More Alphabet in the Soup?

To everyone who has been driven nuts by the dizzying array of display choices in the pro video and AV world, good news! The industry has heard your laments and responded...with a spate of new products, new specs, and new acronyms.

It actually may be good news, of course, if these new tools (and a familiar old one) really meet the perennial demand for better performance at better prices. But in the meantime, they''re joining a crowded field.

Consider SED, for instance -- Surface-conduction Electron-emitter Display -- which has been launched by Canon and Toshiba. “I think the SED technology is going to have some legs,” says Steve Sechrist of Insight Media. Its developers claim SED combines the light weight and low power demands of an LCD panel with the picture quality of a CRT.

“Canon and Toshiba have been very forthcoming as to their business models, the yields they expect to achieve, and so on,” Sechrist says. “They''re really pitching this technology to the industry.”

Also pitching hard are the six Japanese companies collectively marketing 3LCD projection systems (www.3lcd.com). They''re fending off challenges from DLP-based rear projection and publicizing studies indicating a clear preference for the 3LCD image.

Another “newcomer” in the display derby has an acronym that won''t be hard to remember: CRT. The recent Consumer Electronics Show saw introductions of “Super Thin” tube TVs from Samsung and LG Electronics; these products boast cabinets about a third less deep than conventional TVs. “The CRT image is still the gold standard,” notes Sechrist, adding that tube displays should also be strongly price competitive with plasmas and LCD panels.

Plasmas, for that matter, aren''t about to disappear, despite the high-profile announcements by some industry big names that they''re leaving the category. One reason for this persistence is the fact that plasmas simply meet certain client demands better than other options, says Bruce Reid, VP/Event Technologies at Mills James Productions, Columbus, OH (www.millsjames.com).

For small group training, breakout sessions and similar settings, Reid says, plasmas deliver an intimacy that projection systems can''t match. Besides, he adds, “right now in the larger sizes plasma is at a good price. LCD is expensive.” The publicized problems that may deter consumers are often non-issues in the pro setting, he adds. Burn-in, for example, springs from static screen images that the professional producer generally avoids.

As to the defections from plasma by Sony and others, Sechrist comments, “the big companies are making large bets on different technologies. LCD started to get into the plasma space quickly,” he adds, “in 12 months from one CES to the next, and the plasma guys were surprised. But is plasma dead? I don''t think so.”

Mills James Productions finds that clients generally don''t approach projects with preconceived notions of what display tools they want to use -- instead, they''re looking for a solution to a communications problem, Reid says. Still, he adds, “There are always some clients for whom the technology drives the creative, some clients who want a wide screen, or want to generate an image that will create excitement.”

Reid then dropped yet another acronym into the pool, noting that in corporate and staged event settings, “LED is also coming on rapidly.”