We reported on a pre-ISE briefing by Samsung last week and so at ISE we spent most time looking at products (Samsung Heads for eBoards) with the company.
We started by looking at outdoor displays – the firm is looking for business in this area in Europe. We spoke last week about the UK deal with the retailer, Game (Samsung Heads for eBoards), and we heard that about €1.8 million was spent by Game on displays to go in store windows and they needed them to be bright. Samsung is exploiting bonding technology that is currently being applied in Korea, but production may eventually move to Eastern Europe.
Although Samsung didn’t point them out to is, the firm was showing the OH24E and OM24E which are small signage models that have brightness of 1,500cd/m² and, apparently, 5,000:1 contrast. The signs have SoC technology and can run MagicInfo. The OH24E can be used outdoors, and is protected to IP56, with a temperature range of -30 ° C to +50 ° C. The OH24E will cost €3,300. The OM24E will cost €1,910. Both screens have special A/R coatings which are said to be below 0.5% and are rated for 24/7 operation.
Samsung has been working with BlackBox in the UK on an innovative application that takes data that was previously sent to dot matrix displays and is now being processed and displayed on dual LCDs for ScotRail (see the image – right). The displays give a very flexible medium for communicating with passengers, for example in emergency situations.
A big focus for Samsung in the coming year is the LED display market. As we mentioned in the report last week, winning new business in this market has taken longer than was originally hoped. LEDs up to 2.5mm pitch are developed and made in Suwon and those above made in the US and all LEDs are currently “build to order” (BTO) products. The US LEDs are now being sold as “PrismView”, the YesCo name for its hardware and control software. At ISE, there was a demonstration of a 1.5mm display in a FullHD configuration at 2.8 x 1.6M using eight cabinets of 480 x 540 resolution and each with 6 modules. Brightness was said to be 700 nits-ish.
Indoor LEDs from Suwon will be in 1.5mm, 2.0mm and 2.5mm, while from Yesco, products will be 3, 4, 6, 8 and up to 20mm for indoor applications and 6 to 20mm for outdoor use.
In the UK last week, much was made of the plan to attack the eBoard market and at ISE Samsung showed an infrared + EMR (for pens) touch display which is expected to become available in Q2 of this year. Samsung is also working on a system for wireless collaboration. It will have a control box which could be mounted under a table and allow connectivity to meeting room displays.
There was a big show of UltraHD for LFD applications and Samsung will end up with a full range of UltraHD displays. The company is also starting to offer the 3200ºK 55″ video wall that was developed by Samsung Display for TV studios.
In desktop monitors, Samsung is planning a push to promote its WQHD (2560 x 1440) displays, which are popular with gamers, as it is still a challenge to display UltraHD at the frame rates want. Samsung told us that specialist gaming online sellers tend to be very influenced by the desire to supply and use Nvidia graphics cards, so tend to want G-Sync rather than FreeSync, so Samsung will be working on that.
The firm also told us that it is getting more traction with curved displays now and it is planning to introduce monitors with tighter radiuses this year (which is in line with what Samsung Display said at CES).
In hospitality TV, Samsung has been working on more software support and told is that it will switch to a Tizen software platform in the future which should give a faster and more responsive user experience.
Analyst Comment
Specialists in LED that we spoke to are underwhelmed by the quality of some of the Samsung LEDs compared to the best products in the market (apart from the 1.5mm). They believe that this is because Samsung is confident that its ex-factory calibration is good enough and, as I understand it, Samsung does not see a need to calibrate after set up. (BR)
