The Society for Information Display (SID) today revealed the recipients of the 22nd annual Display Industry Awards, to be presented at the annual Display Week awards luncheon. This year’s honorees – along with the Best-in-Show and I-Zone winners – will be recognized on Wednesday, May 24, at the Los Angeles Convention Center during Display Week 2017, which runs from May 21-26.
“Choosing the winners of coveted annual Display Industry Awards is always an exhaustive, but ultimately rewarding, task that serves as a reminder of how much innovative work is happening in the display world,” said SID President Yong-Seog Kim. “For all the recent debate about the future of OLEDs, it’s clear that they are getting stronger – our well-known winners in the Display and Display Application categories all integrate OLEDs, illustrating the technology’s flexibility (both literal and figurative) and value for achieving ever-thinner displays with heightened image quality and user satisfaction. Meanwhile, our two Display Component winners have both made names for themselves not just in developing novel technologies, but in ensuring their commercial availability via strategic manufacturing relationships.”
Displays of the Year: Granted to display products that incorporate the most significant technological advances and/or outstanding features.
LG Display 65-in. Wallpaper OLED TV
Widely recognized as a leading innovator in advanced TV technology, LG Display launched its line of Wallpaper OLED TV panels in 2016 and 2017. The 65-in. Wallpaper OLED TV display combines stellar image quality with a streamlined design and a form factor that’s far slimmer (only 3.9 mm, or less than 0.2 inch, thick) and lighter (just 7.4 kg, or 16 lb) than conventional television monitors. This allows the TV to fit right up against a wall – like wallpaper. LG created a unique interface based on the V-by-One HS digital signaling standard, and included high-bandwidth digital-content protection (HDCP) to transmit video data and control signals between the display and the driver circuit board. The slim, flat external cable enables simultaneous transmission of panel power and video data to the ultra-high display (UHD) panel – 700 watts of power and a frame rate of up to 120Hz. LG Display’s vision is for this display to become a trendsetter in the TV market.
Samsung Display Quad-bended Flexible AMOLED Display
Samsung Display’s innovative flexible display products have been integrated into its smartphone designs since 2013. Two of its previous flexible displays – a curved AMOLED and a bended AMOLED – were SID Displays of the Year in 2013 and 2015, respectively. Last year, Samsung Display introduced the Quad-bended AMOLED Display, which uses industry-first “quad edge” flexible technology on the sides as well as the top and bottom of the display. Used in the Galaxy S7 Edge smartphone, the quad-HD display utilizes special curved technology that varies the radius for the curvature of the OLED panel at the left and right edges from 35R to 3.8R, enabling very fine contours, a natural curve appearance, and enhanced grip comfort. The new display’s circuit plan also greatly reduces dead space around the display edges to just 1.09 mm – a record for Samsung Display.
Display Components of the Year: Granted for novel components that have significantly enhanced a display’s performance. Sold as a separate part slated for incorporation into a display, a component may also include display-enhancing materials and/or parts fabricated with new processes.
Luminit Transparent Holographic Components for Motorcycle Head-up Display
Luminit’s Transparent Holographic Components (THCs) are the latest breakthrough in special-purpose head-up displays (HUDs) and head-mounted displays (HMDs) enabled by the company’s patented holographic master recording technology. Luminit THC embeds holographic wave-fronts onto a thin, clear photopolymer film that’s applied to such surfaces as helmet visors or eyeglasses. Then, when an image is projected onto the item’s glass or acrylic surface, the THC translates the information into a virtual image for the viewer. REYEDR, a developer of motorcycle HUDs, created the first publicly available display product using Luminit’s optical components. In these products, the holograms are integrated into a non-planar waveguide, enabling improved ergonomics and product design compared to those possible with conventional flat waveguide optics.
Nanosys Hyperion Quantum Dots
A leader in quantum dot technology, Nanosys has developed a significant breakthrough with its Hyperion offering. These new quantum dots enable displays to meet the BT.2020 ultra-high-definition (UHD) color standard without requiring an exemption to the Restriction on Hazardous Substances (RoHS) Directive issued by the European Union. The Hyperion quantum dots combine a Cd-free red quantum dot with a green quantum dot whose Cd content and emission spectrum are very low. This has allowed Nanosys to demonstrate >90 percent BT.2020 color gamut using Hyperion in a quantum-dot enhancement film (QDEF) sheet with Cd levels below the RoHS ceiling of 100 parts-per-million (ppm). Nanosys has partnered with Hitachi Chemical to begin immediate production of QDEF with Hyperion quantum dots.
Display Applications of the Year: Granted for novel and outstanding applications of a display, where the display itself is not necessarily a new device.
Apple MacBook Pro with Touch Bar
Delivering an entirely new degree of user interactivity, Apple’s Touch Bar feature is a multi-touch, high-resolution OLED display placed directly on the keyboard of the MacBook Pro. The Touch Bar delivers shortcuts and tools to the user’s fingertips based on which app is being used and in what capacity, with context-specific features and controls that can both make an unfamiliar app more accessible to a new user and empower a pro by enabling greater workflow efficiency. The creation of the Touch Bar involved several breakthroughs in OLED technology – in particular, its Retina-resolution (221-dpi) display, which enables sharp, print-quality fonts and icons. The Touch Bar’s cover glass is also revolutionary; engineered with nano-structures to minimize surface reflection and distortion, it provides a look and feel that allow the Touch Bar to blend seamlessly into the keyboard. Both the Touch Bar’s display and the MacBook Pro’s liquid-crystal main display are designed to minimize surface reflection from the other display and reduce ambient crosstalk, and color management in both displays is synchronized to ensure matching color.
PlayStation®VR / Sony Interactive Entertainment (SIE)
The PlayStation®VR (PS VR) system takes SIE’s PlayStation®4 to the next level of immersion, achieved by virtual reality (VR) technology that allows players to experience the sensation of being physically inside a game’s virtual world. Equipped with a 5.7-in. 1,920 x RGB x 1,080 resolution OLED display, the VR headset provides an approximately 100-degree-wide field of view and enables low persistence with no motion blur or flicker, heightening the feeling of reality for the gamer. The display’s “screen door effect” (a visual artifact in which the fine lines separating pixels/sub-pixels become visible in the displayed image) is minimized by the full RGB sub-pixel structure in full HD resolution and the use of an original optical element on top of the display. The OLED display also supports a 120Hz refresh rate and produces exceptionally smooth visual imagery, further adding to the player’s sense of presence within the game being played.
