In retail, there is high demand for stores to install direct-view LED displays, to entice consumers to enter. Photos courtesy Samsung Electronics Canada
By James Arndt
From boardrooms to shopping centres to stadiums, an emerging technology is taking over the digital signage space. With enhanced picture quality and brightness, glare-free viewing, flexible configurations, and no visual seams, direct-view LED is ushering in a new era of digital display possibilities.
Due to its growing popularity, direct-view LED is already being widely adopted in many markets, including corporate, retail, automotive, sports and entertainment, advertising, transportation, health care, and education. In fact, only five years ago, LED had limited applications, and displays such as video walls were rarely seen outside of trade show exhibits. Now, direct-view LED has become increasingly commonplace, with displays cladding buildings and embedded in everything from film and foil to commercial window glass.
What exactly is direct-view LED and what makes it so revolutionary?
LED versus LCD
Firstly, LED is short for light-emitting diode, a minuscule chip of light which produces the red, green, and blue lights that deliver the visuals on full-colour digital displays. The next generation of LED is called microLED, and it differs from its predecessors in that the light chips have become much tinier. This technology is also referred to as direct-view LED, because viewers look directly at the LED light source and its continuous blending of red, green, and blue light diodes. The LEDs both create the illumination and are the colour source for the entire image.
Alternatively, liquid crystal display (LCD) has been around a lot longer and is used in most flat panel displays. This technology uses white LED chips to illuminate an LCD layer that provides the visuals. The light chips are embedded inside the enclosure, behind the LCD layer, or along the edges. Unlike direct-view LED technology, viewers do not directly see the LEDs.
While there are variations in specifications for different products and types, direct-view LED displays are generally much brighter and have a higher contrast than their LCD counterparts. This means they are a great choice in natural light, outdoor, and brightly lit settings, as they can overcome the reflection and glare that often occurs in these scenarios—offering businesses and other users more versatility when it comes to where and when they want to use them.
With enhanced picture quality and brightness, glare-free viewing, flexible configurations, and no visual seams, direct-view LED is ushering in a new era of digital display possibilities.
Finally, perhaps the most important differentiator for direct-view LED—and one that explains its rising popularity—is best described in two words: no bezels. LCD video walls, including the most premium “extreme narrow bezel” ones, show hairline-thin vertical and horizontal gridlines which reveal where the individual LCD units are placed against each other. Properly installed direct-view LEDs have a uniform surface, with no evident gaps or lines showing between the individual modules. This allows today’s businesses to create large digital canvases with no visible gridlines, to provide a truly seamless viewing experience.
Direct-view LEDs also offer more flexibility than conventional LCD screens because of how they can be configured. With the exception of some specialty products, LCD units are uniform rectangles that can only scale to become larger rectangles when they are grouped as video walls. Meanwhile, direct-view LED displays have much smaller cabinets, which allows them to be grouped and tiled in different ways. For example, they can be arranged to cover curved arches at an entryway or be suspended face-down to create virtual digital ceilings. As a result, LEDs unlock new design possibilities and allow architects to think outside the (rectangular) box, by overcoming the constraints of older display technology in physical spaces.
