MODULAR DISPLAY HISTORY Part Four

In the beginning there were PCBs and ribbon cables and large driver boards and power supplies. There were small PCBs each in a housing with a discrete louver and there were large PCB subassemblies. Some had lenses. And like the great Permian extinction few if any of these designs have survived to the present day. Soon, in the mid-1990’s, the commercial introduction of the blue LED would lead to an explosion of new display topologies.

Geoff Lunn related this story to Tom Mudd in a thread discussing the history of Invision Microsystems.

Exchanges like this are our starting point. People had their Red-Green displays and they thought they made white and they liked it that way. This is before the transition to surface mount electronics. Before the introduction of the three-in-one SMD package that came to define the successful Lighthouse and Barco LED displays of the early 2000’s. And before the introduction of the 16:9 cast aluminum frame that has come to dominate the market for fine pitch install screens. How did we get from an ad hoc bunch of large screen display enthusiasts putting pins though holes in PCBs to an industry standard of sorts driving most of the specs for fine pitch LED installations?

Barco launched NX4 in 2007 with an 8:9 aspect ratio and radical carbon fiber space frame. But the install variant had a much more simple frame. This was a cost driven decision and the resulting design had a lot in common with the Olite frame. Element Labs made slightly different decisions on the install variant of Cobra opting to design the casting so that the latches could be replaced with fixed mounting plates. NX4 was used in the Comcast install in Philadelphia. This is the first real iconic lobby LED install. At the time a 4 mm install LED display was the cutting edge and this was a massive architecture scale install. But the 8:9 ratio would seem to indicate that Barco felt like this product would be primarily used to make typical 16:9 video displays while the square iLite product would continue to be used in large arbitrary media surfaces. 

Silicon Core brought the Orchid 1.9 mm panel to market in 2011 with a 8:9 aspect ratio. The panel was built around a large format aluminum plate supporting six LED boards and a central control box. The frame featured some elements that exist in products today. A flat front plate locating the LED boards with a rear housing for the power supply, the receiver cards, and a hub board. 

A few years later Eyevis and Planar both introduced LED install products built around a layered design concept that more closely mirrors the approach of other trades in architectural interiors. Both companies supplied projection and LCD video wall systems to integrators and they needed to add high resolution LED to their offerings. The companies were more focused on providing complete solutions to integrators and so the products reflected a different set of priorities.

Hartmut Weinreich, now at Technikkonzepte GmbH, worked on the development of the EyeLED-M at Eyevis and confirmed this. 

A space frame system can be built and leveled before the electronics are installed. Adjustments for the X, Y, or Z axis are easily accessible to the installation team as would reference points that can be used with a laser level or a plumb bob to confirm that the screen was flat before the installation of the electronics. The new Eyevis system had all the bells and whistles that a high end integrator would want.

The Planar DirectLight X included something called the "EasyAlign mounting system". This follows the same pattern. The framing system can be installed and alignment handled before the LED tiles are installed. Planar included two levels of Z-axis adjustment and remote power supplies in their system.

Within a few years of these product introductions Unilumin, AOTO, Leyard, Liantronics, QSTech and others were all shipping 16:9 install panels at a variety of price points and the cost advantage of these products was too much to ignore. Both Eyevis and Planar are now part of Leyard but at the time Eyevis was working with Unilumin. While the EyeLED-M had a strong point of view Unilumin were offering LED panels in a 16:9 format that were much more cost effective. Desay introduced a 16:9 install product in 2017. ROE, Yaham, and many others now have 16:9 products in the way that narrow bezel LCD displays are largely 46” or 55”. This is now a high volume business with manufacturers targeting different market segments while sticking to this de facto standard form factor.

The next phase is refinement. ESDlumen came up with a simplified lighter weight panel. Digiled worked on a prototype called Wafer that went on to become Digithin [see image of a prototype of Digithin below courtesy of Graham Burgess]. There is a clear focus on wall mounted installation and the need to move away from the complicated and expensive framing systems that are required for most front service installations.

The CreateLED AirIM is an interesting outlier. These are small 200 mm x 150 mm modules with a lot of built in intelligence. Four to six modules roughly the size of the AirIM go into most 16:9 panels. CreateLED have eliminated the larger panel entirely and moved to put all the intelligence into smallest viable component. A network of modules. Each LED display module incorporates power distribution and a receiver card and there is a cost associated with moving all of that into such a small package. More connectors. More mechanical connections. This is something that you can expect late in a development cycle in the way that LCD manufacturers are moving memory into the pixels. The CreateLED approach points to the high level of product integration that may be the future of fine pitch LED.

I end this week not really knowing who introduced that first 16:9 panel. This is the internet though and I am certain someone wants to enlighten me. Graham Burgess mentioned that he believes the 16:9 panels started slightly smaller with a 500 mm width and scaled up to the 600 mm width, a move that helps with unit cost and allows similar wall sizes to the 55” narrow bezel product. This also gets manufactures close to the imperial system and some manufactures introducing products that are two feet wide (609.6 mm).

Next week - MODULAR DISPLAY HISTORY Part Five 

The rise of the Shenzhen Public Frame