Photos courtesy NEC Display Solutions
By Keith Yanke
Both ultra-high-definition (UHD) digital displays and cinema-grade ‘4K’ projectors were all the rage at the 2014 InfoComm audiovisual (AV) industry show, which took place in June in Las Vegas, Nev. On the display front, in particular, manufacturers were clearly racing to deliver higher resolutions to eager customers.
Several manufacturers are already shipping UHD displays in a range of sizes, from desktop monitors to large screens, while excitement has grown for 4K projector applications in the digital cinema market. The most hype has focused on pushing UHD/4K technology into consumers’ homes, but there are many applications in the commercial market, including the digital signage sector.
Phases of adoption
Early adopters of UHD display technology have included animation studios, broadcasters, computer-aided design and manufacturing (CAD/CAM), control rooms, engineering departments, governments, health-care facilities, military organizations and photography studios. On the projector side, flight simulators, large auditoriums and corporate event rental and staging companies have appeared to hold the ‘first mover’ advantage. For most of these applications, users can turn to multiple existing display options to accomplish UHD/4K results.
Moving beyond these markets, retailers are likely to be among the next set of adopters, along with corporate video conferencing applications. Brand marketers in the retail space, especially, are always looking for the latest, greatest technologies to help them stand out from their competitors. Fashion designers, for example, can use 4K resolution to showcase their latest collections with greater detail and clarity than ever before. To captivate retail audiences, they tend to use screens around 2.5 m (100 in.) in size to provide lifelike, full-size images.
In video conferencing, meanwhile, two earlier, lower-resolution displays can now be replaced by one, such that live video and data sources can share space on a single screen. These configurations will help make AV installation and integration simpler by reducing the number of components needed for a given video conferencing system.
Factors to consider
For these and other digital signage and AV applications, it is important to consider several key factors before jumping into a UHD/4K display deployment:
- What is the customer trying to achieve?
- Will 4K content provide a real advantage in the marketplace?
- Does the customer absolutely need UHD resolution today?
- Is the goal to ‘future-proof’ the business, so there will be no need to replace systems in a few years’ time?
These are all important questions to ponder before taking any action. The key is to start out with a plan that outlines specific, measurable goals. Content, bandwidth, cost and compatibility will all come into play when preparing an effective transition to 4K technology.
HD screens, long the standard for digital signage, are gradually giving way to 4K displays.
Content
Both 4K content and, for that matter, the corresponding media player hardware are currently in their infancy, but as time goes on, this will change. More digital signage hardware manufacturers will begin to offer UHD/4K players
and more 4K content will become broadly available.
That said, it is worth keeping in mind 4K-resolution displays also offer the capability to feature multiple high-definition (HD) images, graphics and video feeds on-screen at the same time. With a standard ‘full-HD’ screen, the user is limited to 1,920 x 1,080 pixels, but by moving to a 4K screen, he/she essentially achieves four times the resolution; so if he/she wants to display smaller, existing images and fonts, they will remain highly visible on the newer screen.
In other words, 4K screens excel not only at displaying content from a single UHD source, but at offering almost limitless flexibility in content configurations without image degradation.
