Completely different situation. Betamax was incompatible with other media formats. Since that format did not become the standard, nobody produced their material on that format. In this case, this TV is not dependant on any format. It just displays signals that all TV's receive better. Toshiba would be dumb to give away this technology.
"Completely different situation. Betamax was incompatible with other media formats."
My point was: Would Toshiba rather be receiving licensing royalties or spur competition from other companies?
This was Sony's mistake. If they had licensed betamax, like JVC did with VHS, we might have been using betamax instead of VHS because betamax was the superior technology (at the time). I say this having never owned a betamax.
SED is not going to be the end all/be all in display technology, and unless Toshiba is willing to stifle the competition by allowing others to pay them to use the technology, then they will promote others to develop other (better?) displays.
I already understand that such R&D goes on already, but unless someone has developed something comparable/better than SED, at the same or lower price, then the bean counters would/will insist on paying royalties to Toshiba than producing a more expensive (non-competitive) product.
How is that a "totally different" situation?
'Toshiba would be dumb to give away this technology.'
There are only a couple of companies that manufacture all plasma or LED display panels. Other companies buy them and add their own processing. There are surprising differences in picture quality from brand to brand, all using the same displays.