.eetimes.com/story/OEG20010508S0033
http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2003/07/16/1058035060929.html?oneclick=true
For those of you too lazy to click, here's a good excerpt from the bottom article:
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Field Emitting Devices
Field Emitting Devices (FED) are described by many as the future of large-screen flat-panel TVs as they potentially offer the best of all possible worlds - the brightness, contrast and low production cost of a traditional CRT with the thinness of a plasma or LCD. Even better, they use less power. The trouble has been making them actually work.
The way this family of screens work is simple. Whereas a colour CRT has three guns that fire electrons at a screen, FEDs use loads of minuscule electron guns - one for each pixel. Hit by their beam, these pixels, which are made of old-fashioned CRT phosphors, glow intensely.
CNTs
Some are now using carbon nanotubes (CNTs) - basically sheets of carbon atoms rolled up into tubes - as the tiny electron guns. These can be applied accurately by printing at low temperature on materials such as plastic, resulting in potential cost savings and screens that can be rolled up and curved. Motorola, which is keen to find partners to license its FED tech, is talking about a 50-inch, one-inch-thick CNT-based display costing the same as standard 32-inch CRT - eventually.
HyFEDs
In February SI Diamond Technology demonstrated a 14-inch mono TV using carbon nanotubes (CNT) printed on to low-temperature glass. This is actually claimed as a HyFED display because each CNT addresses 10 pixels, not one, making the technology a hybrid of CRT and FED technologies. SI Diamond Technology says the price of this new generation of displays will be, inch for inch, the same as for current CRT TVs.
SED
Canon and Toshiba have also been beavering away at what they call "surface-conduction electrode-emitter devices" (SEDs). Tipped to launch late next year, with large-screen product to be aimed at the booming plasma market. Expect SEDs to offer more brightness and contrast than plasma at a cheaper price with the same slim, sexy profile and screen size.
HEED
Pioneer's research in flat-panel display has taken it into the development of high-efficiency electro-emission devices (HEEDs). Using the regular CRT phosphor, this MIS (metal-insulator-silicon) diode cold-cathode device is claimed to emit a dazzling
80,000 candela per square metre. That's about 150 times brighter than a CRT. As yet no other cold-cathode technology, such as field-emission devices (FEDs), has achieved such brightness. Consumer applications are somewhat distant and are likely to aimed at huge screens.
Well, these are some of the contenders. Now it is just a matter of seeing which of these competing ideas is the Little Red Engine that will make it over the hill before its technology is. Over the hill, that is.
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Enjoy the wait. Go travel the world or read a good book for now.
