Samsung has not been at the PTE show before, although it has been active in the airport market segment for some time. The company has an established team that focuses on the applications and started when Samsung started to change its business model to try to build solutions with partners. Samsung also has access to a lot of support facilities including access to services and financing, leasing deals, etc.
At the show, there was no new hardware that had not been seen at ISE, although I would say that the emphasis was much more towards LCD at PTE, whereas at ISE, it was LED everywhere. There was some emphasis on the colour performance of QLED although staff admitted that under difficult lighting, they can be a little more glossy than, for example, NEC.
Samsung has been developing its SoC-based technology in aviation and has been getting more and more support for its SoCs and apps that fully support the API can really get the benefit. For example, controlling the power state of the display can be important. In Dubai (where there are 3,000 units installed), the saving for switching off the displays for four hours (overnight) can amount to $1 million in a year.
There are also companies that are developing smarter apps – for example, smarter FID applications that keep a check on how much space is free on a display and use spare space, later in the day when there are fewer flights still to go, for advertising. Dynamic wayfinding is also becoming more widely supported and can help in the event of gate changes, etc.
Like NEC, Samsung is seeing more interest in the use of LEDs and highlighted to us that it feels it has a big advantage because of the tighter control, especially at low brightness. (as we pointed out, one of the key points about LED is that it is often a challenge to get good images at low brightness, because of the subtle . Almost anybody can make a very bright ‘blast your eyeballs’ LED, but only the quality brands can make a really good video image in a low brightness control room) Samsung is seeing demand for LEDs down to 1.5mm pitch for operations, wayfinding and signage. The controller can also support boosting brightness in parts of the display, so that larger displays that have a mixture of content can be optimised.
Samsung showed this video wall which might have been better at the ATM Conference. Image:Meko
