AV Magazine has extensive coverage of the Digital Signage Summit Europe 2023 that includes one particularly interesting panel discussion. On this panel, Tobias Lang, CEO of Lang AG, said that the technology behind LCD and LED displays will merge in the future. He believes that it is incorrect to simply categorize displays as LCD or LED. Lang suggests that LCD factories, despite the declining market for LCD, can use their knowledge and expertise in core technology and transistors to develop new ways of driving pixels. This approach would result in the production of active matrix products with each pixel driven directly, leading to better LED products. The aim is to make sustainable use of LCD factories for improving LED displays.
In general, the panel discussion highlighted the potential merger of LCD and LED technologies, the coexistence of e-paper displays with LCD and LED, the need for optimizing power consumption in displays, and the challenges faced in certification processes for energy-efficient innovations.
To that end, Martijn Vanderwoude, VP of global business development and marketing at PPDS, also participating in the discussion, mentioned the coexistence of PPDS’s new Tableaux full-color e-paper products alongside LCD and LED displays. While the low power consumption of e-paper is appreciated, Vanderwoude said PPDS is still exploring its best use cases. E-paper displays have advantages in environments with ample ambient light, but they are not suitable for displaying videos. They find use in applications such as replacing room booking panels or dynamic displays where content can be changed across multiple installations simultaneously.
The third panelist, Vincent Piarou, head of the solutions market development team at Samsung, highlighted that their products have long had features to optimize power consumption. However, integrators often preferred to keep screens running continuously for maintenance purposes, which hindered energy savings. Lang further mentioned that there is still room for reducing power consumption in LED displays, and increased awareness about their energy impact presents an opportunity for innovation in this area. Piarou added that Samsung has significantly reduced the power footprint of their latest products in terms of size and weight.
