At the show, Planar majored on its new direct LED displays, which it is promoting under the DirectLight brand. The technology is available in 3.1mm, 2.5mm, 1.9mm and 1.6mm pitches and the company was highlighting that it has used a very consistent 400 x 300 tile size for all of them to make them easily interchangeable (which led to a discussion as to whether it might make some sense in big displays to have different pitches on different parts of the display?)
Like Planar’s LCDs, power is kept off the tiles which makes redundancy an option and also makes cooling easier. The panels can be put directly up against a wall and protrude just 4″ (10cm). A frame can be used to keep modules aligned and front access is enabled using a magnetic system. Avoiding the distribution of power through the tiles means that they can be daisy-chained. The video cables can also be duplicated for redundancy. For more on the LEDs, see our report on the first sighting at NAB. (Planar Unveils New LED Video Wall Series)
Planar DirectLight at NAB
Analyst Comment
A feature of the “offer” rather than the product is a very clever (well, it looked that way after a quick demo!) web-based configurator that helps potential customers to work out what they need to meet the application they have.
We noted that the Planar DirectLight LEDs had good contrast. That made us wonder if lower brightness operation was possible. It is often harder to deliver a low brightness image than a high brightness one, but Planar assured us that it can support high quality operation down to just 10% of maximum brightness. at 100 cd/mm² (BR)
