With the announcement this week that Mitsubishi are planning to show a laser projection TV at the 2008 consumer electronics show consumers are once again being tantalised with technology that promises superior pictures to Plasma and LCD.

Using a red, blue and green laser rather than white-light mercury lamps to generate images the advantages of laser technology are brighter and deeper images on larger, thinner, more lightweight screens.

At the beginning of the year Sony announced that they would be producing the first commercially available OLED (Organic Light-Emitting Diode) TVs by the end of 2007, and Toshiba has announced that they will be producing their own OLED TVs by 2009.

The exiting potential of OLED includes a huge increase in the number of available colours over traditional LCD and Plasma TVs, with contrast ratios of 1,000,000:1 producing a vastly superior picture. Perhaps the most appealing feature of OLED screens however is their thickness, ranging from an incredibly waif-like 5mm upwards, and surely the next must have consumer electrical fashion accessory

Although the technology is experiencing teething troubles, SED (surface-conduction electron-emitter display) will provide a better picture than LCD or plasma TV, say Toshiba and its partner, Canon. Toshiba also claims they have managed to cut the manufacturing costs so that the TVs won't cost much more than similar-sized LCDs or plasmas.

SED technology works along the same lines as CRT except instead of one large electron gun firing at all the screen phosphors that light up to create the on screen image, SED has thousands of tiny electron guns known as "emitters" for each phosphor sub-pixel which enable a vastly superior picture.

All of the new technologies can be described as being 'just around the corner' but expect Plasma & LCD to be with us for a good few years yet. Prices for these existing technologies are set to continue dropping through 2007, and any new flat panel innovations are likely to come with significant price premiums.