Leyard and Planar did not introduce any new products at NAB-NY and the coverage of their existing products at IBC and other show reports is relatively complete. At NAB-NY, the company was highlighting their TWS series display with a 0.9mm pitch.
Leyard/Planar TWS series LED display with a 0.9mm pitch. (Credit: M. Brennesholtz)
Many vendors have told me that they have 0.9mm or even 0.7mm pitch LED panels but, due to their high cost, customers are not actually buying them. At NAB-NY however, Tani Klein, Regional Manager for Metro NY for Leyard/Planar, told me that he was going to do his first install of a 0.7mm pitch within the next two weeks. After that, he has five other installs of the 0.7mm pitch panel on his schedule. He says that the 0.7mm and 0.9mm pitch LED displays appeal not to the broadcast community, the main group of attendees at NAB-NY, but to people with boardroom and other high-value applications. He said these people do not want to scale 4K video signals – they want 1:1 pixel mapping from the video signal to the display. The height of the ceiling in the boardroom often dictates the pitch of the screen, not the need for resolution. Unless the room has a very high ceiling, a 4K screen (2160 pixels high) with a 1.2mm pitch simply will not fit, as shown in the table.
|
Pitch |
4K Panel Height |
Minimum Ceiling Height |
|
1.2mm |
2.6M |
3.6M (11.8’) |
|
1.0mm |
2.2M |
3.2M (10.3’) |
|
0.9mm |
1.9M |
2.9M (9.6’) |
|
0.7mm |
1.5M |
2.5M (8.2’) |
|
Table Credit: M. Brennesholtz |
||
The panel height in this table is the active area alone. The table assumes there with be 1” (25.4mm) borders top and bottom of the panel, the minimum distance from the floor will be 36” (0.91M) and the installer will want at least 1” (25.4mm) clearance from the ceiling. With these assumptions, a 0.7mm pitch 4K panel will fit in a room with only a 2.5M (8.2’) high ceiling. While most boardrooms have a ceiling higher than this, not all do and there are other high-value applications that can afford the cost of a fine pitch panel that may be in rooms with lower ceilings, for example, a post-production house installation for customer review of video content, especially HDR video content.
He added that the larger pitch displays in the TWS series, 1.2mm and 1.5mm, are commonly used by the broadcast community for on-set use because these pitches are still fine enough to avoid moiré in the broadcast HD camera. –Matthew Brennesholtz
