In previous years, Delta and its wholly-owned subsidiary Vivitek had separate booths at ISE, in part, representing their different market orientations. This year, they shared a common booth.
Delta Highlights Control Rooms and Video Walls
A 2 x 2 array of 70” Delta RP cubes in a simulated control room environment at ISE. (Credit: M. Brennesholtz)
Delta was showing its new 70” Xtra Slim rear projection cubes for control room installations. These 4K (actually UHD, 3840 x 2160) cubes have a laser-phosphor-based single panel DLP engine and are targeted at control room applications. Delta said the high resolution is useful for monitoring systems where there is a lot of fine detail that needs to be visible. The light engine can produce up to 2500 lumens, which the RP screen turns into up to 1500 cd/m² as the image brightness. Delta says this compares to 300 cd/m² from an LED-based cube of the same size and this can avoid the need for a darkened control room or in cases where there is a “challenging environment.” The light source is said to be good for 100,000 hours, 11.4 years of 24/7 operation, minimizing maintenance needs. Xtra Slim design means a depth of about 560mm, saving valuable real estate in the control room. The cubes are available with either front or rear access for maintenance.
The Delta representative told me the company believes there is still room for RP cubes in the control room environment, even after recent developments in tiled LCDs and fine-pitch, direct-view LED displays. He said that low-budget control rooms can use tiled LCDs but the owners should understand that they will only last about for about years of 24/7 operation before they must be discarded and replaced. Medium budget installations can use RP cubes and installations with very high budgets can use LED video walls, both of which provide about 10 years of service. While the price of LED videowalls is falling rapidly, it isn’t falling fast enough to make them price-competitive with RP cubes anytime soon. The RP cube has the added advantage over LED videowalls in control room applications in that it can be upgraded by replacement of the engine without discarding the entire wall array of cubes.
A 2 x 2 tile of Delta LW-5581 displays. (Credit: M. Brennesholtz)
Delta offers customers both tiled LCDs and LED videowalls for control room use, in addition to its cubes, and was showing both at ISE. They were showing the LW-5581 MR VC LCD display in a 2 x 2 tile. Each of these 55” displays has FHD (1920 x 1080) resolution, a narrow bezel that gives a 1.8mm picture-to-picture distance, a contrast ratio of 1200:1 and a brightness of 500 cd/m². They have a full-array LED backlight. They support audio in and speaker output, USB 2.0 and OPS plug-in cards. The LW-5581 can be tiled in arrays up to 10 x 10.
Delta unveiled at ISE their new FE-12 indoor videowall with a 1.26mm pitch. This joins the existing members of the FE series with 1.5, 1.8 and 2.5mm pitches. According to Delta, the FE-12 with
“black SMD technology provides a seamless, high-resolution, high-contrast display solution for interior areas with short viewing distances. Its compact and lightweight design guarantees easy, quick installation. With a contrast ratio of over 3,000:1, a light output of over 1,000 cd/m² and native 13-bit color processing, the 1.2mm LED delivers excellent image and video quality in any indoor setting.”
After calibration to match adjacent tiles, the brightness is said to drop to 800 cd/m². The FE-12 targets digital signage and retail applications more than control room applications, although Delta suggests it can be used in traffic control rooms, which are normally less demanding than industrial control rooms.
Delta was also showing its existing IE-3 LED indoor videowall which targets digital signage and retail applications, not control rooms. The one on display had a 3.0mm pitch but the IE series has other members with 4.0mm and 6.0mm pitch. None of these are fine enough for control room applications.
Vivitek Focuses on Projectors
Vivitek DU9800Z projector (Credit: Vivitek)
At ISE 2018, Vivitek showed off its new and brightest single-chip DLP DarkChip 3 laser projector: the DU9800Z which is designed for large venue, house of worship & professional installation. The solid state illumination source projector provides 18,000 ANSI Lumens with a 20,000 hour life and native WUXGA (1920 x 1200) resolution. There is a complete range of interchangeable lens in throw ratios from 0:84:1 to 7.01:1. These lenses have motorized focus, zoom and lens shift. The projector is designed for 24/7 operation with minimal maintainence. This projector was launched at the end of 2017 and is shipping now. At ISE, Vivitek was using six of the DU9800Z projectors illuminate its main overhead display. –Matthew Brennesholtz
