FX Luminaire released this week the new VE, a hanging LED fixture that complements both commercial and residential landscapes with soft, overhead illumination.

The VE is available in a choice of four metal finishes on a copper sleeve, and ten powder coat finishes made of anodized die cast aluminum with 1 or 3 LED for any application. An optional perforated sleeve can be used to create a starlight effect. Each fixture includes four colored filters (amber, blue, green, and frosted) for color temperature customization. The VE is zone-able with the Luxor controller and dimmable as an option.

Here are the details.

FX Luminaire announced the release of the new MO, a LED wall fixture that complements both commercial and residential landscapes.

The MO is available in a choice of four metal finishes, and 10 powder coat finishes made of die cast brass with one or three LEDs for any application. Like other FX Luminaire fixtures, it includes four colored filters (amber, blue, green, and frosted) for color temperature customization. The MO is available with zoning and dimming capability using ZD Technology with the Luxor controller.

More details are here.

Home automation has long been the domain of the upper middle class and wealthy. Expensive, professionally installed proprietary systems have traditionally dominated the home automation landscape.

The rise of mobile tech and ubiquitous wireless communications — combined with less expensive and more powerful sensors and electronics — are finally enabling the availability of relatively affordable devices. Most feature leading-edge functionality and the ability to control them from anywhere in the world using your favorite mobile device. Many of the most compelling products are the efforts of Silicon Valley startups, not entrenched players.

From monitors that sense when your plants need water to video-capable deadbolts that allow owners to communicate in real time with visitors to smartphone-adjustable multi-color LED bulbs, these domestic tech tools are finally delivering real power and convenience at prices that all of us can at least consider.

But what can you really get? And how much will it cost? Companies like Nest, Lockitron, Skybell, Dropcam, and LIFX are introducing new consumer-friendly products and services at a rapid pace. Nest (now owned by Google), the most recognized name in home automation, has sold millions of cloud-connected and remotely controlled thermostats and smoke detectors. The appeal of the Nest thermostat is primarily the average annual savings it delivers in the form of decreased heating and cooling bills, so it’s a relatively easy sell (even though tech geeks lust for it for obvious and different reasons). But what about other, lesser known products?

Most home automation devices aren’t as practical as the Nest thermostat in terms of saving money. Many of them provide considerable convenience or safety, however (depending on your use case). For example, LIFX sells high-quality Wi-Fi controllable LED light bulbs. While some of the nicest units on the market, they’re also priced in the zone that gives most middle class consumers the willies: $100 for a single bulb. However, LIFX’s models don’t require a hub controller; you can get started with the purchase of only a single bulb.

For homes on a budget, but still wanting Wi-Fi controlled bulbs (many of which offer thousands of colors, all selectable from one’s smartphone or tablet), there’s products like Philips’ Hue, with bulb kits beginning at about $185 on Amazon. The entry-level kit nets you a three pack of bulbs and the hub necessary to control them from your Wi-Fi network. Philips promotes the “personalization” of its bulb system, noting that owners can adjust the brightness and color of its bulbs to meet any occasion or mood. Other companies offering LED bulbs that can be controlled by your mobile device include ilumi, which sells units priced from $90 to $100, and Insteon, with bulbs costing a modest $30 — but they require a $115 hub (always read the fine print).

“Smart” locks and doorbells are an interesting and sometimes amusing category of home automation. The top vendors include Lockitron, Kwikset, Skybell, and Doorbot. Lockitron, a Silicon Valley startup, sells a remotely controlled smartlock. The $180 device boasts user-friendly installation and fits over most conventional deadbolts — instead of requiring the replacement of your current lock, like most competing products. The $200 Doorbot takes a different approach, adding a wide angle video camera to the outside doorbell and alerting you to visitors on your smartphone. It’s a full two-way communication system, allowing owners to see visitors and speak to them via an integrated speaker and microphone. It’s even compatible with Lockitron, allowing owners to not only communicate with visitors, but also unlock the door to allow entry into their homes.

The $220 Kevo, from old school deadbolt manufacturer Kwikset, takes automation and convenience even further, providing one-touch admittance to your home by trusted friends and family — as long as they have their smartphone in their pocket. But what if your kids don’t have smartphones? Kwikset provides key fobs that act as authenticators, solving this problem (after the company received a lot of flack from customers for not bundling such fobs with the first release of the product). The Kevo can even detect if a request is coming from inside or outside your home, helping prevent unauthorized entry.

Such products, because they’re software-controlled, even allow you to schedule access by particular individuals, granting them a permission code that works only during a specific time slot. This is practical for folks who travel for their jobs or simply aren’t home for a plumber, pet care, or other domestic maintenance. And what if the service tech is late? They can ping you and request real-time entry.

The companies behind these products obviously market them based on convenience and security. It used to be said that most advertising appeals to only two emotions: Greed and fear. I suppose the convenience of these home automation devices points toward our greed, while security enhancement obviously caters to our fear.

This blog post could easily grow to 10,000 words by describing the plethora of home automation products available today to consumers — some of which are really cool, some of which suck, and many of which are not-quite-affordable for people who count themselves among the middle class. For that, you’ll have to wait for my forthcoming book in 2015, Understanding Home Automation. In the meantime, do some Googling to learn if any of these leading-edge products can enhance your particular home with greater security and convenience.

And if the neighborhood kids begin pranking your Doorbot, don’t say I didn’t warn you.

Curt Robbins

Curt Robbins is author of the following books from Amazon Kindle: Home Theater for the Internet Age ($9.95), Understanding Personal Data Security ($4.99), Understanding Home Theater ($4.99), Understanding Cutting the Cord ($4.99), and Understanding Digital Music ($4.99). You can follow him on Twitter at @CurtRobbins, at rAVe Publications, and on Flickr.

Absen Optoelectronics showcased a new range of super high resolution LED displays for rental and fixed installation at ISE 2015. Absen will be giving a demo of its smallest pitch outdoor LED display for the high end rental market – the X5.  Another major stand highlight will be the new A1.9 4K LED display, the lowest pixel pitch product currently available from Absen, alongside the existing A2 Ultra HD indoor LED display with 4K capabilities; both ideal for control centers, shopping malls, conference rooms and other high-end indoor applications. Other products on show will include the C7 Mesh LED display for customizable indoor and outdoor stage rental, the F8 Flexible LED display for indoor creative staging rental, and the A97 Stadium LED perimeter display for sports advertising.

X5 Outdoor Rental Display

Brand new on the stand at ISE will be Absen’s new generation, smallest pixel pitch (5.2mm) X5 Outdoor Rental Display. The X5 consists of two main parts – frame and module – for simple installation, maintenance and spare parts management. The module provides IP65 rated protection, front and rear access, and a dual backup power supply design.

A Series Indoor LED Displays

ISE will be the first occasion that the A1.9 will be presented to such a huge European audience. Both the A1.9 and A2 (2.5 mm) products use high quality black SMD LED to deliver high color contrast ratio and excellent performance under challenging lighting environments. Key differentiators include integrated A3C (Absen 3rd Generation Calibration) Technology, which allows panels from different production runs to work together in one display, and a unique Hot Swap module feature, which means no re-calibration is required on replacement of faulty modules or receiving cards.

Further features include an Absen patented connector, ensuring seamless connection with precision adjustment within 0.15mm, and a user-friendly information window that monitors voltage, temperature and total operation time.

C7 Mesh LED Display

In addition to the A Series models, Absen will exhibit its C7 (7.5mm) Mesh LED display, an ultra-lightweight panel offering high brightness, flexible installation style and dazzling video performance in indoor and outdoor applications. An auto-lock system enables faster installation and disassembling, and a flexible panel design allows for -10 degree to +10 degree angle continuous adjustment.

F8 Flexible LED Display

The F8 (8mm) Flexible LED display for creative staging and rental will also be at ISE. Not only is it the lightest in the industry but it also features the industry’s highest transparency when used with smoke, wind and dry ice machines. One module can be installed in just three seconds using vertical connection by hook and horizontal by magnet. Integrated rigging and power balance function reduces installation time, and an integrated receiving card and module decreases failure rate.

A97 Stadium LED Perimeter Display

The A97 (10mm) Stadium Perimeter display will be present on the stand. The display offers IP65 waterproof capability for permanent outdoor stadium and sports club applications. It is both front and rear serviceable, with supporting legs for convenience and its back-up data and power route ensures a reliable performance at all times.

Here are the details.

Editor’s note: This blog was written as an introduction to display technologies for non-industry insiders. Everyone can use a refresher though, so we’re reprinting here anyway.

OLED! LED!  Plasma(RIP)!  There are, today, quite a few technologies for video displays. What does it mean? What’s best? Today we’ll talk about video displays. This is an AV post, but if you’re a “regular” user and curious about some of the buzzwords stick around.

Last week I stopped by at the Sapphire Marketing Roadshow as it  traveled to my city of New York. Sapphire, as my AV friends know, is the rep firm for Crestron, Digital Projection, Vaddio, RPVisual, and Silicon Core. The latter was the brand I was most interested in seeing face-to-face. They might not be a household name outside the AV industry, but they have the most eye-catching product at this show: direct-view LED displays.

Plasma and LCD

Display technology has gotten confusing since the days when televisions were big and the only choice was a CRT screen. I’ll assume you know that a video image is made up of tiny dots called pixels, and that a high-definition image measures 1920 pixels across by 1080 down. A “4K – UHD” display doubles each dimension, to 3840×2160 (the purists in the industry don’t consider this “true” 4K as the horizontal pixel count is less than  4000 pixels. Aspect ratios are another topic). Today’s question is what those pixels are, and how we light them up.

You can, without being too far wrong, think of a plasma display as an array of very tiny fluorescent lights (this is a metaphor. You’ll remember that I like metaphors). Each element contains a phosphor which, when hit by an electron will admit a certain wavelength  of light. Red, green, and blue phosphors will be combined to create the full range of color; when they’re lit they’re on, and when they’re off they’re off – more on this tautology later. Plasma is considered an emissive display technology because each elements emits light.

An LCD tv works differently. An LCD screen is a sort of glass sandwhich; the “bread” is a polarizing filter on the inside (facing the light source) and the liquid crystal on the outside (facing the viewer). In between are colored filters which give us our red, green, and blue pixels. An electrical charge applied to the liquid-crystal element would twist the crystal to align its polarization with the inner layer, letting light through. LCD displays are transmissive in that each element allows light to be transmitted from a white source.

Which is better? This is a question I’ve heard a great many times before the slow death of plasma. For viewing experience, emissive technologies are better. Remember when I said that an element that was “off” is off? That means that “black” on a plasma display is truly black — no light. “Black” on an LCD will always have some leakage; it’s a darkish-grey masquerading as black.

So why did plasma die? Plasma displays are very heavy. They use a great  deal of energy. And they are susceptible to “burn in”. Phosphors degrade as they emit light. This not only means that the entire image dims over time, but that displaying a static image may degrade one group of elements more than the rest, leaving a persistent “ghost image” on the display.

Did I hear someone ask, “What about my LED TV”? LED TVs (not OLED or direct-view LED walls which we’ll talk about later) are a special case of LCD display. Remember that “light source” I was talking about earlier? In older models that was a compact fluorescent bulb. IN newer ones, it’s white LEDs, placed either at the perimeter of the viewing area (edge-lit) or behind it (back-lit). Back-lighting creates a brighter, more evenly lit image, while edge-lighting allows flat panels to be made almost absurdly thin.

OLED

Organic light-emitting diodes (or OLED) is an emissive technology, involving organic molecules which behave as LEDs. As with a plasma display, each color is directly emitted. Also as is the case with plasma, these elements will degrade with use. Your ten year old television? That would be functioning at less than half the brightness as when it was new if it used OLED. It’s a great technology (in my opinion) for cell-phones. By the time your phone display has noticeably degraded you’re very likely to have replaced it with a newer model for other reasons (processor speed, screen size, amount of memory, etc). You’re even more likely to have dropped it and shattered the screen in the first place.

Direct-view LED

This brings us back to the Silicon Core display at the Sapphire roadshow; Silicon Core is one of several manufacturers of large-format emissive displays which use individual LEDs for each pixel. The challenge with those has always been “pixel pitch” or the distance between elements. Older LED displays, with a pixel-pitch over 2mm, are only well-suited for applications in which the viewer is very far away; closer, one sees “dots.” We now can pack them in much closer; Silicon Core’s “Lavender” display has a pixel pitch of 1.2mm. It’s one of the prettiest displays I’ve seen, with two clear drawbacks:

First, there’s cost. Not only are they expensive to purchase, they are expensive and difficult to mount. A large LED display of this type is made of many smaller (about a foot and a half square) blocks, each of which needs to be placed within a very tight tolerance to give a seamless-looking image. Because maintenance and connectivity is at the rear, this often involves a complicated “scissors” type mount with moving parts allowing for some kind of front-access.

Secondly, there’s a manufacturer-specific issue with Silicon Core: It’s current “top of the line” model is called Lavender. Previous models, with larger pixel pitches, include Magnolia, Peony, Orchid, Sunflower, and Tulip. I’m afraid that before too long they’ll run out of recognizable and pleasant flower-names, and we’ll be stuck with “Stinkweed” or “Corpse Plant.”

NEC Display Solutions Europe (NEC) has announced a new range of fine pitch LED products that will be showcased at Integrated Systems Europe (ISE) 2016. The new LED LiFT (LED intelligent Front Technology) range is the latest development following the partnership between NEC and S[quadrat], the LED manufacturer and media system integration specialist.

The partnership expands NEC’s market opportunity for LED display installations and will give more customers access to a greater range of NEC solutions. These include the new LED LiFT range based around a 16:9 module with a unique magnet solution. The pixel cards are interchangeable, allowing for upgrades with minimum effort and cost, and easy servicing via access from the front. Four pitch sizes are available: 1.5-millimeter, 1.9-millimeter, 2.3-millimeter and 3.8-millimeter, all using the same module.

Together NEC and S[quadrat] will create total LED solutions with the highest image quality and performance to meet customer needs. These solutions are built to order (BTO), and orders have already been received for a number of LED installations for high profile customers using fine pitch indoor and outdoor LED.

The two companies will also explore additional applications, enabling expansion to new market sectors whilst offering the highest quality of LED solutions, designed and fully EMC tested in Germany, together with one of the best video processors in the market. The partnership also enables close product and solution development to ensure customers in the corporate, transport, retail, cinema, leisure and museums vertical markets will benefit from an even wider range of effective display technology.

Having demonstrated LED solutions together at ISE 2015, InfoComm 2015 in Florida, NEC Showcase events (in Germany, UK, U.S., Scandinavia and Italy), and at exhibitions such as Gitex in Dubai and CineEurope in Barcelona, during 2015, the partnership is now well established. At ISE 2016, NEC Display Solutions will display new products including the 1.5-millimeter and 1.9-millimeter modules — the latest fine pitch LED products with a unique feature set providing an elegant modular, future ready solution and with front and rear access for ease of maintenance.

Here is NEC’s ISE site.

Common Cathode LED manufacturer SiliconCore will showcase its smallest LED pixel pitch display yet — a 0.95mm prototype. At ISE 2016, this technology demonstration will be held at booth 10-K110, from 9th — 12th February at the RAI in Amsterdam.

SiliconCore’s 0.95mm LED prototype is a fine pixel pitch display for extremely close proximity viewing. The display claims 2000 nits in brightness, 4K resolution and a 165″ diagonal image at less than one meter.

This advancement in pixel pitch, contrast ratio and brightness has been achieved due to SiliconCore’s Common Cathode driver architecture. The Common Cathode method reduces the heat output of displays for lower power consumption, a longer lifespan of over 100,000 hours and removes the need for additional cooling.

Here are the details.

Sony is literally blowing people away with their new Crystal LED technology. Sony’s new Canvas display system is a high-end visual display that re-defines the landscape for large-scale visual entertainment. The new technology, Crystal Light Emitting Diode Integrated Structure (CLEDIS), uses Sony’s ultrafine LEDs in a unique surface mounting structure as its light source to deliver a visual experience not possible with even the highest end conventional LED array. This scalable new type of canvas delivers an unmatched viewing experience, offering 99 percent black surface area, for high contrast, high resolution and immersive visuals.

This new type of canvas enables limitless flexibility and creativity in public spaces and high-end visual entertainment.  It is far more advanced when compared to the technologies currently available for large-scale display, offering a leap forward in depth, contrast, color, resolution and impact.

Sony’s Canvas display technology is designed for a range of commercial applications and immersive experiences, from industrial product design and manufacturing, theme parks, museums, and high-traffic lobbies to corporate boardrooms and broadcast studios. It is ideal for any environment requiring intricately detailed video displays and realistic simulation on a large scale. Here are the details.

The VPL-GTZ270 is a 4K laser projector with 5000-lumen brightness making it ideal for a range of B2B and commercial applications, especially for entertainment use including planetariums, theme parks, museums and retail. The projector is designed to create an immersive reality viewing experience, with image enhancement functions including “Reality Creation” upscaling and compatibility with High Dynamic Range (HDR) content, giving users the ability to view the entire range of an image accurately and clearly. A wide color space covers the full DCI range and simulates the new ITU-R BT2020 color gamut. The GTZ270 is extremely quiet and virtually maintenance-free for 20,000 hours of operation, even in the most demanding conditions. It can also operate in 4K 3D mode.

The VPL-GTZ280 is a 4K projector with options for higher brightness up to 5000 lumens making it ideally suited for simulation and training applications. It uses high-speed motion functions and new high-speed 4K 120Hz signal processing capability for 4K3D 60Hz left eye/right eye and reducing blur in fast motion scenes, in addition to smear and transport delay reduction, infrared light output for night vision stimulation and vibration resistance.

At InfoComm, Sony is showing its full PTZ camera line, including the SRG-120DU and the SRG-360SHE models.

New to the line is Sony’s SRG-360SHE 30x robotic model. This new model adds power over Ethernet (PoE+) and triple simultaneous video and audio streaming (embedded audio in IP, HDMI and 3G-SDI). The simultaneous output of 1080/60p baseband video through the three streaming outputs makes it ideal for webcasting and viewing while simultaneously recording live events.

The SRG-360SHE is designed for use in classrooms, courtrooms, boardrooms, houses of worship and other settings where full HD visual communications are needed. In addition to the triple streaming outputs, other advances in the SRG-360SHE include a series of enhanced PTZ capabilities to produce professional-looking results even with non-professional camera operators. ‘Semi-Synchronous Simultaneous Motion’ improves transitions between subjects, delivering smooth, coordinated camera motion that does not distract viewers. A Slow P/T setting allows for precise tracking of objects or people, for example, a speaker walking across a stage. PTZ Trace Memory provides the ability to store a sequence of camera movements as a preset. With “trace,” a complicated series of motions/commands can be carried out flawlessly and replicated as needed.

The SRG-120DU is Sony’s first USB 3.0 PTZ Camera and is being widely designed into corporate boardrooms due to its professional picture quality, ease of installation/use and compact, lightweight design. The HD model incorporates Sony’s high-sensitivity 1/2.8 -type Exmor CMOS sensor and the latest View-DR technology.  It also features UVC video compatibility and a wide field of view with plug-and play simplicity for superb image quality, even in challenging lighting conditions. More information is here.

Sony is showcasing its expanding laser projector lineup, offering 14 models spanning from 2,000 lumens to 7,000 lumens and meeting nearly every commercial AV application. To go along with these new projectors, Sony has the first interchangeable ultra-short throw lens for 3LCD projectors.

Featured projector models include:

VPL-FWZ65/VPL-FWZ60: Sony’s VPL-FWZ65 (6,000 lumen) and VPL-FWZ60 (5,000 lumen) 3LCD Laser Light Source Projectors offers bright, beautiful images with low running costs, minimal maintenance and flexible installation. The powerful Z-Phosphor laser light source is teamed with Sony’s advanced BrightEra 3LCD projection engine to deliver extremely crisp WXGA (1,280 x 800) resolution images with natural-looking rich, stable colors. Offering 20,000 hours of virtually maintenance-free operation, reality creation to analyze and process every input signal to refine detail, clarity and sharpness for naturally up-scaled images, edge blending to seamlessly blend images from multiple projectors and a variety of optional lenses, the new projectors are a high-performing choice with a low total cost of ownership that is ideal for a wide range of business, education and general presentation applications.

VPL-FHZ57: Featuring many of the same benefits as Sony’s other laser projectors, the VPL-FHZ57 operates at 370W power, making it the most energy-efficient laser light source projector. The low power consumption also reduces heat dissipation, in turn lowering fan noise. The VPL-FHZ57 laser projector has the quietest operation in its class (32dB, 28dB at Standard Brightness mode).

VPL-FHZ65: Sony’s VPL-FHZ65 6,000lm WUXGA (1920×1200) laser projector uses a BrightEra panel technology to reproduce natural and vivid color. It is designed to deliver enhanced picture quality using features including “Reality Creation” and “Contrast Enhancer,” technologies already in use by Sony’s home theater projection systems. Reality Creation analyzes and processes input signals to refine detail, clarity and sharpness for naturally up-scaled images. The Contrast Enhancer feature expands the perceived dynamic range of the signal.

VPLL-3003 — Ultra-Short Throw lens for Sony projectors: Sony’s newest lens option is the VPLL-3003 ultra-short throw lens, the first interchangeable ultra-short throw lens for 3LCD projectors. This lens offers sharp focus and minimized picture distortion due to a large mirror system, and easy adjustment of lens shift and focus via remote control. Its 0.33:1 throw ratio allows it to be used in tight spaces with no clearance from the wall.

The lens can project an 80” to 300” diagonal image with minimal throw distance (39” throw distance for 140” diagonal image), making it ideal for small meeting rooms, as digital signage or use in museums.

Here is everything.

Leyard just launched a 0.9-millimeter TWA Series LED video wall display. As you likely know, the pixel pitch of an LED display is the distance from the center of an LED cluster to the center of the next LED cluster, measured in millimeters.

The Leyard TWA Series 0.9mm joins the existing Leyard TWA Series line of fine pitch LED video walls available in 1.2, 1.4, 1.8 and 2.5 millimeter pitches. Leyard TWA Series LED displays are spec’d to use 35 percent less power than conventional LED displays. When the display is in standby mode with a black screen, it consumes up to 60 percent less power than the most power-efficient LED video wall displays on the market today.

The Leyard TWA Series is the first LED video wall solution to feature an innovative “flat panel” design that includes a 16:9 form factor optimized for the most popular high resolution standards. Leyard TWA Series displays are self-contained units with standard HDMI inputs and looping, along with optional redundant configurations. The larger 54-inch cabinet means more of the video wall is factory-aligned, easing the time and cost of installation with fewer displays to align and seams to perfect. The larger units also mean that fewer displays are needed to create a video wall, reducing the potential points-of-service.

The 0.9-mm Leyard TWA Series display specs are here.

PixelFLEX’s new TrueFLEX LED video tile is designed for non-traditional LED applications as it has the ability to curve in any direction and attach to virtually any surface. Available in 2.5mm, 3.0mm, 4.0mm, 6mm and 10mm indoor pitch options, the fanless design allows for a no-noise solution that can operate in any indoor space, and its slim and lightweight construction provides a low-profile installation that needs very little space for wiring and mounting. With its single module replacement for easy onsite service, TrueFLEX uses magnetic modules and set screw ports to attach to virtually any surface, and the external sending and receiving control, paired with quality connectors, guarantee safe and reliable module connections.

Here are some details on the technology.

By Seth Waltz
Principal, AVL Designs

“Everybody says they wants LED theater lighting, yet we hear many people saying they have it and hate it. Totally believable because they got the wrong LEDs for their application.”

In the old days of analog lighting (meaning incandescent and halogen lights) lights pretty much turned on and off and up and down when you told them to. If you wanted to dim those lights there were a variety of devices that would dim them pretty well with the occasional lamp sing noise. (For those of you who don’t know what lamp sing is, it’s a buzzing of the filaments in the lamp that is audible as a buzz when the lights are dimming. Good dimmers don’t produce that noise, but cheap ones produce it in various forms,depending on the type.)

Thanks to flat-screen TVs we enter the wonderful world of LED lighting. Yes that’s right — television is at fault for LED lighting. Somebody realized that a nice flat screen display actually made colors and light all of the same time. That seemed like a good idea for lighting, which it is except that it also has a bunch of problems (what a surprise).

LED accomplishes a variety of things other types of lighting technology could only hope to do. Energy efficiency is one of those. About 25 percent of the energy for the same light output, but the best thing about LED is the ability to change color. Being able to pick any color of the spectrum without a gel being inserted in front of the fixture is really kind of spectacular. The problem is that getting the color requires a sophisticated array of LEDs and a driver which is basically a computer telling a variety of LEDs what to do (a room full of small computers).

Another problem with LEDs was how to get them to look like theatrical lights do. Most theatrical lighting uses lenses to provide focused tight beams of light. These beams of light have sharp edged capabilities that allow lighting designers to light just what they want and not have light spilling all over the place.

The first group of LED offerings couldn’t really do that because they were groups of individual LEDs that provided a wash of light, not a focused beam. (In the wash of light, there were also issues with the use of the individual color LEDs to create the lighting field so the whole thing wasn’t smooth and consistent.)

LEDs have come a long ways and some are just as good as traditional fixtures (not the cheaper ones).

Many specifiers select LEDs from catalogs, or the recommendations of manufacturers. LED should never be selected without actual experience with the specific product, and a full understanding of how they operate and are used in theater.

Some of the problems with LED lighting that were never issues with incandescent:

• Color Rendering Index – Incandescent Quartz stage lighting has a high CRI in excess of 90. What his means in simple terms is your eyes like it as a white light source. Many LEDs have poor CRI , your eyes don’t like them.
• Color Consistency – Pick a few LEDs from different manufacturers and check their red/green/blue base Led colors – they are not the same. This makes it impossible to get various fixtures to match when trying to create white or a specific color. (With some manufacturers pick two of the same fixture and they won’t even match)
• White Light color Temperature – many LEDs do not have a good “white “period. When the red green blue base colors don’t work white doesn’t either.
• Poor dimming
• Stepping, flickering, etc.
• Noise – Some LEDs have fans that kick on that are louder than HVAC noise.
• Lack of light output  if you make the fans quiet. Many “quiet mode “ settings restrict light output  by as much as 50 percent.
• High Frequency noise when dimming in some fixtures. A squeal or whine when dimming. Changes depending on the color selected.
• Colors at the edge of light beams – “rainbowing”
• Life spans that are much lower than expected – High output devices for theater are made possible  by overdriving the LEDs so they last much less than the 50,000 hours people expect. As low as 20,000.
• Comparing data is not simple as many standards that do exist are not published by many manufacturers. You can’t compare what isn’t published.

Summary — You have to test to select appropriate LED fixtures.

At AVL we test equipment and test fixtures extensively before we specify them. We test fan noise, dimming, color, rendering, dimming noise and overheat behavior. Based on those tests we will specify different fixtures for different projects based on budgets, needs, field conditions, etc.

Examples:

• High fan noise isn’t a problem in mall, but is in a theater.
• White not a big deal if I’m lighting in blue.

LED is a fast moving industry so we are testing fixtures regularly. The latest offering may or not be an improvement, and in some cases the latest and greatest have new issues that didn’t exist before.

LED Replacement Lamps and the dimming problem

What about just using LED lamp replacements? There are many “dimmable” LED replacement lamps on the market. You would think if it fits in the socket and says it dims it will right ? Not so much. Here is a brief discussion….

Incandescent Dimming

• Incandescent dimming has been  easy and for the most part reliable. Many dimmer types will dim an incandescent lamp pretty well.
• The hope has been that LEDs would be better. That is not the case.

Dimming of LED fixtures or Lamps:

• LED lamps are called thing like “dimmable” and “truly dimmable,” and “really dimmable”
• Unfortunately, “dimmable” can mean many things. It may mean they will dim well, not dim well or not dim at all. Dimming can also shorten the LED lamps life if the drivers and the dimmer type are not compatible.
• Any dimmable LED solution needs to be a designed solution. LEDs have solid-state drivers within the lamp or fixture, which need to be compatible with the type of dimmer being used. Dimmer types : ELV, MLV, SSR, TRIAC, SINE WAVE AND IGBT dimming are all options, but not all will properly dim a particular LED lamp or fixture or in some cases a particular quantity of LEDs on a circuit.

Data Control Dimming

• Some Led fixtures  dim directly via DMX data, some with 0-10VDC (which has its own issues), some over DALI and other control schemes. These control schemes are more reliable where the fixture is self-dimming, but the solid-state driver circuit boards within the fixtures can be subject to damage from surges and low voltage.
• In essence these driver boards are mini computers, which need to have protected power, and have their power fully shut off when not in use. If this is not done the fixture life may be shortened by data driver failure. This requires an additional layer of control in the form of remote control relays or switches to kill the power feeds when the fixtures are dimmed off.

There are also issues of LED consistency device to device. A row of LEDs where all but one dims well is  likely a bad LED lamp  not necessarily a bad dimmer. It may also be conductor resistance, a bad LED driver, phase reversal or a host of other issues.

Substitutes when dealing with LED’s cannot be simply a cut sheet saying a lamp or device is “dimmable.” Specific combinations of LEDs, quantities,  and dimming devices must have been tested as a system to verify they will actually work.

A well written on online resource that describes the issues of LED Lamp dimming is available here.

The department of energy has authored this, as they recognize the issues moving forward.

Their basic recommendation is not to use any design without a mock up. Therefore when a contractor wants to substitute a lamp for a specified LED they will need to verify with the manufacturer that they have test data to support the dimming of the lamp in the configuration on the plans with the dimmer types and curve being used.

At AVL, we keep dimmers in our office and test lamps we might specify as replacements.

Seth Waltz is an acoustical consultant and principal at AVL Designs. Find Seth on LinkedIn here and AVL online here or on Twitter @avldesignsInc.

This blog was reprinted with permission from Seth Waltz and originally appeared here.

Handy AV will be joining other AV mounts manufacturer B-Tech to demonstrate its own hardware at ISE 2017 – showcasing 4mm pixel pitch HandyLED panels in a B-Tech pop-out mounting solution.

Handy AV, an AV integrator working across the commercial and retail AV sectors, has begun producing its own line of LED panels in recent years, with a portfolio that now includes 1.9mm, 4mm, 6mm and 100mm pixel displays.

This year’s ISE will see their 4mm solution being utilised in a 3×4 display on B-Tech AV Mounts’ Hall 5 stand – demonstrating how LED panels can have the same pop-out convenience now enjoyed by videowall displays. Handy AV’s 4mm LED solutions are widely used in retail signage across Europe, with installs completed for clients including Primark, Dior and adidas.

Handy Managing Director Aubrey Wright believes B-Tech’s mounting solution will help to further drive the adoption of LED displays. He says, “There is no doubt that LED panels continue to play a big part in commercial digital signage. We are delighted to be joining B-Tech AV Mounts on their stand this year as we showcase not only how easy it is to mount an LED solution, but also how a pop-out mount makes maintenance and replacement of panels a simple process.”

Handy AV can be seen on B-Tech AV Mounts’ booth – Hall 5 Stand R-60 at ISE in Amsterdam in February.

Today another eulogy was given to AV technology. As with most AV eulogies, the problem is that the technology declared dead is still alive and well. In this instance, the projection screen business was “buried alive” by Gary in his latest blog “Is the Screen Business About to Disappear?” However, like Uma Thurman in Kill Bill, I’m about to punch through that coffin, explaining why the screen business isn’t disappearing anytime soon.

In full disclosure, I work for a company that owns a screen manufacturer, as well as several other AV product companies. However, my outlook is not based on my manufacturer affiliation, but rather my real world experiences as an integrator and the experiences that end users have.

Gary’s blog puts forth three theories on why screens will disappear. I encourage you to read his whole blog that is linked above, but in short, his arguments are LCD and LED screens are proliferating, interactive displays are gaining in popularity, and that in today’s world, projecting on the wall is just as good. Since the last point is really used in the article as the final death blow, I’d like to address that first.

The Wall.

Projecting on the wall is not a new idea. People have tried it for a long time with varying results. The reason projecting on walls has not displaced the screen business is because it rarely turns out well. Why is that?

Walls aren’t flat.  

Show me a wall built by a GC, and I’ll show you the ripples in it. Whether the studs are not flush before sheet rock or the tape and mud seams are slightly imperfect, most walls are not flat. Project on one of these walls and you will quickly see straight lines become curved.

Now Gary argues that projection mapping could correct this and theoretically it could, but these ripples are small and slight. Short throw projectors, like the ones mentioned in the article, exacerbate the problem, as the short focal length means less tolerance for wavy surfaces and enhanced distortion. Projection mapping is great at adjusting for protrusions, corners and other architectural features, but adjusting for these tiny imperfections would be a little more difficult. Now add the cost of that software and programming in each job and you may just find that a screen wasn’t a bad investment after all.

Even if you could map out all of the imperfections from a visual standpoint, there is still an issue with interactive projection, in that the scanning system that tracks the touch interactions needs a flat surface as well for accuracy. Imperfections in the wall of varying depths will create potential calibration issues and a sub-par interactive experience with false touches.

As a final note, I installed an interactive projector in a high-end real estate office in 2011 and projected onto a wall coated with Opti-Rite wall covering that turns the wall into a white board. The wall was not flat and caused the projected image to be wavy and distorted in places, all issues that having a proper rigid, interactive screen would have corrected. Luckily, that projector only used an IR pen for the interactive component, so the issues with a laser scanning, touch-enabled interactive system were not an issue in that project.

Walls aren’t smooth.

Now Gary argues that wall texture isn’t an issue, but physics of light argue differently. If you’ve ever played pool, you know that angle of entry equals angle of exit. Higher resolution projectors don’t solve this problem. They make it worse. As pixels get smaller, the chances of texture on a projection surface reflecting that pixel away from the eyes as opposed to straight back to the eye actually increases. Moire effect also becomes more of a potential issue as texture increases. Speckle in laser projectors has been seen to increase as the texture of the projected surface increases. This is why screen technology has continually gotten smoother with each iteration. The proper screen will mitigate all of the potential negative effects that a textured wall would create.

Walls aren’t uniform.

Uniformity in a projected image matters. If an image has hotspots or varying levels of brightness, the quality immediately suffers. This applies to LCD and LED displays, video walls, and arrays as well. Go look at a video wall that has not been properly calibrated and you will instantly see this is true.

A painted wall may seem like it has even coverage, but shine some bright light on it and you will immediately expose the truth. You will see where the paint is applied unevenly, where there are thicker coats of paint than in other parts of the wall, and even where the mud and tape seams may reflect light differently than where the paint is just on the sheet rock. The resulting image can look splotchy and striated.

As an integrator, I once did a job where we built a simulator. It used a 6-degree of motion platform (like Star Tours at Disneyland) and utilized a 30,000-lumen projector to create the imagery. The client insisted on projecting on their curved wall as opposed to buying a curved screen. The moment the system was powered up, the streaks in the painted wall were immediately visible and the customer did not have time to properly spray the wall (multiple spray coats done horizontally from top to bottom until even coverage is achieved) before the attraction opened. The result was an experience that was less than immersive, something that would have been avoided if the proper screen was used.

Walls don’t reject ambient light.

Ambient light rejection (ALR) is a real thing in the screen world. If you want to achieve contrast ratios in a projected image, you need to be able to reject ambient light. You can’t project black. ALR screens typically have a base gray level that enhances the blacks and the screen has gain properties that keep the colors correct and the whites white.  Painting a wall gray will not have the same effect, as paint does not have those gain properties. It will add a base level gray to white and all the colors in between.

Gary asserts that color correction could be applied to address varying wall colors, and that is in theory true. However, a base wall color other than white will change the white levels as well. Depending on the shade of the wall, you may have to add lumens to the projector to get your white levels back, and then color correct for the hue of the paint. Here’s the problem, lumens are expensive. Even if you wanted to use the wall, add lumens and color correct the image, odds are you just spent more money in projector brightness and labor than you saved by not utilizing the proper screen.

There is no wall.

Go into many corporate environments and you will see conference rooms. All of those rooms technically have walls. However, many of those conference rooms are fish tanks with glass walls on all sides. Others have glass walls on the entry side and a window opposite of the entry. In these cases, many times the room dictates that the screen needs to go in front of a piece of glass or in front of a window. When this happens a drop down projection screen may be the only option, as there is no solid wall to project upon anyway, even if all the problems above did not exist.

Now I’m not saying that there aren’t applications where you may want to utilize a wall for projection. There may be. However, those walls should be purpose built so that they are flat, smooth and painted evenly with a white paint to help assure that the images are correct and acceptable. These would be purpose built spaces, not places where projectors are just added to an existing room as an afterthought. Even then, a system where top and bottom pre-leveled tracks are installed to the wall and then projection material stretched between those tracks would create a better surface.

As another point on this, a large amount of manual projection screens are utilized in schools, and these screens pull down in front of charts, maps or chalkboards which means the wall is not free for projection even if you wanted to utilize it.

LCD and LED Proliferation

I won’t spend a lot of time here, as Gary concedes that large venues or rooms where screens need to be larger than 100″ in diagonal will still need projectors. If LCD and LED aren’t killing projectors, then they aren’t killing projection screens either.

Price per square foot of the screens, installations where the existing structure can’t support the weight of a video wall, complexity of mounting solutions, etc. may all preclude LCD and LED in many installations.

In all of these cases, a projector and a screen will still be the preferred solution.

Interactive Displays

There is no doubt that there is a renewed buzz around interactive displays, especially with the introduction of Jamboard, Surface Hub and Spark. But here’s a little secret.

Interactive displays aren’t new.

Interactive displays are being utilized more, but those sales will affect traditional flat panel sales as much if not more than they will affect the projection screen business.

These interactive displays top out at 84″ right now.  In rooms where larger screens are needed, these will not kill projection screens. In the hierarchy of importance, visibility trumps interactivity. What good is an interactive display if no one can see it? In these cases an interactive projector will be used instead and because of the issues above, a proper screen should be utilized to assure video quality and interactive accuracy.

Here’s another secret.

Interactive displays aren’t cheap.  

Don’t get me wrong, interactive displays are worth the money when the application demands it. I used to work for an interactive display manufacturer so I know the benefits and applications well. However, I also know from my experiences selling them, that in areas where no interactivity is actually needed, they will not be purchased just because they are cool.

Interactive displays are built for small rooms with viewers and participants that will stand close to and touch the screen. This is not the traditional application for most projection screens anyway.

The projection screen market IS changing.

So, all of the above being said, I’d be remiss to recognize that the projection screen market is changing.

Flat, rigid, writable projection screens are taking the place of traditional pull down screens in front of white boards as more interactive projectors enter the market.

Transparent and translucent projections screens or projection films are finding more applications in digital signage applications like window displays and mediatecture due to the capabilities of laser projectors to run without bulb replacements and in new orientations.

Ambient light rejection screens are allowing projectors to be placed in brighter environments to maximize brightness and contrast without compromising screen size.

Specialty projectable paints and wall coatings or fabric wall systems will be incredibly important as more immersive AR and VR environments are created.

However none of these shifts spell death. Technology always changes and applications shift. It is our AV reality.

If you don’t mind having a washed out, splotchy, patterned, wavy image that needs to be corrected for color and geometry, has reduced interactive accuracy and screen resolution and requires a brighter, more expensive projector to restore white levels… then by all means, use the wall. Heck, maybe the bed sheet will kill the projection screen business too.

I’ll declare projection screens dead when large format OLED film can be applied like wall paper to a wall or rolled up like a drop down screen at a reasonable price.

Until then, you may want to invest in a projection screen.

If Samsung’s vision for LED Signage comes to fruition, we’ll see a lot more displays in creative places in the near-future. And, their new IF Series is the industry’s first with HDR (High Dynamic Range) technology thus, it boasts a 1600 nit break brightness spec. As you’ve no doubt seen, most LED displays struggle to present red, green and blue color hues accurately and without distortion in low grayscale settings. Samsung says the IF Series displays have a unique grayscale management algorithm that maintains consistent R/G/B gradation for improved color accuracy. As a result, low-brightness indoor environments, such as galleries, museums and shops, can display content at optimal quality with uniform and precise color expression.

Made for indoor applications, it has a 2.5mm pixel pitch, is spec’s at over 100K hours, is front-serviceable and each 192 x 216 pixel module is only 480x540x65 mm in size and weighs less than 14-pounds.

The HDR-equipped IF Series joins the IL and IS Series of indoor LEDs and the XPS100 for outdoor applications and now Samsung is competitive to any manufacturer out there.

Check out all the specs and their full line-up here.

I was talking to a friend and industry colleague the other day who was a little frustrated with the way a recent project had gone.

The AV design included a large 1.9 mm dot pitch direct view LED screen in a large presentation space.  Based on viewing distances from the seated positions in the room, all the math checked out and the screen should look great in the space.

Then at zero hour, the client related that they wanted to be able to have people come up to the screen and collaborate. This meant that the dot pitch on the 1.9 mm solution was going to become very apparent. Realizing this, the client asked for the solution to be upgraded to 4K.

Hmmm.

For any of you that sell or manufacture direct view LED, you most likely already see the issue with the request. Changing a 1.9 mm solution to “4K” requires the screen to get wider and taller. Adding “resolution” to this solution just makes the screen BIGGER, it doesn’t actually add any detail.

What the client actually needed was more “pixel density.” The only way to accomplish this with direct view LED was to use tiles with a smaller dot pitch, which was cost-prohibitive based on the budget, or to go to an LCD based video wall, which introduced some bezel interruptions and changed the infrastructure and mounting needs.

The problem with the resolution spec is that it doesn’t actually relay “perceived” resolution.  

Question 1 – What looks better from 3 feet away: a 42″ 1080p LCD display or an 84″ UHD LCD display?

Most people would lean toward answering the UHD display given it is 2160p vs. 1080p, but the truth is the pixels are exactly the same size on both displays.

A 42″ 1080p display and an 84″ 2160p display have identical pixel densities, about 2751 pixels per inch (PPI). Many of you may have already known this or been able to conclude it rather quickly, so let me give you a harder one.

Question 2 – What looks better from 3 feet away: a 2×2 video wall made with 80″ 1080p LCD displays or a 160″ diagonal 1.2 mm direct view LED array?

This immediately becomes harder to figure out as we know the resolution spec alone tells us little about the perceived resolution, and the LED arrays are typically referred to by dot pitch, a spec not used in LCD displays at all.

The answer is that an 80″ 1080p LCD display would look better from a perceived resolution perspective. It has a pixel density of 758 PPI, whereas a 1.2 mm direct view LED array has a pixel density of around 410 PPI. You’d need to upgrade to a .9 mm dot pitch direct view LED solution (735 PPI) in order to get the same perceived resolution.

To the credit of the direct view LED community, they seem to realize that “dot pitch” doesn’t readily convey resolution, and they do utilize “pixel density” as a specification on their data sheets. They include it in the form of “pixels per square meter,” allowing one to easily differentiate between different direct view LED solutions.

I would suggest that it may be time for LCD display manufacturers to start doing the same, and include pixel density as a specification. As I’ve illustrated, it can be ascertained from all the other data on the spec sheet but it takes a little math. Currently, an integrator or consultant would have to determine the area of an LCD display, divide the number of pixels in the display by the total area in square inches to get pixels per inch. Then they would have to multiply that by 1550 in order to get to the “pixels per square meter” specification included by the direct view LED crowd for a direct comparison.

Regardless of whether LCD display manufacturers include this or not, designers should be paying more attention to the pixel density of their solutions than the “resolution.” It can assist in determining whether or not direct view LED arrays will meet the clients expectations for perceived resolution, as well as determine whether that video wall should be a 3×3 constructed of 55″ 1080p dispays, or a 2×2 constructed of the 84″ UHD version.

Are you considering pixel density in your solutions? I’d love to hear your take in the comments below.

GLP’s new JDC1 hybrid LED strobe creates a new class of strobe that goes way beyond the standard definition of a hybrid. Fundamentally, the JDC1 has been designed in three sections, which can be controlled independently or as a complete synchronized unit.

The fixture itself contains a traditional single tube element with an incredible clear, bright, white output, derived from 216 white LEDs, and then combines that with a surrounding, format-filling full face of RGB LED power, utilizing 1,320 high quality LEDs. Whether running independently, or together these elements offer the brightest output unit its class with retina burning output.

The two RGB plates can be divided into six separate ‘pixel’ sections on each plate and then operated with full pixel mapping control. This alone creates stunning effects, whilst the LED tube can pop through with high intensity flashes.

And, the JDC1 also allows pixel mapping of the LED tube, which is broken down into 12 individually addressable sections. This enables the tube to create incredible motion effects, either when forward facing or through shadow play behind a performer. Whilst the tube is operated in this mode, the RGB plates can give a solid background color to strengthen the effect.

Finally, along with working as a strobe light, both the tube and the RGB plates can be run continuously for high output blinder and wash light effects, which never reduce output or have thermal cut-out. With their wide beam angle, this allows for wide coverage of backdrops, stage areas or audience sections. And, JDC1 also offers dynamic movement, with a 16-bit, 185° tilt range, allowing you to place effects exactly where and when you want them to be — to derive the most possible power and impact.

Here are all the detailed specs.

B-Tech has responded to growing demand for hassle-free mounting of today’s LED panels with the launch of a new universal LED mounting range. Designed to work with the most popular LED panels on the market, B-Tech’s LED mounting solutions can be specified to requirement using B-Tech’s online LED configuration tool – available here.

Using their System X technology at its core, the new range can be ordered for wall mounting, mobile and fixed base applications. Using off-the-shelf components means that solutions can be packaged and shipped quickly, with B-Tech staff pre-assembling all key components to save installers on-site time.

All key mounting requirements are met, with solutions for wall mounting, freestanding, mobile (on castors) and bolt down now available.

Key features include:

• Suitable for front service or rear access panels
• Silver aluminum, with black or silver upright color choice
• Universal design suitable for variety of LED panels and configurations
• System can be extended to any required width for large installations
• Easily specified for any display configuration using B-Tech’s online configurator

Again, all the details are here.

THIS IS A PROMOTED POST – PAID BY SAMSUNG

There’s no question that just adding a digital sign to a retail store or a building’s entrance doesn’t catch anyone’s attention any more. Everyone’s got them now.

So, how do you stand out?

LED are quickly emerging as a go-to source in the battle for customer engagement — especially when wanting bigger, bigger, bigger signs. And, this new generation LED isn’t like the old stuff. Modern LED signage offers exceptional (and seamless) picture quality, infinite signal compatibility and scalability that virtually no LCD can even come close to.

Samsung Electronics, in particular, recently took its LED lineup capabilities to the next level by integrating the High Dynamic Range (HDR) imaging technology — more commonly found in its TVs and large-format displays. Adding HDR capability to LED makes the content pop and significantly increases the contrast ratio. And, more color, to a consumer’s eyes, shows up as more resolution. So what people notice is better imaging and higher-resolution pictures and video!

And, while others may claim HDR-like color, it isn’t HDR unless it’s HDR. Samsung doesn’t just process HDR, but they actually display HDR encrypted content — most other LEDs DO NOT.

While this LED revolution in signage provides opportunity, it can also create confusion for business, as there are all sorts of quality claims along with a plethora of no-name companies entering the signage space with so-called quality LEDs.

What’s the differentiator with Samsung LEDs? Well, here are just three:

Dynamic Peaking

Any indoor environment understands that varying natural and ambient lighting conditions can hinder presentation. These businesses need versatile displays to overcome potential distortion and deliver captivating content at all times.

In turn, dynamic peaking is essential for successful LED display performance. This innovative technology adjusts on-screen content to suit a range of grayscale and environmental settings, and helps business owners overcome common consistency obstacles. “Dynamically peaked” LED displays can reach maximum brightness levels nearly twice as high as that of standard LED offerings, with the P2.0 and P2.5 models of Samsung’s IF Series specifically raising LED brightness to a 2,400-nit peak. The company’s comparable P1.5 model similarly elevates brightness above the 800-nit standard to a 1,600-nit peak. As a result, featured content remains clear, colorful and consistent even against the extremes of white or dark backgrounds.

Color Management

Modern LED displays have advanced to incorporate a wider RGB color gamut than that of their LCD counterparts. This extended depth of shades brings even the most minor visual details to the forefront, and gives content an added layer of immersion. However, despite this extended depth, some LED offerings still struggle to execute against this wider gamut and instead display images with blurry or oversaturated tones. In the most extreme cases, skin colors can appear with an unnatural reddish hue.

To overcome these discrepancies, ensure that your target LED displays include thorough color management technologies. Color management deploys specialized algorithms to ensure consistent RGB gradation and showcase colors with greater precision across all content formats, even those at low grayscale levels. These algorithms also defend against skin representation discrepancies, ensuring that featured subjects appear as intended. Just imagine seeing featured models at their most beautiful in promotional retail content, or newscasters with a lifelike aura that makes it seem as if they are in the room.

And Samsung’s color management is easy for any newbie or AV veteran user to customize and activate. Users can identify, store and activate the native RGB shades that most closely fit their branding and content needs. This instant, easy-to-repeat color deployment rings advantageous for museums, corporate facilities, control centers and other environments that must immediately view and transmit branded content across multiple screens at the highest possible clarity.

Scene Adaptive HDR

This is a biggie as consistency is the foundation of truly effective LED content — as a large image is made up a separate LED tiles butted-up together, one bad tile can throw off the entire wall’s color consistency and uniformity. And, variations in grayscale and brightness levels can deter the delivery of business messaging, or worse, change it.

Scene adaptive HDR technology that can recognize and correct visual irregularities is another LED display feature that will make your investment worthwhile. A combination of several aligned technologies, scene adaptive HDR ensures that all core content maintains consistent elevated brightness and an audience-friendly presentation as the display simultaneously achieves peak brightness.

Specifically, specialized inverse tone mapping algorithms fine-tune contrast within individual frames or scenes in respect to the display’s overall size and the featured content’s brightness. Modern scene adaptive HDR technology also includes a complementary dazzling defense feature that gives viewers’ eyes room to scale as brightness levels shift, and eliminates a common source of visual discomfort brought about by the perceived presence of white or gray color shades. This anti-dazzling feature also reduces brightness in other parts of the screen as brightness rises, delivering a more comfortable and engaging long-term viewing experience.

LED signage technology may be a new endeavor for certain businesses, and it’s possible that decision-makers may not be fully sure how to search for an implement new-age displays in a way that will make a difference. However, the potential of such innovations to attract new audiences and drive sales remains tantalizing. By understanding what LED features will drive the best possible results, businesses can position themselves as true innovators and leverage technology to achieve greater goals.

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The year 2018 could turn out to be full of giant changes. The market is certainly poised for it as you have a number of technological advancements that have emerged simultaneously — each of them have a lot of potential. First, let’s review all the latest in emerging AV technology and then and I’ll tell you what I think will be the biggest one of them all in 2018, and why.

SSD Lighting: In the world of projection, both laser and LED lighting will hit the big-time in 2018. Although Christie Digital’s affirmation, last month, of Futuresource’s stat that 91 percent of the projectors sold in 2016 were still lamp-based, they have — along with nearly every other projector company — retooled its production lines for laser-based projection. If a company hasn’t done that, it’s most likely decided on the other leading SSD (solid-state device) lighting source, LED. SSD lighting will change everything in AV in 2018. And, I am not just talking about third-party relamping companies going out of business. I am saying that colorimetry will be revolutionary. Any — I mean ANY — side-by-side you do with a traditional lamp-based projector compared to a laser-based projector will win you the project for the replacement every single time (unless, of course, the customer doesn’t have the budget — and, in that case, why do the demo?). When given a reference to what the color reproduction from the original source is on lamp vs. laser, laser wins 100 percent of the time. With LED (vs lamp), it’s easily 90 percent of the time.

But, SSD isn’t all about color — tt’s about lifetimes too. Most laser- and LED-based projectors, no matter the brand, are being spec’d at 20,000+ hours of operation — and some are even reaching the 30K hour mark. This simply blows away any lamp-based projection model. Everyone will want to upgrade.

But not everyone will be able to afford it. And, although SSD lighting will be the largest trend in projection, it won’t be the biggest thing in AV for 2018 — so keep reading.

Direct-View LEDs: It drives me — and about about 85,000 other AV professionals — crazy when I see ads on TV or even in our own trade publications touting the new generation LCD displays as LEDs. They aren’t LEDs. There’s a big difference between LED-lit LCDs and actual LED displays. Sure, LED-lit LCDs are awesome and way, way better than CFL-lit LCDs — who would’t buy an LED-based LCD monitor or TV today? LEDs last longer, have way, way less uniformity issues and much better colorimetry than any other backlighting technology for LCD monitors. But, they aren’t LEDs. LEDs will be big in 2018 and we need to stop the confusing the customer with our nomenclature as since they are, in fact, very different from LED-lit LCDs.

The big thing for LCDs in 2018 will be how they continue to get thinner, cheaper and lighter while also getting brighter. We’ll see brightness go up 30 percent in 2018, we’ll see prices reduced nearly 50 percent from mid-2017 pricing and we’ll see a plethora of 75″+ displays hit the market by mid-year — all at half what they cost now. But this won’t be the biggest thing to happen to AV in 2018. So keep reading.

LEDs: If I were starting new business in the market right now, I’d start an advertising agency that specializes in content for LED displays — this is the next big thing in advertising. The entire digital signage space will be revolutionized by LED and much of it will start to happen in 2018. In places where we were putting LCDs before (e.g., menu boards, drive-thrus, transportation signage and retail video walls)m LEDs will swallow up the market. I mean, LEDs will dominate nearly every direct-view display conversation and will certainly own 60 percent recent of the video wall market by the end of 2018. And because they are SSD, they too will have colorimetry that’s significantly better than LCD. In many cases we’re actually having to run the LED panels at 40-60 percent of their potential brightness because they’re too bright — so really will last forever. Yet, even with all that happening in 2018, LEDs will still not be the biggest thing to effect the AV market in 2018. So keep reading.

OLED: So far, LG is kicking butt with OLED. LG’s Wallpaper display is the one everyone wants for direct-view installs, but it’s still very expensive. But if the client wants perfect colorimetry throughout their signage network or in conference room, there’s only one choice in direct-view and that’s OLED. No one sees it and doesn’t think so — even LG’s competitors. However, issues like so-called burn-in, 24/7/365 operation limitations and cost will relegate OLED to the very high-end of display technologies. Companies like LG and Sony will be perfectly fine with that as they improve from generation to generation. OLED will accomplish 24/7/365 operation in 2018 without burn-in and pricing will fall. But even with all that happening, it’s not the biggest overall trend of 2018. What is? Keep reading — and no peeking ahead.

4K to 8K: Every single friend I have — whether they are in the AV market or not, wants a 4K TV. I live in a liberal arts college town full of non-techie types that see me as their only tech outlet and I get asked, all the time, about 4K TVs. Heck, even my parents went out over the holidays and purchased a 4K TV from Samsung — the QLED Q7 series.  It looks amazing — even with old-timey 1080p coming from their AppleTV. But, all this talk in our market about 4K will diminish when Sharp debuts an entire line of 8K displays at CES next month. This introduction will garner much of the CES attention worldwide and will help put Sharp right back on the big-time monitor-map as an alternative for more than just their collaboration systems, dubbed AQUOS BOARDS. 8K will be big for Sharp.

However, just because you can display it, doesn’t mean you can use it yet. 8K will mostly be relegated to demo-land and wow-factor applications. So, although you will see it garner a lot of attention in 2018, routing signals will be difficult (in fact, currently, the Extron XTP II CrossPoint Series is the only switching system able to route 8K without compressing it because of its 50 Gbps digital backplane). 8K will impress, no doubt, but it won’t be the biggest trend in AV for 2018. So again, keep reading.

BYOD & Collaboration: Thanks to Barco and its ClickShare systems that debuted in 2012, a new market was spawned for wireless transmission systems — heck, Barco even bought one of them: WePresent. 2018 saw the launch of the first 4K BYOD system in the Barco CSE-800 and a few others have followed as well. Barco will continue to own the largest market share for stand-alone BYOD systems in 2018 and watch for them to launch a more cloud-friendly version this year (more on that later).

But, 2017 spawned an even bigger segment for AV than BYOD that will get even bigger in 2018. Dubbed the collaboration board by this very author when the segment found its way to the mainstream market, these are mostly direct-view LCDs that include white boarding, annotation and wireless sharing. They are integrated with cloud-based video- and audio-conferencing (without a PC), most have a USB camera and all of them include multi-touch interfaces. Infocus and Sharp didn’t totally invent the category a few years ago with respective launches of the Mondopad and the AQUOS BOARD, but they certainly set the bar for what was to come. And, 2017 saw nearly 15 new companies enter the market with collaboration boards — now everyone from Google to Sony has one. Name any display company and they have one. The biggest surprise here wasn’t a flat-panel manufacturer but projector manufacturer EPSON. The company’s BrightLink Pro, once aimed only at the higher-ed market, grew exponentially in 2017 because of two factors: They launched a corporate version and they added laser-projection models.

You can also expect to see digital canvas pioneers Nureva launch laser and higher resolution models this year as well. This market will explode in 2018. Everyone will be talking about collaboration, again, this year and the number of companies and products won’t contract one bit — you will see more, in fact. This will, no doubt, be the largest growth segment of the AV market for 2018 but it’s the second largest big-trend of the year. So read on.

AV-over-IP: Network-based AV, AVIT, AVN — whatever you want to call it, AV-over-IP is coming and coming fast — maybe faster than we all thought? In all honesty here, there are segments of the AV market that are all-in when it comes to an AV-over-IP future (like higher-education) and there are segments that are still in the “not yet” stage (like the corporate AV market). The adoption of AV-over-IP might even be outpacing supply as there are very few alternatives. The SDVoE (Software Defined Video Over Ethernet) protocol based on the Aptovision chip reference design is the leading technology out there due, in part, to their 25+ partners building (including companies like Sony, Christie, DVIGear, iMAGsystems, Aurora and Belden) and also, in my opinion, to their savvy hiring of industry-leader Justin Kennington. Justin has set a great vision and organizational system in motion over at the SDVoE Alliance and they are the system that will likely emerge at the end of 2018 as the leading sales of AV-over-IP systems — passing industry leader SVSi.

That said, the AV-over-IP market will literally explode and change the landscape WHEN Extron and Crestron BOTH have a family of AV-over-IP offerings. In fact, they will likely help validate the market shift towards IP. Crestron has one line, so far, in the NVX series using JPEG 2000 over a 1Gig network, but expect to see more in 2018. Certainly AV-over-IP won’t come close to 10 percent of the signal routing market by the end of 2018, but we could see one or two clear leading systems or direction site market is going — setting up for 2019 or 2020 to be the big-shift to move it all to the network.

The VTC Cloud: Desktop videoconferencing has been around for years, but 2017 was the year it truly became mainstream with, mostly, Zoom Video Communicaitons and Skype for Business, dominating the discussion — so much so that both Cisco and Polycom partnered with them. And, Zoom was savvy enough to have even worked deals with companies like Creston — who integrated Zoom into their Mercury huddle room system as well as Logitech, box and Slack. Although Cisco is still the market leader in videoconferencing, Zoom isn’t far behind them — along with Skype (aka Microsoft), BlueJeans and newbie (at least in this segment) Google. What this all means is that the video call is going in the cloud. Zoom just needs a PC (or something like it that can connect it to the Internet) and a USB camera — that can be a 720p, 1080p our even a 4K USB camera. You can even make 4K calls! The days of the hardware-based solution is numbered and 2018 will put most of the proverbial nails in that coffin.

And, speaking of the 4K call, a tiny unknown company called Altia Systems — you’ve probably never heard of them but probably heard of their product, the Panacast USB camera — took advantage of the concept of the 4K video call and created a 180-degree field-of-view USB camera that allows everyone in a room to be seen on a video call — even when sitting right up next to the screen. This, along with the new Logitech 4K Brio and MeetUp USB cameras, turn Skype, Zoom and BlueJeans into the “this is more than good enough” videoconferencing system for more than 90 percent of the users.

2018 will see more USB cameras, a new, giant company enter the so-called soft-codec (cloud-based conferencing) market and a nearly total shift away from hardware-based codecs. This is still not the biggest of all new trends of 2018. But what’s next is!

AVaaS: AV as a Service. Maybe you’ve heard of it, maybe you haven’t. But you will. And you’ll start doing it in 2018. The future of everything we do is in services and customers love this concept. It takes the confusion, complexity and caution out of buying AV gear from them. It simplifies your AV lines (as you can build all your AV systems with just a few lines rather than having to carry hundreds of brands), allows you to always specify what you want (and what you can best control and maintain) and sets you up to OWN the client relationship. Basically, to simplify it — your customer would be leasing each system from you rather than buying it. And, as long as it did what they wanted, was simple to use and worked when they need it, they won’t care what you use. So, you are in control of it all.

Look, AVaaS requires much more than a few paragraphs in a future-looking product round-up, and I will write about it a lot in 2018 as it emerges, but, here’s the basic concept:

AVaaS is where all the AV hardware, software, programming and integration services are paid on a recurring basis — maybe annually, quarterly or even monthly. The customer will like this as it removes the risk of owning a depreciating asset that is generally locally managed. And, you will like this as, since you are the owner, technically, of the AV gear, you become their in-house AV company — their go-to for all AV needs. Most of your clients have been using this model in some capacity for years for both IT and furniture. But, in the AV space, until now, we’ve pretty much only applied it to services — selling recurring service or maintenance contracts — and sometimes proactive monitoring, too. But why not everything?

The obvious response right now, from the integrator who may be reading and pondering this is that they can’t afford to finance the AV gear — you can’t afford to buy it all and lease it, in a sense, to the customer. But, you can. Basically, you form a relationship with a leasing company, you slightly mark-up their service and then resell it to the client. But, you also get to roll-up the programming, software licenses and integration fees (and maintenance, if you want) into one recurring fee. The advantages are huge — the obvious ones are, as I said, you own the relationship with the client. Since you’re managing and charging them regularly for the training rooms, why not use you for their meeting rooms too? And, and this is the biggie, you get to ALWAYS pick the the right AV gear for them. This will significantly reduce your overhead, eventually, as you can basically standardize on a set of AV gear you always use for every system. OK, maybe not all of it — but certainly 90+ percent of it. This means you will know that set of gear inside out: how it works, what its idiosyncrasies are, what its tolerances are, etc. — you’ll know those systems so well you’ll know before something happens what’s likely to happen. Servicing identical systems becomes easier and more profitable — especially if you’re good at selling services and/or proactive maintenance plans. Ssimplifying your systems means you’re carrying fewer brands, have fewer SKUs, spend less time finding a product that does something unique for the client and spend less time differentiating each system. In an AVaaS model, leasing programming becomes, legally and technically possible — and very profitable. There’s no question who owns the code.

AVaaS will be HUGE. The clients will start to demand it, eventually. So, consider adopting it now — be a pioneer and, if you don’t know how to do it, ask! AVaaS will be THE BIG THING everyone starts to talk about in 2018 and it’s my pick for the biggest new trend for the new year.

An Honorable Mention – Digital Content Management: Back in October of 2017, Barco issued a press release on a new version of its higher-ed focused WeConnect system. In that press release was a barely-mentioned “Digital Engagement Platform.” But, that mention didn’t go unnoticed by us. This is foreshadowing the direction Barco believes the future of the AV market is heading — content management. The press release describes the Digital Engagement Platform as a digital collaborative portal allowing clients to manage their WeConnect subscriptions over the internet. Translation: Barco has set up an online system to manage content that doesn’t require a locally-hosted network AND they’re even setting up WeConnect as an AVaaS product that has a sort of a seat-license to use it.

Maybe this was intentional or maybe it wasn’t. But you can be sure that every major AV manufacturer who currently does signal routing and management did notice — or at the very least, is looking at integrating such a platform themselves. This is all part of the future, forthcoming AVaaS model and this would even stack on content management — the holy grail (think AppleTV for the corporation) — the AppleTV is his the device and all the content management is the secret sauce. Or, put another way, the Amazon Dot or Echo is only the cheap interface to the intellectual-property-rich Alexa platform. The value of the Digital Engagement Platform is, in fact, intellectual property!

That’s it! I hope you enjoy this and will share it on social. Please also post it in your cubical or office and track it for accuracy. I’m curious what you think too! So comment below and let us know your thoughts.

A new 70-page report about fine pixel pitch LED display technology is now available for free to those working in the digital signage industry. The report, written by respected industry veteran Dave Haynes, founder and editor of Sixteen:Nine, explains not just the technology, but also the marketplace, ecosystem and applications. Haynes put it together over several months and visited factories in Taiwan and China. The report was sponsored by several companies, which are referenced in the report, but it is still vendor-neutral and intended to educate without steering readers to specific conclusions, according to Haynes.

Although there have been numerous LED vendors at trade shows for years, those of you who went to ISE last month in Amsterdam will probably agree that it feels like there has been significant development in LED technology in the past year, particularly as it comes to fine pixel pitch displays and Chip-on-Board (CoB) systems. At the show, we saw fine pixel pitch LED displays being used in new applications, including as a replacement for cinema projectors in a movie theater on Samsung’s stand. No doubt we’ll see some innovative LED display demos at DSE in Las Vegas in a couple weeks as well. It is definitely a technology worth taking a deeper dive into.

The report is free to download after the reader fills out some details. The form page will refresh with a link at the bottom of the post, which the reader needs to click in order to download the report. Click here to go to the download page.

Presented by John Fisher at the 2018 Almo Professional E4 AV Tour

In this discussion, we will look into the value of curved vs. non-curved displays, OLED vs. LED or LCD technologies. We will discuss HDR and why it is an important consideration with regards to choosing display technologies that fit your needs. We will also look at the impact contrast ratios and pixel counts may have on your decisions when choosing a new display. Understanding these new technologies and terminologies will assist you in making the best selection when choosing your next display devices. Make 2018 the year you take the plunge and implement digital technology and signage solutions. That’s one resolution you can’t afford not to keep.

View the presentation below or click here.

NEC Display Solutions of America today announced the launch of its new F-Series indoor fine pitch direct view LED (dvLED) and Q-Series indoor and outdoor dvLED panels that offer customers a complete video wall solution. The F- and Q-Series mark the first NEC Display dvLED products to be launched from the company’s acquisition of S[quadrat] earlier this year.

The F-Series is a 16:9 aspect ratio dvLED panel with a tight pixel pitch from as low as 1.2mm for indoor use. With up to 18-bit color processing and the option to add HDR10 capability, the F-Series delivers superior content reproduction with sharp images and deep contrast. In addition, its cabinet dimensions match up with a 55” large format display (LFD), so customers can easily upgrade an LFD video wall with high-end dvLED panels. Because dvLED delivers a brighter image than LCD and projection technologies, it is a perfect choice for customers who need a video wall in bright areas like an atrium or a room with skylights or storefront windows.

The F-Series offers nearly 100 percent uptime thanks to a standard redundant power supply and optional redundant scan card allowing redundant signal processing at the dvLED panel and data distribution between the controller and the dvLED panel. This is a key feature for Command and Control customers where maximum uptime is mission-critical.

Meanwhile, the Q-Series dvLED panel is designed for customers who need a larger display, with a 1:1 aspect ratio panel and a wider pixel pitch starting at 2.84mm to produce seamless images at an attractive price point. Designed for digital signage and digital out of home customers in retail, houses of worship, theater, restaurants/QSR, zoos, and banking, as well as corporate customers looking for displays in lobbies, cafes, and for general information uses, the Q-Series is available in both indoor and outdoor models.

The Outdoor Q-Series dvLED panel features a clear image even during the day, thanks to its 6000 Cd/m2 brightness, factory color-calibration, and panel design. It delivers a low total cost of ownership thanks to its calibrated front and rear serviceable panels, and 80,000-hour lifespan of about 10 years. In addition, the outdoor model features additional seals to provide an IP 65 dvLED panel that offers protection from the weather.

The F- and Q-Series is available starting this month and they are here.

LED video technology will begin to surpass projection technology, spurring a wholesale replacement of projectors in the house of worship market when audiovisual (AV) manufacturers and integration firms realize the path of least resistance for churches is in modularity.

The end of video projection for large venue churches is now in sight. Indeed, the wholesale of replacement of projectors in churches is now a viable reality.

The Value Threshold for LED Video

The math alone for replacing projection with LED in churches is compelling. It is estimated well over 250,000+ churches in North America alone currently use video projection. Within that huge number is another estimated group: about 10,000 churches using projection in multiple venues on the same campus. And another key subset: Multi-site churches, which in 2012 numbered about 8,000, are now thought to be nearly double that for multi-site churches in the United States alone. Interestingly, those 15,000 churches have an average of three or more campuses per church.

For the audio vendors reading, a similar pattern started over a decade ago with line arrays replacing conventional speaker systems.

When technology advances to the point where the benefits outweigh the costs, customers will spend money for greater value. LED video technology has reached this threshold.

In the house of worship market, weekend services with a clearly articulated message are a key priority, a truth that applies to video as well as the spoken word.

While the stats are focused on North America, and the U.S. in particular, the images below show a significant percentage of churches worldwide where LED video technology is already in place. Some of these boast screens that dwarf the largest projection screens in U.S. churches precisely because projection could never attain the combination of resolution, brightness, and contrast achieved by LED video technology.

Wholesale Replacement of Projection

Projection technology is almost always a fixed, static installation with limited options for modifying the screen location, size, and required projection distances. However, because the cost-per-lumen (measured brightness) has steadily marched downward over the years, projection became the assumed standard for all but the smallest screen sizes where flat panel monitors are an option. With this assumption came the accepted limitations of projection and the resulting compromises made in church venues.

Projection technology has increased perceived brightness through a combination of technologies. From flat-out brighter lamps and bulbs to increased contrast ratio to the screen surface and screen viewing angles, manufacturers have done as much as they can to make projected images look bright and saturated in spite of ambient light from windows, stage lighting or even indirect bounce light sources. The physics demanded compromise in order to make the projected images ‘pop’ including stacking projectors, refocusing lighting instruments or even requiring black-box, windowless rooms (similar to movie theaters) to absolutely control or minimize any non-projected light sources.

The resulting trade-offs are evidenced in the wide variety of architectural decisions made by church architects and church leaders, yet all understood and recognized the limitations of projected images and simply accounted for the accepted compromises. With LED technology reaching fine pixel density (known as ‘pitch’ in LED parlance), increasing brightness, contrast and the additional color mixes of LED diodes, the viability of LED for indoor (and outdoor) applications means that the assumed compromises are now off of the table.

Since LED video technology is available in multiple configurations, shapes, sizes, and configurations, the possibilities for stage design are nearly unlimited. This freedom does come at a price, as increased resolution and a finer pitch is more expensive than projectors on a square foot or square meter cost.

However, with the significant advancements in LED video technology, including the brightness, contrast ratios, pixel density and pitch, modularity, sizes, shapes and placement options, the value proposition of LED video has already made this technology the standard in the rental, staging and touring markets. The house of worship market has already begun to rent and install LED video walls and LED video curtains to leverage these technology advantages for their theatrically-lit and/or broadcast video-lit stages.

The gallery of images below represents how LED video technology has already been incorporated into churches and other large stage venues. The possibilities are nearly endless and represent the dawn of a new era in church video.

Though not nearly an exhaustive list, I have included the following list of LED video technology manufacturers (alphabetically) as a sampling of the overall vendor space and to include links for my usage of the images above.

• Absen
• Aoto
• Barco
• Blizzard
• Chauvet
• Christie Digital
• Coleder
• CreateLED
• Daktronics
• Dicolor LED
• Elation
• Gloshine
• INFiLED
• LianTronics
• Macroblock
• Mega Systems
• MR LED
• Nanolumens
• Tritonvt
• Unilumin
• Vanguard LED
• Yes Tech

Crossing the Chasm to LED Video Adoption

To ‘cross the chasm’ between the early adopters and the early majority of churches replacing much of their large-venue projection with LED video technology, the AV industry as a whole needs to present the option to address both new video display opportunities and show the total cost of ownership differences on an amortized 15+ year schedule.

Manufacturers, consultants, and systems integrators all should be helping church buyers understand the usable lifespan of your technology so that they can amortize the initial cost out over the lifespan of that product, in not only years but also in the number of services it will likely handle before it’s time to upgrade it. LED video technology has a much longer expected lifespan than projection technology and has no expensive replacement lamps to add to the cost of ownership.

Vendors will be able to present a base installation of key LED video components which can be expanded with rental solutions for changing up the staging requirements over time. The actual investment cost has a value proposition for LED video technology that projection does not: modularity.

Considering the huge number of churches with multiple services (and even multiple venues and campuses), it’s not unreasonable for a church to have more than 250 services/special events in its venues per year. Those church stats at the beginning of this article represent somewhere in the neighborhood of 8 million services per year, based on the number of venues. The total cost of ownership should be easily calculable using the variables of the LED video screen cost, the number of services per year, the number of hours used per service and the number of venues using the technology.

For large-venue (1,000+ seats) church auditoriums and sanctuaries, LED video technology will surpass projection technology and usher in the wholesale replacement of static projectors with flexible, scalable LED video technology in the house of worship market. The question is, who will be first-to-church-market with a comprehensive, amortized solution?

What do you think? Do you agree with Anthony Coppedge’s thoughts about LED video for the house of worship market?

LED has experienced explosive market growth over the past three years. In fact, you’d be hard-pressed to find any other display technology that’s experienced the market growth that LED has. And it’s not Just for stadiums, arenas and billboard anymore. Now, LEDs are everywhere — inside and outside. In fact, it’s probably the one technology that will likely, one day, usurp the LCD. Now we even have LEDs with a fine enough pixel-pitch to go into meeting rooms.

This webinar, led by rAVe founder Gary Kayye, is designed to update you on where we are right now with LED and where it’s heading over the next 12 months. He’ll cover the technology, the new applications LED-based products are likely to end up in and give you an update on the market leaders. If you sell displays going into meeting rooms, retail stores, boardrooms, schools, airports or if you just do meeting rooms, you should consider watching this webinar and understand what’s what and where you can make money selling and installing LEDs. This webinar is sponsored by Leyard Planar

View the recording here. 

Leyard and Planar today announced a strategic partnership with Lighthouse Technologies to target the sports and entertainment market.

Lighthouse brings a product line and years of implementation in the sports market with LEDs. They have installs in professional venues in Los Angeles, Cleveland, Dallas, Seattle, Philadelphia and Atlanta and a major presence at Times Square in New York.

The partnership follows Leyard and Planar’s hiring of industry veteran Douglas Moss as general manager for sports and entertainment in March 2018. Moss leads the companies’ focus on the sports venue market and brings more than 30 years of experience, including serving as president of Madison Square Garden Network; president and CEO of the Buffalo Sabres and president and COO of the Phoenix Coyotes (National Hockey League teams). Moss’ career also includes senior roles with the International Hockey League (IHL) and the NHL’s Anaheim Ducks.

To learn more about the Leyard and Planar partnership with Lighthouse and their offerings for the sport and entertainment market go here or here.

As part of its Fine Pixel Generation solution campaign, Absen will showcase three new narrow pixel pitch (NPP) product series at next week’s ISE (Amsterdam RAI, 5-8 February 2019) on booth 12-C60. Featuring the company’s Integrated Matrix Device (IMD) and Common Cathode (CC) technologies, the new Aries Series (AX 1.5mm) and CR Series (CR 0.9mm) provide five times the strength as traditional LED screens whilst consuming 20 percent less power.

Absen’s new Aries Series 1.5mm is the company’s first NPP display that has been specially designed to for sub-2-millimeter fine pitch LED in rental and staging. Supporting HDR10 (high-dynamic-range) standard, the AX 1.5mm allows for a broader range of colors, while being road-rugged thanks to its corner edge protection. In addition, the AX 1.5 is also designed to be used in fixed installations due to its 27.5” cabinet size, achieving a 16:9-aspect-ratio.

The CR 0.9mm has been designed to provide the highest detail to support mission-critical decision-making in secure operations. The product is ideally suited for the corporate / control room sectors, featuring true pixel-to-pixel HD in 4K and 8K, while achieving high grayscale at low brightness levels via CrystalView technology.

The final product, the Absenicon is an all-in-one display solution specifically developed for meeting rooms, event spaces and lecture theatres, designed to empower presenters and captivate audiences. Boasting higher brightness, contrast and colour saturation than traditional projectors and LCD displays, which can be typically found in such spaces, Absenicon comes in five different standard sizes ranging from 110″ to 220″ including 4K compatibility.

In addition, Absen’s stand at ISE will also be showcasing existing products, including Polaris, the leading rental series for indoor and outdoor applications, the N-Plus Series which is suited for retail and corporate applications, as well as Cassette for outdoor and transportation advertising.

Absen is here.

By Satish Agrawal
CEO, Bambu Vault

This year will be an exciting time for the lightning industry as it leverages the latest technology to innovate LED design, color, wavelength, energy efficiency and more. All indications point to healthy growth for the lighting industry in 2019 and the next few years.

Several factors are contributing to this growth, particularly demands for increased energy efficiency amid environmental concerns, and new “smart” technology embedded in lighting for use in homes, offices and cities. Some estimates expect the market for smart lighting products to grow at a compounded annual growth rate of 27 percent from 2017 to 2023.

In 2019, we can expect to see the convergence of technology and market demands push new innovation, design and color of LED lighting. As we look forward to a bright future, here are several trends that will affect the lighting sector over next year:

1. Increasing energy efficiency will continue to be important. Efforts are continuing to increase energy efficiency, for example in flat panel lighting – to beyond 125 lumens/watt. However, customers are now increasingly demanding value. Hence $$/lumen will become a more important metric.
2. Soon all LED fixtures will become IoT-enabled. Soon all LED light fixtures will be enabled for the Internet of Things (IoT). With IoT-enabled or “smart” fixtures, users will be able to turn on, turn up, dim or turn off lights using an app, whether they’re home (and using Alexa or Google Home) or away. This capability will soon become a must-have. We expect that over the next decade, all lighting will be digitally connected.
3. The form factor for LEDs will lead to new designs, profiles and applications. Traditional lightbulbs offer limited variety of shapes and options; there wasn’t much thought put into the design of traditional incandescent and compact fluorescent lighting. They tend to be bulb shaped and either frosted or clear. But LED lights offer tremendous design flexibility and that’s become a key differentiator and has opened new ways of using lighting in commercial, public and residential spaces. Lighting design is moving toward slim profiles that are easy to retrofit and install. Previously, retrofitting required rewiring but LEDs provide more light and flexibility, and require less space, than traditional lighting.
4. Healthy lighting will become a necessary requirement in the workplace, schools, hospitals and other environments where alertness is a priority. Consumers are becoming increasingly aware that light from smartphones and other devices as well as from LED fixtures can affect sleep patterns and long-term health. In fact, a number of studies have shown that having the optimal daytime light spectrum can increase human concentration, analytical ability and attentiveness; in other words, increase human productivity and decrease feelings of tiredness. Similarly, having the optimal nighttime light spectrum has been shown to prevent the suppression of melatonin, an important human body agent that prevents cancer. As a result, healthy lighting solutions (also known as biofriendly or human-centric) that can align with the body’s circadian rhythms will become increasingly mainstream.
5. Increasing awareness of the importance of the impact of the non-visual spectrum on human health will drive development efforts. Researchers are now aware of another eye pigment, photosensitive retinal ganglion cells. The light absorbed by these cells is not perceived (not seen) but it does have a direct impact on biological or circadian rhythms. This means that any attempt to create healthy biofriendly lighting must address more than the just the visible color spectrum to create the desired biological effects. In fact, the industry will move away from traditional measures of healthy lighting (such as correlated color temperature) which only measure the visible light to newer measures that can evaluate the entire lighting spectrum.

The lighting industry has now entered a time of rapid change. Technology innovations, as well as greater understanding of the impact of light on human health, makes for a very dynamic time where we can expect many new exciting ways to use lighting.

Satish Agrawal, Ph.D., is the CEO of Bambu Vault, the technology arm of Aurea Lighting, which develops, markets and sells biofriendly LED lighting solutions for industrial, commercial, automotive and horticultural applications.   

At InfoComm 2019, LED display provider Absen will be showcasing its latest rental and staging as well as indoor fixed LED display solutions at booth #2760 alongside its partner Modtruss.

Since the market demand for high density and high definition increases, the narrowing of pixel gaps on LED based screens has become a continuing trend, which means higher resolution displays are also ideal alternative solutions for environments that were previously thought unsuitable such as exhibition stands and live events. At infoComm 2019, Absen will demonstrate the power of narrow pixel pitch (NPP) LED with a range of innovative solutions.

What takes centerstage at Absen’s booth is Aries series (AX1.5), which was firstly launched at ISE 2019 and had made its debut at the NAB Show in this past April. Aries Series is the company’s first NPP range that has been specially designed to meet the growing demand for sub-2mm fine pitch LED in rental staging applications such as auto shows, high-end conferences and live broadcasts. This range is also an ideal solution for fixed indoor environments due to its 27.5” cabinet size, achieving a 16:9-aspect-ratio. Thanks to the Integrated Matrix Device (IMD) and Common Cathode (CC) technologies, Aries Series is 2.5 times stronger than conventional rental LED display products and is able to create real seamless displays with enhanced visual performance whilst consuming 20% less power.

Surrounding the AX 1.5 will be the N Plus 3mm and 4mm video walls. N Plus series is the upgraded version of Absen’s award-winning product, N series. The industry-first flat display boasts super thin and lightweight design with a depth of just 54mm and weight of only 10kg, which make it an ideal solution for today’s retail, corporate, and house of worship environments and beyond. In addition, N plus series features 3+1+1 design, allowing system integrators to create more flexibility in terms of configuration.

At the booth visitors can also see Absen’s multi-award-winning products, Polaris series, which recently won the award for Best Technology for Entertainment & Live Events at the InAVation Awards 2019, as well as Acclaim series, a market-proven product suitable for a wide range of indoor fixed applications including retail, control room, transportation and corporate.

Visitors can also see Absen’s products in action at its key partners’ stands, including NovaStar booth #2773, Premier Mounts #1843, Peerless AV booth #3429 and Draper booth #1342.

Christie at InfoComm launched the Christie Core Series and the Christie CorePlus. Core Series is designed for applications such as shopping mall kiosks, airport and public transit signage and select corporate installations with budgetary constraints.

With pixel pitches from 1.2 to 2.5 mm, redundant on-board power and ADA-compliant mount system; Christie Core Series installs directly onto any wall without a costly mounting frame, saving setup time and money for integrators and end users.

Available in 1.2 to 4.0mm pixel pitches, Christie CorePlus delivers a tremendous amount of flexibility while the choice of on-board or remote power increases installation options — all at a competitive price point. Front and rear serviceable, Christie CorePlus is quick and easy to both install and maintain.

Both the new Core Series and the updated CorePlus ship in the summer of 2019. Here are all the specs.

The global LED videowall market achieved revenues of $5.7 billion last year, with year-on-year double digit growth expected out to 2023, according to a new worldwide industry report from Futuresource Consulting. As the U.S.-China trade war intensifies and political indications suggest a continuing period of punitive tariffs, Chinese companies are exploring ways to accelerate their expansion into Southeast Asia, the Middle East and Latin America.

Speaking at the recent Macroblock LED Display Conference in Shenzhen, China, Hope Lee, senior market analyst at Futuresource Consulting summarised global LED display trends and presented on the shifting market landscape.

“Upwards of 500 companies in China have R&D and manufacturing capabilities for LED video wall,” said Lee. “With all this competition, the sector is going into overdrive and vendors are not only considering new international markets, but also placing renewed focus on durability, reduced power consumption and innovation.

“Narrow pixel pitch (NPP) remains a key battleground, with companies migrating more of their products to sub-2.5mm. With stiffer competition, vendors are now focusing on quality as a differentiating factor and our forecasts show that by 2021, NPP will have overtaken LCD video wall in annual revenue terms.”

As international expansion becomes a core business objective for many China-based companies, understanding of local markets is a fundamental requirement. From business culture to channel dynamics and vertical demand, there are many elements to consider for success, beyond securing a local physical presence.

In addition to geographic expansion, many Chinese companies are also focusing on acquisition and business model flexibility, completing a three-pronged strategic assault that is likely to yield strong financial growth.

“As the industry matures, flexibility and versatility are crucial for success, and singular project-based business models will start considering repeat business and run-rate focused activities,” comments Lee. “Vendors with rental specialism are starting to look at opportunities in the fixed installations space. Conversely, companies that have the fixed installation strength are expanding their rental business. It’s all about shaping the landscape to ensure the most viable long-term solution is delivered to the customer.”

Despite wider display industry turmoil, Futuresource says that the LED market will remain resilient over the long term, continuing to outpace growth in LCD and projection, and on track to achieve global revenues of $11.7 billion by 2023, according to Futuresource forecasts.

Futuresource is here.

Today Samsung Electronics America announced the integration of Prismview, LLC sales and marketing teams into its display business — further strengthening the company’s LED portfolio and salesforce. The Utah-based company manufactures and installs large-format LED video displays, and their products are recognized around the world for outstanding image quality and superior durability.

Prior to being a wholly-owned subsidiary of Samsung Electronics America, Inc., Prismview, formerly known as Yesco Electronics, LLC, was an affiliate of the Young Electric Sign Co. (“Yesco”). Prismview will continue to operate its product management, production, engineering/R&D and administration groups.

Prismview has deployed thousands of displays worldwide and installed some of the largest, most complex and most recognizable LED video display installations in the world: M&T Bank Stadium, Rogers Place, State Farm Arena, Vivint Smart Home Arena, the Spectrum Center and multiple spectaculars, including several installations along the world-famous Las Vegas Strip and in Times Square in New York City, including the recent renovation of One Times Square.

Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. has maintained its position as a leader in digital signage as measured by unit sales for the tenth consecutive year. Recently released data from IHS Markit identified Samsung as the top-selling brand in the industry since 2009. According to the IHS Technology report “Public Display Market Tracker,” Samsung accounted for 25.8% of the global market share for digital signage unit sales in 2018.¹ Samsung offers technology that fulfills the increasing demands of today’s businesses, provides the opportunity to transform workspaces and creates new, immersive experiences for customers.

Learn more about Prismview here and Samsung’s commercial display division here.

¹ Note: Consumer TVs, along with Commercial Lite and Hospitality TVs used for signage, are excluded.

THIS IS A PROMOTED POST FROM HD DISTRIBUTING

Maybe a 98-inch display in your boardroom just isn’t big enough. Maybe a projector just isn’t bright enough. Maybe your customer won’t sign off on a custom LCD video wall, even with the thinnest of bezels.

MAXHUB, an all-in-one, integrated LED display terminal, could be your solution.

If you perked up a little reading this, there’s more good news. The first shipment of MAXHUB, currently the number-one LED display product in China, has officially landed in the United States — for the first time ever. And there’s only one U.S. distributor you can get it through: HD Distributing.

Debunking the Myth That LED Is Complicated

LED is no longer just for outdoor applications. It has moved (and continues to move) indoors. These environments — places where you wouldn’t have seen LED a decade ago — include corporate lobbies, exhibition centers, lecture halls, houses of worship, command and control centers, and even multifunctional conference rooms.

There’s a reason LED is growing. As it drops down in price — an expected trend as technology matures — LED is also giving AV integrators and dealers more flexibility.

But for LED to make sense in these applications, there’s got to be clear value. LED, to date, has been much more complicated than LCD. Most LED is fully custom, and there are still a lot of what-ifs.

But if the biggest problem with LED is complexity, why not solve for what makes it so complicated?

MAXHUB gets to the core of one of the biggest barriers to entry: that LED is too complicated to install and integrate with existing systems. Its value, then, is clear; MAXHUB takes LED, which has historically been seen as more complex than LCD and projection, and makes it simple.

Meet MAXHUB

With MAXHUB, everything truly is all in one. The product is just one SKU, so it’s a whole lot simpler (and much easier to sell and spec) than customized LED setups. The all-in-one benefit makes it easier for the integrator — they don’t have to “design” an indoor LED display system, a system they haven’t created before, because it’s already done for them.

Whereas a system like this is typically done in piecemeal and would require 10 to 15 SKUs (one for each LED panel, one for the processor, a few for all the cables and adapters, the collaboration software license, etc.), MAXHUB doesn’t require any additional parts. For lack of a more eloquent expression, it’s pre-packaged LED (where, mind you, pre-packaged is actually a good thing).

Design-wise, MAXHUB is beautiful, with a 160-degree wide viewing angle horizontally and vertically, so there isn’t a bad seat in the house. MAXHUB is designed to match the resolution — 1080p at a 16×9 aspect ratio — that rooms and devices are already using. In this setup, it allows users to share wirelessly (supporting up to four devices, which can mirror simultaneously).

If you’re doing your due diligence, you’ll ask about complementary products. Along with MAXHUB, HD Distributing carries LED solutions for signal distribution, control, video wall processing, software and mounting — so that you can guarantee success in a finished project.

By being all in one, MAXHUB takes the complexity out of it. It meets the demand of customers who want better, bigger and brighter. But it still makes it easy for the dealer to spec and sell because, again, it’s just a single SKU.

Bigger, Better, Brighter

Customers are big on the wow factor. But if they’ve only seen LCD or projection, the won’t know how much better it can get. But dealers and integrators do. So when a projector just isn’t bright enough, and LCDs don’t meet your size demands, turn to MAXHUB, a new take on LED.

Aside from deciding what size MAXHUB you need (the product starts at 110 inches and goes up to a staggering 220 inches), the only thing to customize is whether to mount it on the wall, suspend it from the ceiling, or use a mobile foot stand for added flexibility.

See the full specs for MAXHUB, and get in touch with HD Distributing for more information.

Samsung featured unique installs of their micro and direct view LED solutions installed at its customers’ locations in New York City this month at a press and industry analyst event.

In between quick bouts of chilly weather, we visited four locations across the Midtown and downtown Manhattan areas including stops at Fisher Brothers, Ogilvy, MoMA and Times Square. Samsung is pushing its LED solutions after an announcement in October that the sales and marketing teams of Prismview, a fully-owned Samsung company, would be integrated fully into Samsung’s display business.

Fisher Brothers

Fisher Brothers, a real estate development firm based in Manhattan, tells the story of “wow” in the company’s real estate work, which includes close to 1.5 million square feet in New York. Its 24-seat executive conference room, which towers 50 floors above street-level in Midtown, doesn’t fall short: it includes Samsung’s 10.5-foot microLED solution The Wall Pro (IW008J). We discussed return on investment because, as we know, The Wall certainly isn’t an inexpensive solution. For Fisher Brothers, it is more than a financial return on investment — they see the installation as an expression of greatness. “We went with Samsung because it is the best of the best. We operate in a first-class manner and that is why we partnered with Samsung,” shared Kenneth Fisher, a partner at Fisher Brothers.

A small, emerging trend in the signage space is that of using direct-view LED (dvLED) in the conference room. A significant concern that comes with is the viewing angle and distance. Both Samsung and Fisher Brothers emphasized that The Wall, as a solution, considers both viewing angle and distance so that it performs better. After some slight control difficulties as Samsung sent their own, produced content to each of the tour stops, we were able to see a spreadsheet on the display. It looked great.

Technical details:

• Pitch: .84mm
• Brightness: 500 nits
• Model: IW008J
• Length: 10.6’
• Height: 6’
• Diagonal: 146”
• Resolution: 3,840×2,160
• Configuration: 4×4

Ogilvy

Ogilvy, a well-known advertising agency with its headquarters in Hell’s Kitchen, incorporates Samsung signage in its theater and event space. Two dvLED, SMD displays each with a 1.2-millimeter pixel pitch flank the back of the stage. Installed as a replacement to projection, Ogilvy installed dvLED because of its flexibility. The agency cited not being able to use the majority of its stage, which already has unique sightline issues because of two huge columns, because of the restrictions associated with front-throw projection.

“Our content wasn’t looking great — and that is important as we want to wow our clients with their work and ours. You walk into a room and LED causes your jaw to drop,” said Lynn Roer, director for event management and experiential design, Ogilvy.

Technical details:

• Pitch: 1.2mm
• Brightness: 600 nits
• Model: IF012J
• Length: 13.2’
• Height: 7.4’
• Diagonal: 182”
• Resolution: 3,200×1,800
• Configuration: 5×5

MoMA

The Museum of Modern Art, a name and mission that speaks for itself, utilizes two Samsung LED displays in two separate exhibits.

The first, a 1.5-millimeter IF015H display, is installed in the lobby above the main entrance to the museum. It is a part of a mixed-media exhibit called “Echo,” a “sensible and sentient automation that perceives and reflects.” Data is pulled in real-time from the lobby space and content is curated live on the display to mirror the energy of the physical space.

Technical details:

• Pitch: 1.5 mm
• Brightness: 800 nits
• Model: IF015H
• Length: 15.7’
• Height: 8.8′
• Diagonal: 217”
• Resolution: 3,200×1,800
• Configuration: 10×5

The second, a 1.5-millimeter IF015H dvLED display installed to face the sidewalk, and passersby outside, features the true-white and true-black power of a Samsung LED display. The exhibit itself is simplistic, featuring looping, black-and-white, content, of a power button icon being put together.

Technical details:

• Pitch: 1.5 mm
• Brightness: 800 nits
• Model: IF015H
• Length: 14.2’
• Height: 7.1’
• Diagonal: 190”
• Resolution: 2,880×1440
• Configuration: 9×4

Times Square

The final stop on the tour was the one location I typically avoid like the plague: Times Square. The display, produced by Prismview is a staggering 11,000 square feet and is installed at One Times Square.

Technical details:

• Upper:
  • Pitch: 16 mm
  • Length: 35.5’
  • Height: 50.3’
  • Resolution: 656×928
• Lower:
  • Pitch: 16 mm
  • Length: 52’
  • Height: 51’
  • Resolution: 960×944

Here is a video of the install from Samsung:

The biggest takeaway from my time in New York is that LED is not just an eye-opening experience in Times Square anymore — it is now providing that same wow factor in boardrooms, event spaces and in museums.

The wow factor, paired with the efficiency benefits of LED over projection or video wall technologies, is simply why the future of display is LED.

Here is more information about Samsung’s Display Solutions and Prismview.

THIS IS A PROMOTED POST FROM HD DISTRIBUTING

By Amelia Vrabel
Vice President of Sales, HD Distributing

LED, LCD or projection? Maybe you haven’t decided yet. Maybe you have, and the clear winner is LED due to its vivid imagery, high efficiency and long lifespan. If that’s the case, you already know there will be some added complexity. With LED, even as far as it has come, there are still a lot of what-ifs. But this is the AV industry, and no one loves making the choice with the most what-ifs. But ultimately, if your application needs LED, your application needs LED, because the benefits of LED over LCD and projection are clear (which is probably why you chose it). Integrators and designers choose LED for its amazing brightness and rich color, that “wow factor” we often talk about, and, of course, the ability to design it exactly the way you need it. LED is the most scalable solution, and it does things LCD and projection only hope to do.

This conundrum, the push-pull of needing LED but sadly having to accept the hurdles that come with the technology, is how HD Distributing was born. HD Distributing is the AV industry’s only — yes, only — full-service, value-add distributor focused exclusively on direct-view LED (dvLED).

It was 2006, and LED was growing fast and furious. With that growth came a lot of questions and challenges for the AV industry. But rather than shy away from the complexity of LED, HD Distributing embraced it. Thus the Minneapolis-based distributor found a unique position and purpose for itself as a distributor focused only on LED, serving a rapidly growing customer base: integrators and dealers who wanted LED but didn’t like the complexities that came with it. Over the last several years, HD Distributing has experienced almost every LED what-if you can imagine, and it’s found a solution for each. Because when you’re specifying LED for your customers, there can be no what-ifs.

How HD Distributing Figured Out (the Distribution Side of) LED

Let’s talk three of the most prominent challenges in LED today. For each, we’ll discuss how HD Distributing found a solution and helped its core customers do LED better.

One of the biggest challenges with LED is ensuring color consistency when modules need to be repaired or replaced. Unfortunately, not all LED modules output color the exact same way, even from the same manufacturer. Every batch produced is unique — varying red, green, and blue base colors means ensuring an exact color, or white, match isn’t likely. It’s also unlikely dealers have the space to store a bunch of extra bulky modules, especially for a huge application like a video wall. Plus, it wouldn’t make sense for them to order extras not knowing how and what they’ll need anyway. Sure, you can order directly from the manufacturer — but the majority of LED manufacturers are overseas, with extremely long lead times for shipping. These are added layers of complexity that, frankly, integrators just don’t have time for. Thankfully, HD Distributing manages the logistics and inventory-management side of the transaction completely; the distributor stocks replacement modules from the exact batch of original LEDs that customers ordered and will continue to service for years. With this confidence, there is no question when it comes to color-matching replacement LEDs for your customers’ applications.

Most LED is custom, which means added complexity — and, usually, a bigger time commitment — to determine appropriate aspect ratio, resolution, pixel pitch, and specifying the correct processor. If integrators don’t have the time to evaluate multiple manufacturers’ LED solutions in real-life environments before specifying them, they can’t be certain the LED is exactly right for what they need. But your trusted partner, HD Distributing, does have the time. It’s what they do. HD works closely with best-in-class manufacturers to learn the ins-and-outs of their solutions. HD takes that knowledge and guides customers through the complex process, whether their LED is fully custom or all-in-one. (By the way, for the latter, we’re talking about MAXHUB: currently China’s number-one all-in-one LED product. MAXHUB just landed in the U.S. for the first time in history through a special distribution partnership with HD Distributing.) HD gives integrators the attention they need when specifying LED, so they can feel absolutely confident in their choices.

Third, evaluating LED is not as simple as referencing a universal standard — like Dante for audio. Judging the performance and output of one LED product over another is a value-add only a distributor focused exclusively on LED can provide. HD knows the industry top to bottom, and these insights mean it can help customers make the most informed choice. That knowledge led HD Distributing to represent only the highest quality LED and complementary solutions, as the distributor established itself as a thought-leader in the niche space.

What You’re Really Getting When You Hire a Distributor

Any distributor will tell you it offers only the best (HD Distributing does, in fact, stand by the fact that its partners are best in class). But working with a distributor is so much more than access to great products. It’s top-notch service and support — one of the biggest points of pride for a distributor — usually above and beyond what the manufacturer can provide. It’s access to a larger industry vision and information on trends and technologies, a step beyond the short-term win of deploying one great project. It’s certified solutions from trained professionals with manufacturer-specific and industry-specific accreditations. It’s both bundled and custom solutions, no matter your needs or your budget. When you hire HD Distributing to help you successfully manage and deploy your dvLED, here’s what you’re getting:

• A better (and closer) source for your AV products, with consistently available stock
• Representation for the best ProAV LED, including Absen, NovaStar, MAXHUB and more
• Expertise on complementary products from partners like Kramer, Peerless, tvONE and T1V,
  with solutions in LED software, signal distribution, control, video-wall processing, etc.
• Quick quotes and flexible payment terms
• No minimum orders, competitive pricing and fast (often same-day) shipping
• Ongoing consultation — before, during and after the install

HD Distributing built its business by taking the guesswork out of LED to help integrators offer the best display technology on the market. Instead of trying to be everything to everybody, HD carved out a niche that was very much needed in the industry. With almost 15 years of experience partnering with the finest (scroll down on HD’s homepage to see some of the reputable partners we’re talking about), HD Distributing has helped its customers in the AV industry realize their LED potential.

Have you realized yours?

Barco is expanding its LED portfolio. Last year, Barco claimed a renewed focus in high-res LED technology with the launch of the premium XT series and the announcement of its strategic partnership with Chinese LED manufacturer Unilumin. Today the company is introducing an extended offering with five new models addressing a variety of indoor LED applications.

Barco’s XT series narrow pixel pitch LED tiles are specifically designed as high-end LEDs. Barco says they have mechanically optimized the Unilumin hardware for seamless viewing and added a proprietary LED image processing solution, Infinipix, to the LEDs.

While the new XT-E and XT-HB are similar, they are set to meet the variable needs in Barco’s targeted core segments, i.e. control rooms, television studios, meeting rooms and 3D visualization. The entry-level platform XT-E, offering tiles with 1.2, 1.5 and 1.9mm pixel pitch, allows LED projects that don’t require high brightness or advanced features to get access to the valued Barco products with a cost-effective solution. This entry-level range is still designed according to the consistent Barco quality levels with careful selection of alternative LEDs.

With brightness levels up to 1500 nits, the XT-HB brings high-brightness LED to those applications in full daylight and environments with high amount of ambient light. Introducing two models with higher pixel pitches, i.e. XT1.9-HB and XT2.5-HB, this series is also ideally suited for viewing from longer distances and set-ups where narrower pixel pitches are nonessential.

The new LED family will be at ISE 2020 (Hall 12, booth F120) or you can see them here.

By Matthew Rubin
Futuresource Consulting

The past year has been one of the most volatile on record for the professional displays industry. As COVID-19 spread across the globe, supply chains were interrupted and end-user demand plummeted in some of the biggest markets. Add into the mix the increasing appeal of LED, which makes it a three-horse race along with LCD and projection, and you have a recipe for disruption.

Futuresource’s tracking services show that in terms of volume, projection was the hardest hit across 2020, down by almost a third in total. LCD flat panel displays recovered considerably quicker after a poor first half, resulting in volumes down just 7% for the year.

Meanwhile, LED had a mixed performance. Stability was attained in China thanks to a combination of government spending and relatively insignificant COVID-19 fallout, whereas poor results were achieved internationally, as many major installations were either canceled or delayed.

However, it was not all bad news. Key display segments were — and continue to be — adept at enabling the now commonplace need for remote and hybrid working and learning. Interactive displays are at the heart of this, particularly in relation to education, with volume up in double-digit percentages in 2020, especially driven by Q3/Q4 — a major positive shift from early expectations at the start of the pandemic.

Even within the projection category there were some bright spots. The ultra mobile product segment reported year-on-year growth for 2020, mostly as a direct result of social distancing and lockdown measures. Consumers were spending more time at home and streaming entertainment, seeking ways to enhance their viewing experience, while some workplaces valued the portability of displays at a time when meeting room use cases were quickly evolving.

Looking ahead to the rest of 2021, it is easy to paint a brighter picture of positive volume growth across all three core display technologies, mostly due to a bounce back in demand after an unprecedented fall. Nonetheless the outlook remains relatively unstable, as the drawn-out impact from the pandemic continues to affect core demand. However, equally important is the movement toward price parity across LED, LCD and projection, resulting in uneven performances as the primary technology used for different applications is adjusted.

The cost of LED in particular is falling rapidly, which, when combined with its flexibility in terms of use cases, puts it in a strong position this year for new installs and replacements. This is expected to propel growth in 2021, with value set to increase by almost half compared to the year before.

Some of the biggest past hinderances to LED, after considering price, have been durability and a general lack of knowledge on how to best use the technology from both an end user and installer perspective. These issues are quickly being resolved thanks to improved production methods, but also through a combination of product training and product packaging. The latter is being seized upon by the likes of Samsung and LG as they launch all-in-one, simplified solutions, packaged neatly in an effort to make the process as simple as buying and installing an LCD display.

The growth opportunities are there for the other display technologies too. For projection, this is expected to come from higher brightness categories, working as solutions for applications across higher education, rental, staging, museums and macro-mapping. For LCD, the demand for Interactive displays is expected to remain strong as schools across the world continue to upgrade. Further LCD solutions will also emerge in the corporate space: decreasing bezel sizes and demand for integrated collaboration technology is set to accelerate the relatively mature, but still appealing, flat panel display technology.

While opportunities in 2021 should be relatively abundant, a key theme for this year that offers growth potential for all three display technologies will be merged display applications. Whereby for certain situations, it makes sense to use a combination of multiple display technologies to get the best out of each. Retail signage is where most of this activity is expected, as retailers look for ways to create experiential shopping trips to draw consumers back to the high street. Such blending of displays is also expected to appear across the corporate, education and notably the live events space as they look to recover from the impact of COVID-19.

Image courtesy of The Futurist.

I have a half dozen LCD TVs around my house. We have at least 40 LCDs in our office. However, I’ve always wanted an OLED. But, I haven’t been willing to invest — even though I am an image snob. Honestly, I’ve been really happy with the QLED from Samsung.

But, let’s be real — the black is still gray, which means the white is gray too.

My home theater has an SXRD from Sony and my kids have portable DLPs from Vivitek; they love them. They’re little Qumiss and they can project on anything (at like 400 lumens) and have Netflix and Hulu built-in.

However, I’ve been obsessed with the OLED ever since I saw the first one in LG’s booth back in 2016 at the Integrate Show in Australia.

I am likely about to buy my first OLED in a matter of weeks. My decision won’t be which LG to buy, though even Samsung is about to launch OLED. What? Yep, you read that right. This month, Samsung allegedly agreed to buy something like 5 million OLED panels from LG over the next 18 months. That will yield three to four times as many displays, too. If the deal holds true, you can expect to see Samsung commercial and residential OLED by the end of the summer.

In the meantime, I am looking forward to getting outside! So, my sights on a new TV will await the colder months of the fall, and this will give LG and Samsung time to become buddies. Oh, where’d you think Sony got their OLEDs? Really? You thought Sony made their own?

Panasonic too? Surely not …

The first LED was invented, or actually, accidentally discovered, in the fall of 1961 by engineers working at Texas Instruments. James R. Biard and Gary E. Pittman were working together on a project for the U.S. Airforce to build “low noise parametric amplifiers for X-band radar receivers,” and discovered that IR light was being emitted from one of the diodes they had built on gallium arsenide substrate. The following year, the first commercial LED product, the SNX-100 GaAs LED, came out, selling for $130 each ($1,180.80 in today’s dollars). Over at GE, also in 1962, physicist Nick Holonyak invented the first LED with visible-spectrum light — red.

LED, of course, stands for “light-emitting diode.” Technically, an LED is a semiconductor that converts electrical energy into light when a current is passed through the layers of materials contained in the chip. This process is called electroluminescence. LEDs produce different wavelengths (colors) based on the molecular makeup of the material the current is passed through. Without getting too deep into solid-state physics, the reason the molecular makeup of the compound is so critical is that the color (wavelength) and amount of light (efficiency) produced is determined by how far the electrons have to jump, or fall — otherwise known as a “band gap” or “energy gap.”

To create different LED colors, scientists had to experiment to see what happened when currents were passed through different materials with unique molecular makeups — how wide the energy gap was, and what wavelength was produced. Trying out different compounds was a very slow trial-and-error process. The ideal compound had to efficiently produce protons and be thermally stable (i.e., it wouldn’t break down when energy currents were passed through it) — but it also had to be a compound that could be efficiently manufactured. Only recently was a machine learning algorithm invented that could predict what compounds might produce a desired band gap, and therefore, specific color.

The right materials to produce both red and green LEDs were discovered relatively early on in the LED development process. But the right one to create a blue LED proved elusive. Scientists knew it needed the widest energy gap of all to create light with a blue wavelength, but no one had been able to pin down the right compound.

Why did the blue LED matter so much?

Engineers knew that LEDs could revolutionize many scientific and commercial applications that required light. Back in 1969, engineers at Hewlett-Packard wrote about the idea of a “wall-mounted color television set” that would use LED technology. They estimated it to be about 10 years away. But for many of the applications, a pure white light was required, and it wasn’t yet possible.

A single LED can’t produce pure white light on its own because white light isn’t made up of a single wavelength; it’s a combination of multiple wavelengths. The combination of red, green and blue light in equal amounts appears visibly to the human eye as white light. In color theory, RGB is an additive color model in which red, green and blue can be used to produce a broad array of colors — over 16 million different hues, in fact. Without a blue LED, there would be no white LED, which severely limited the applications of the new technology.

In the coming decades, incremental improvements were made in the production of blue LEDs. A possible material with a wide energy gap was discovered in 1972 (magnesium-doped gallium nitride) by researchers at Stanford, but the first LED actually built with it emitted green light, not blue. Another version of events says that engineers at RCA figured out the right compound in the early ‘70s, which ended up being bad timing; RCA founder David Sarnoff had just died and his son Robert tried to make RCA a leader in computing, but failed to compete against IBM. RCA’s blue LED project was scrapped.

In 1989, Cree introduced the first commercially available blue LED, which technically emitted blue light, but was very inefficient (and therefore, dim). Finally, in 1993, Japanese scientists Shuji Nakamura, Isamu Akasaki and Hiroshi Amano figured out how they could produce high-brightness blue LEDs by growing crystals of gallium nitride that they had molecularly engineered to have the precise energy gap they wanted. This made high-brightness blue LEDs finally a real possibility. But this method of growing gallium nitride crystals was inefficient and expensive, and it took many scientific minds another two decades to figure out how to get to mass production. In the end, those same Japanese scientists would win the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2014 for the invention of the blue LED. Many consider the invention of the blue LED one of the most significant engineering advancements of the last century, after the invention of the transistor.

From early on, scientists were excited about the possibility of LEDs. They are much more energy-efficient and long-lasting and emit significantly less heat than previous lighting technology. Twenty to thirty percent of all electrical energy consumed is used for lighting, so efficiency improvements are significant, both economically and environmentally. Since the blue LED problem was solved, the quality, brightness, efficiency of LEDs have increased dramatically, while the size of the chips and production costs have fallen. In LED display technology, there are still many manufacturing improvements to come that will further decrease costs and make direct-view LED displays price-competitive across a range of AV applications. But if the rapid rate of progress since commercial blue LED production became possible is any indication, that’s not too far off.

By Matthew Rubin
Futuresource Consulting

Companies operating in the professional displays market experienced a bleak 2020, with value dropping by more than 15% year-on-year. Yet 2021 has seen a turnaround, and the market is on course to end on a high. That’s according to a new competitive review report from market research firm Futuresource Consulting, which forecasts an increase of more than 27%, finishing the year at a global value of $36 billion.

Professional Displays on the up Against the Odds

“2021 has been a tremendous success for many pro display vendors,” says Matthew Rubin, Senior Market Analyst at Futuresource Consulting, “but there was plenty more promise in the market that remained unfulfilled. Chip shortages, partly born from years of consolidation within the semiconductor industry made the industry vulnerable to the challenges of COVID-19. The pandemic caused disruption, factories closed due to an assumed drop in demand, and natural disasters also played their part. Earthquakes hit a Japanese semiconductor manufacturing plant, winter storms struck a Texas plant, and a fire and severe drought slashed production in Taiwan.”

“In addition to this, some vendors have suffered due to under-forecasting the recovery and falling to the back of the queue for component orders. As we emerge from the turmoil, it’s astounding how much market rebound has been achieved against all the odds.”

LED Market Movements Creating New Opportunities

Pre-pandemic, Futuresource Consulting’s research shows how the LED market was already a fast-growing segment, and its fortunes have now been realigned to create further opportunities. Product quality has matured, brand equity is moving to the forefront and the downstream supply chain is placing more emphasis on the combined offering of product, solution and service. This demand for a more premium solution is destabilising the technology leadership of Chinese brands.

As many major international professional display brands began ramping up their operations, Chinese brands began to retreat, pulling back staff to focus on opportunities in the domestic market. This has radically altered the market landscape, and underlines the strength of these international brands, which are able to reach globally and support locally.

“We expect the future of LED to move from strength to strength,” says Rubin. “Our forecasts indicate a CAGR of 22.4% in the five years out to 2025. Product awareness, improved end user understanding and falling prices will all contribute to wider uptake.”

A Transition to MicroLED

In Pro AV markets and applications, Futuresource explain how a gradual transition will see the market evolve from surface mount device (SMD) LED, through MiniLED to MicroLED. Despite MiniLED being primarily a transitional technology, Futuresource expects all three technologies to coexist in the narrow pixel pitch market segment, as highlighted in their latest MicroLED report.

Due to market pricing considerations, Pro AV will be a large early adopter of MicroLED, with growth slowing in later years. Conversely, early CE market adoption will be limited, but falling ASPs will generate mass CE markets in later years.

Retail and Kiosks Riding High

“Moving forward, bricks and mortar retail, as well as kiosk activities, will lead the charge for new professional displays opportunities,” says Rubin. “By personalising the online and offline shopping experience through targeted information and advertising, retailers can reimagine retail as a series of memorable events, driving engagement and increasing profit margins. Watch out for smart stores, with sensors feeding data back to track consumer shopping behaviour.”

Futuresource’s research demonstrates that kiosks will also begin to pervade many areas of retail, stepping beyond quick-service restaurant environments as consumers become more familiar with the tech. In a post-COVID world, kiosks will support social distancing, while eliminating human error, speeding up serving time and offering ease of use in different languages. Further down the line we could see next gen displays with gesture control, automated COVID-19 testing kiosks, and augmented reality ushering virtual dressing rooms onto the high street.

Planar has launched two new LED video wall display families in the form of the Planar Luminate Pro Series and Planar Venue Pro Series. The new displays feature mechanical elements that accelerate setup and takedown for temporary and mobile events, but also feature full front installation and serviceability, opening the door to more permanent wall-mounted applications. Each LED display line features 500x500mm cabinets that can be used for video wall applications. The cabinets can be hung, mounted on a wall or floor mount, or used to make curved walls. The displays feature cabinet-to-cabinet magnetic assistance to temporarily hold them in place while a single installer uses the quick-lock system to secure them.

The Planar Luminate Pro Series is intended for either indoor or outdoor environments with high ambient light or direct sunlight. Indoor models offer 3,000-nit brightness and are ideal for venues with large windows, skylights or bright lights such as airports, shopping malls and lobbies. The indoor models are available with fine and standard pixel pitches including 1.9, 2.5 and 3.9mm pixel pitches.

Outdoor models feature up to 5,500-nit brightness that makes them visible to viewers even in direct sunlight. They are available in five different pixel pitches from 2.9 up to 10.4mm to suit applications with viewing distances as close as 16 feet. The displays are designed to withstand harsh weather and extreme temperatures. A protective treatment guards LEDs from dust and moisture, earning the Planar Luminate Pro Series outdoor models an Ingress Protection Rating of IP65.

For environments that don’t feature as much ambient light, such as lecture halls, the Planar Venue Pro Series is another display available at 1,000 nits brightness. Models are available with 1.9, 2.5, 3.9 and 5.9mm pixel pitches, enabling viewing for audiences as close as 10 feet. The displays offer front or rear installation and all electronics are contained in a single, easily-removable compartment on the back of the cabinet.

Barco today launched a new LED video wall platform dubbed TruePix. TruePix is designed completely from the ground up to create a purpose-built video wall for a variety of enterprise applications. It’s aimed at control rooms, television studios, lobbies, boardrooms, auditoriums and other corporate applications.

Key product highlights:

• Seamless display tech that LED is known for
• Smart engineering for perfectly aligned installation
• An integrated next-gen Infinipix processor
• Purpose-built for 24/7 operations
• Reduced ecological footprint
• Included with 10 years of dedicated service and support

With the ongoing cost erosion, LED technology is now within the reach. With the TruePix launch, Barco is offering 16:9 tiles with pixel pitches ranging from 0.9 to 1.9 mm.

The first product to incorporate Barco’s Infinipix Gen2 image processing system, Barco says that TruePix has no visual distortions, low latency, perfect sync and no video “tearing.” Infinipix Gen2 also guarantees dimming without any loss in color accuracy, which expands the effectiveness of the installation. Barco says it includes a proprietary smart calibration method for wide color gamut support and full color balancing control. TruePix also includes an EcoPower mode ensures reduced energy consumption, helping to limit the ecological footprint.

TruePix is also incorporated with something the company is calling SteadyView that’s designed to improve viewing ergonomics and reduces eye fatigue. This is interesting for control room environments, where the staff intensely use the wall for multiple hours on end. This makes TruePix one of the very first purpose-built LED walls for critical and high-intensity applications like control rooms and command centers.

Here’s a video that positions TruePix in the Barco lineup:

TruePix also has an auto-balancing system that counters mounting imperfections and makes sure the LED wall is 100% level and frictionless. Thus, the installation time is also cut because the tiles all slide perfectly into place without the need for manual adjustments. The guided module insertion offers a fully contactless installation, with no risk of tile damage.

Availability of batch compatible modules throughout the life of the wall is therefore a key part of Barco’s service offerings. If a module needs to be replaced, Barco guarantees that batch-compatible spare tiles (along with full service support) are available for up to 10 years. This brings complete peace of mind and a reduced cost of ownership over the full lifetime of the product.

The Video wall Management Suite, Barco’s cloud-based platform for advanced video wall management, allows you to monitor, diagnose and/or control the TruePix installation remotely. This maximizes uptime and reduces the need and length of service interventions. TruePix is also the first LED product on the market to leverage 5Gb bandwidth. This makes the system up to five times more efficient with fewer cable runs and points of failure – as more LED modules can be connected in a single link. To further guarantee an uninterrupted data flow, 4-way inter-tile communication and signal loop redundancy are embedded, making TruePix the most reliable LED solution in the market.

Here are the tech specs for Baro TruePix.

In a wild twist of fate, Reuters is reporting that, “South Korea’s LG Display Co Ltd (034220.KS) will start supplying high-end TV panels to Samsung Electronic Co Ltd (005930.KS) from as early as this quarter, three sources said, in a deal that would help the loss-making flat-screen maker turn profitable.”

Well, what do we have here?

It’s all about BLACK.

The truth is that other than LEDs, no other direct-view display technology delivers black-black, than OLED.

Organic light-emitting diodes (OLED), defined by Wikipedia, are light-emitting diodes (LED) “in which the emissive electroluminescent layer is a film of organic compound that emits light in response to an electric current. This organic layer is situated between two electrodes; typically, at least one of these electrodes is transparent. OLEDs are used to create digital displays in devices such as television screens, computer monitors and portable systems such as smartphones and handheld game consoles. A major area of research is the development of white OLED devices for use in solid-state lighting applications.”

Here’s the world’s best video on how OLED works:

Not with OLED. With OLED the light output and the color imager are the same.

So, LG plans to sell at least 2 million OLEDs to Samsung and ramp up to 5 million within three years — all raw components that would yield TVs and monitors that range from 75” to 84”. But, the likelihood is that 90% or more of these will end up in the commercial AV (ProAV) market — not the consumer TV market. In the consumer TV market, buyers are less critical with colorimetry and Samsung’s own QLED and Neo QLED are more than perfect for most consumers. But, in commercial applications, image quality is everything. So, we will see most of these at future InfoComm and ISE shows, for sure!

Alfalite, a European manufacturer of LED screens, will make its debut at InfoComm with its LED panels for the rental, fixed installation and virtual production markets at the booth of its partner FOR-A, Alfalite will showcase its Litepix LED panels for rental companies, Modularpix LED panels for fixed installation, as well as the Modularpix Pro VP XR solution for virtual production and extended reality environments.

The Spanish manufacturer recently worked with FOR-A for its operations in North America and completed the sale of 336 Modularpix Pro P3 panels to a church and another 140 Modularpix Pro P2 cabinets to another religious temple. Both operations have been carried out through the integrator Strata AVL.

Alfalite has something called ORIM (Optical Resin Injection Module) technology in its displays, a new system for terminating LED panels using an optical resin injection that they say improves precision between modules and provides extended viewing angles of 175º horizontally and vertically.

LED panels with ORIM technology have antistatic electricity protection (ESD > 10kV), improved thermal dissipation parameters and are more resistant to impacts, liquids, chemicals, and fire (with UL94 compliance).

ViewSonic says it is set to unveil its latest advancement in technology under the theme “Unfolding the future of collaboration.” The company says the exhibits are aimed at boosting productivity and transforming the communication dynamics for diverse workplaces at Integrated Systems Europe (ISE) 2024 in Spain from Jan. 30 – Feb. 2.

During ISE 2024, the company says will showcase its diverse range of comprehensive solutions for businesses. This showcase will feature video conferencing solutions for groups and individuals, modern collaborative solutions for group work and flexible large-screen solutions, which include a pioneering customizable All-in-One LED Display.  ViewSonic says these products contribute to creating an effective workspace, “emphasizing simplicity while enhancing the meeting experience, viewing experience and collaboration across various business settings.”

“Amidst the evolving landscape of the ‘workspace,’ companies and employees alike seek more seamless and cost-effective alternatives, minimizing the necessity for unnecessary travel. Therefore, more effective, intuitive and user-friendly solutions are needed,” said Bonny Cheng, COO of ViewSonic. “In response to the requirement, ViewSonic offers versatile, user-friendly hardware and software solutions to enhance virtual workspaces, facilitating seamless communication and collaboration for both in-person and hybrid settings, thereby overcoming the physical barriers to co-working and increasing productivity to meet the evolving demands of modern workers.”

Video Conferencing Solutions: From Shared Spaces to Personal Workstations

To demonstrate the optimized meeting experience in shared spaces, ViewSonic says it will present its new “Meeting Space Solution for Microsoft Teams Rooms” alongside a lineup of touch and non-touch commercial displays at ISE. These displays are available in 105″ and 92″ sizes, all supporting a 21:9 aspect ratio. The company says this wider field of view is particularly beneficial for the “Front Row Mode” in Microsoft Teams Rooms, allowing more remote participants to be displayed side-by-side and improving eye contact. It also enables the simultaneous display of video feeds, content and other meeting elements, such as chat or agendas, creating a more inclusive and engaging meeting experience. For large spaces like auditoriums, the new 110″ ViewBoard interactive display will be exhibited. It comes with a Near-Field Communication (NFC) reader, which the company says can enhance user interaction, convenience, security and adaptability.

For personal videoconferencing, ViewSonic will exhibit the VG2757V-2K, a 27″ webcam docking monitor equipped with Windows Hello and Zoom Certification. It aims to showcase a videoconferencing experience with secure facial recognition, ensuring clear audiovisual performance for personal setups, to provide a “secure, efficient and high-quality videoconferencing experience.”

Enhancing Collaboration: Streamline Communication and Visualize Ideas

To facilitate workplace productivity, ViewSonic will showcase “TeamWork”, a web-based real-time whiteboarding software that it says enables streamlined communication of ideas during projects, ideal for both in-person and remote group work. With its adaptability and compatibility, “TeamWork” offers a variety of templates for instant group annotation, effectively centralizing communication. At ISE, it will be showcased with the 86″ ViewBoard G1 Series, which features ViewSonic’s Android EDLA-certified slot-in PC, aiming at taking productivity and co-creation capabilities further with ‘TeamWork’ and access to Google services and applications.

Flexible Large Screen Solutions: Installation Efficiency and Tailored Viewing Experience

According to ViewSonic, large-format digital displays are valuable tools in enhancing social and communication experiences within business environments, especially in spacious conference and public areas. ViewSonic will debut its latest innovation at ISE – the customizable All-in-One LED Display. The company says this solution meets the varied demands of businesses by offering flexible sizes and aspect ratios while maintaining an All-in-One design for easy installation and operation.

In a stride towards enhancing durability and visual quality, ViewSonic says will showcase the second generation of the LDM series. This series incorporates Glue-on-Board (GOB) technology to safeguard LED modules, ensuring optimal and sustained visual excellence throughout their lifecycle. The foldable 135″ LED display will take the stage. With a pre-assembled and mobile design, it enables swift setup and relocation across various venues, delivering “impactful and engaging presentations” wherever an event takes place.

Environmentally Conscious: Visual Innovations for a Brighter Future

Among the other large-scale visual solutions, ViewSonic’s Luminous Superior Series lamp-free projector lineup will be presented at ISE. These projectors, powered by LED or laser light sources, eliminate the inconvenience and environmental hazards associated with lamp replacements and mercury toxicity, according to the company.  By incorporating energy-efficient light sources, ViewSonic says these products not only achieve a longer lifespan but also deliver up to 6,000 ANSI Lumens brightness.

This sustainable approach extends to the company’s ViewBoard solutions, which adhere to stringent environmental standards and energy conservation criteria, as demonstrated by the recycled materials used in their design and their ENERGY STAR 8.0 certifications. These solutions underscore ViewSonic’s dedication to environmental responsibility, according to the company.

DynaScan Technology announced the addition of fine-pitch LED Displays to its display portfolio. With pixel pitch options of 1.86 to 2.5 mm, and brightness levels ranging from 2000 to 4000 nits, the company says the displays are designed to meet the demands of various environments, including retail windows and outdoor environments.

DynaScan says key features of fine-pitch LED displays include:

• Sunlight Readable: High-brightness images combat glare and reflections, ensuring that the screen remains visible even in direct sunlight.
• High resolution and fine pixel pitch ensure sharp and detailed visuals, enhancing the overall viewing experience.
• “Seamless” Integration: The displays integrate with DynaScan’s existing range of display solutions, providing customers with a comprehensive suite of options for their specific needs.
• Reliability and Durability: DynaScan fine-pitch LED displays are constructed using “top-tier components” designed to deliver “reliable and durable performance over an extended period.” The company says the integration of UV-resistant materials safeguards the display from sun damage, preventing potential LED lifespan shortening and image degradation.

Hello, everyone! Welcome to ISE 2024 and therefore, your ISE 2024 Day Two Daily Raff article. I’ll be honest. Today, I mostly ran around the show floor (quite frequently between Halls 3 and 5) and GOOD LORD. Hall 3 was so packed, you couldn’t move. It was almost like a general admission concert. And maybe you’d think, “well Steph, why didn’t you duck onto a stand for some respite?” Well, because those were just as crowded! Samsung, Epson and LG were elbow to elbow packed, and many of the surrounding booths, including Crestron, Christie, Panasonic Connect and Legrand AV.

Can I just reiterate that my first ISE was in 2020, right before the world shut down. It was, understandably, a smaller show than expected. The next ISE I attended was in 2022, right after the move to Spain, but when the show was pushed back to May. Last year seemed more like a “normal year,” but now, I understand what everyone is talking about when they say ISE is the busiest show they’ve ever attended. We’re so back.

Something I talked a lot about today in a few of my executive interviews and conversations today was about AVaaS. There are SO many companies offering it on the show floor, and even manufacturers like Snap One, who is now offering an AVaaS model for its Control4 products. From bringing integrators recurring revenue to providing a streamlined device platform, what these companies are doing is really cool. I know AVaaS has been around for a few years, but if ISE is any hint, we’re going to be seeing a lot more of Xyte, Domotz and similar companies in the future. (Gary, take notes for your Krystal Ball.)

Something else Gary pointed out to me this morning was that there is a TON of LED on the show floor this year. He only saw a few LCDs on the show floor and I haven’t seen any (I’m sure there are some, but all companies are really pushing their LEDs this year). I spoke to John Marshall of Userful earlier today, and he was talking about how a really fine pixel pitch was becoming more important in instances like control rooms because there are so many different types of content these screens have to support from camera footage to text in a really fine print. So, yes, a million LEDs on the show floor. We are definitely moving in that direction.

Without further ado,

Things I Like:

• The AVIXA Women in AV Networking Event — easy networking that didn’t make me feel socially awkward or overwhelmed. (The way I feel at EVERY industry party I’ve ever attended.)
• microLED (self explanatory) (especially when it’s transparent — great work, Samsung! See below.)
• Recyclable packaging (I’m seeing many AV manufacturers move toward this for their products and I think it’s really smart. Packaging can be so wasteful, so it’s been cool to see manufacturers like Kordz and Sony move to make greener decisions for their companies.

Things I Don’t Like:

• Trade show shoes that are eight years old (My shoes from my first InfoComm in 2016 are still kicking, but I’m starting to feel like I should retire them anyway).
• Bounty chocolate bars (coconut and chocolate feels illegal somehow)
• Reused booth designs or themes for more than two years. But this is actually a difficult point to make and for everyone who has reused designs and themes, I totally understand. There has been a lot of uncertainty about returning to trade shows and that has, understandably, cut spending. Either way, next year, I hope to see some really fresh looks for all the stands!

Poland – Sixty million pixels of content is being driven to 18 HD projectors and three LED screens as part of an immersive installation at Poland’s Bieszczady Cultural Heritage Center, with tvONE’s Green Hippo Hippotizer Boreal+ MK2 Media Servers at the core of the visuals. More than 200GB of animated graphics are being handled by the Boreal+ MK2s in a show designed to educate, inform and entertain.

The Center, called Bieszczadzkie Centrum Dziedzictwa Kulturowego in Polish, is located in the southeast town of Ustrzyki Dolne. Its multimedia rooms, exhibition zones, and concert hall have been constructed in an old refinery, offering ample space for the AV show, which takes visitors into a virtual reality space to tell stories about multiculturalism, the richness of nature, and economic development. The room in which the project is installed measures 15 x 15 metres.

Group AV’s technical director Tomasz Zalewski worked with the Center’s team to deliver the project, alongside Radosław Katarzyński, product manager for Green Hippo at ESS Audio. “We chose the Hippotizer Boreal+ MK2 Media Servers because they have the right number of inputs/outputs, and they work great in permanent installations,” explains Katarzyński. “They can be managed centrally, they synchronize themselves and offer many additional options apart from just displaying the image, such as Timeline or support for TCP/IP, ArtNet commands, and so on, enabling simple control of external devices. Additionally, they allow you to combine different types of screens or projectors into one whole.”

The 18 full HD projectors project graphics onto the walls and floors, and three different types of LED screens are on the ceiling and rigged in a cylindrical form in the center of the room. The visuals run alongside a 32-channel immersive sound system, fog screens and infrared heaters that emit heat at appropriate moments, adding a further element to the experience. Additionally, there is also effect lighting installed, which is controlled by a grandMA console. Everything is synchronized using Timecode and a user-friendly control panel was created on AMX devices.

“Due to the fact that the system consists of a total of four different types of displays, we used a configuration in the form of flat screens and part modelled in 3D, which allowed us to quite easily achieve the required projection effects in a quite complicated space,” adds Katarzyński. “All of the data is held on the Boreal+ MK2 servers, and they are handling a lot of information. The Hippotizers enabled us to create a very advanced project with lots of options and possibilities which at the same time can be controlled in an easy way. The Boreal+ MK2s are working very well in the installation where it is ’on’ virtually all the time without even the slightest break.”

Day-to-day operation is being carried out by the Center’s team, and Katarzyński reveals that practically no training was required because the installation is designed so that daily control is simple and intuitive using the AMX devices. “These made it possible to design a personalized touch panel that allows the team to select all the options needed to operate the show in a clear and easy way,” he adds. “Everything else has been programmed to happen automatically each day.”

Katarzyński notes that the Green Hippo team supported the project at every stage of design and implementation, providing assistance from design to the last stage of implementation.

The animations and graphics focus on imagery of the nearby Bieszczady Mountains, the heritage of the region, and local customs. It is designed to educate the community as well as aid tourism.

Cresskill, NJ – August 12, 2024 – At CEDIA Expo 2024, Bond (booth #4109) unveils its Breeze Pro wind/rain/sunlight sensor and Firefly One landscape lighting dimmer control. Plus, the Bond Home App now has Scene Setting capabilities. Bond is featured at 16 manufacturer exhibits throughout Expo.

Bond Breeze Pro: Used with the Bond Bridge Pro (RF-to-WiFi bridge), this ultrasonic sensor can trigger multiple motorized screens, pergola louvers and shutters based on user-defined thresholds set for wind, rain, and sunlight. Real-time weather data, signal strength, battery status and setup are all provided in the Bond App. Power options include built-in solar or AA battery. Installation is wire-free. MSRP $599.

Firefly One: This Smart Dimmer enables wireless control of LED landscape lighting from within the Bond App (no bridge required). Adjust and fine-tune lighting brightness levels, set schedules, and set-up and view the status of zones. Compatible with virtual assistants and automation systems. MSRP $149.

Scenes Feature: New in the Bond App, this enables Bond Bridge Pro users to activate multiple motorized shades, ceiling fans, lights, fireplaces, and more – and all at once. Manage favorite settings for activities, sunrise/sunset, health/wellness, etc. Run by a single tap, schedule, or by its name with voice assistants.

Bond Now Controls Pergola Louvers and Outdoor Heaters: Making for even more pathways for dealers to unify control of multiple brands inside and outside a home or business, the Bond Bridge Pro is now compatible with Azenco and Equinox pergolas (motorized louvers) and Infratech heating.

“The Bond platform now brings its intuitive control to hundreds of indoor and outdoor technologies yet requires only a single API and driver, making setup easy. Plus, our new Scenes feature enables users to get the most out of their connected devices – enhancing their lifestyles,” says Bond CEO Zohar Shinar.

See Bond at CEDIA Expo 2024
• Bond (#4109)
• Progressive Screens (#738)
• Draper at Home (#3907)
• Nice (#2528)
• Coulisse (#C1312)
• Hunter Douglas (#3543)
• Infratech (#3357)
• Savant (#2519)
• SmartWings (#3949)
• WALLSMART (#4105)
• Power Shades (#1539)
• Legrand (#1506)
• Screen Innovations (#1928)
• Modern Atomics (#3520)
• Josh.ai (#2928)
• Sol-Lux (#3319)

Schedule Your Appointment with Bond
Meet the Bond team (booth #4109) to learn more about how their technology takes indoor and outdoor control to a higher-level experience. Email daria@bondhome.io to schedule an appointment.

Become a Bond Dealer
Window treatment professionals can sign-up to become a Bond dealer and purchase directly from the company at www.BondHome.io.

About Bond
Bond is from Olibra, LLC, a privately-owned NJ tech company established in 2016 with a focus of making motorized window coverings, ceiling fans and gas fireplaces simpler and more delightful to use. The Bond Bridge RF-to-WiFi platform was launched in 2018 with the Bond Bridge. This brought intuitive Smartphone control to these appliances. In 2021 came the Bond Bridge Pro, bringing expanded capabilities and integration with leading home automation and virtual assistance platforms. 2023 brought the Sidekick for Shades Gen2 battery-powered wireless keypad, and 2024 brings the Breeze Pro weather sensor and Firefly One Dimmer. (Complete list of compatible motor, automation, and virtual assistance brands here: https://bondhome.io/supported-motorization-brands/) www.bondhome.io

Bond Media Inquiries
Muto Communications PR agency:
Paul Muto: paul@mutocomm.com, 516.662.5374.
Richard Frank: richard@mutocomm.com, 949.637.0700.