From the ash that’s settling over the news of the demise of the once LCD market up-start, then holiday sales leader, Syntax-Brillian and its Olevia brand LCD-TV comes yet another display technology resurrection FED (field emission displays). We are told that Pioneer is planning to sell its PDP Plant to the Sony Spin-off, Field Emission Technologies Inc. (FET) for production of FED technology for the price of $200M as reported on T3.com’s web site today. T3 said the plant will begin to manufacture 26-inch FED panels in 2009.

Steve Sechrist
Senior Analyst and Editor

Displaybank reported the factory in Kagoshima Prefecture, southern Japan, is scheduled to stop PDP production in January 2009. The company anticipates being fully operational and making FED displays by the end of 2009 with an expected production capacity of 10K units per month.

Back in October 2007 we got a good look at the Field Emission Technologies FED panel at the CEATEC show in Japan. There the company showed its nano- (FED) display, a 20-inch prototype high definition FED panel that draws as little as five watts in dark scenes, and less than most LCD screens in the brightest scenes. The company said that in addition to energy efficiency, the slim display features CRT-like color phosphors, and renders 240 frames per second - possibly the fastest flat panel speed of any video display type.

At the show, FET had a darkened room with an original Sony broadcast quality CRT monitor in a side-by-side shoot-out with their new panel. Even the FET engineer inside was a former Sony CRT production manager. Both images were stunning, and viewers were hard-pressed to discern the flat screen over the benchmark CRT display.

More recently, at NAB this past Spring, FET had an exhibit at the broadcast industry show with a similar set up to CEATEC. Our analyst Aldo Cugnini said of that display demo "…there was no difference discernable between the FED and CRT monitors. Of course, this is to be expected, as the FED display utilizes phosphor-based light generation from the emission devices."

At the time, FET said they planned to produce a line of full-HD monitors that target the high-end broadcast market, medical and other niche markets as replacements for broadcast quality CRTs.

The company is a spin-off of Sony who first invested in, then purchased Candescent Technologies in the late 1990’s. They have been working on high-voltage field emission display technology as a replacement to CRTs and may have a slight edge over LED backlit LCD-TVs with their contrast and image lag advantages.

So out of the ash of the Pioneer PDP factory rises a renewed FED panel line whose announcement just happens to coincide with the Chapter 11 "fire sale" of Syntax-Brillian assets. But fear not, the Olevia LCD brand will yet emerge out of those ashes reformed into a new group (Olevia International Group LLC) to face the challenges of entrenched consumer brands, and new display technologies like OLED and now resurrected FED displays.