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What's on the horizon for LED tech?

LED technology is growing by leaps and bounds, as market leaders continually push out innovative products. Digital Signage Today spoke with Sony, a leader in LED technology, to get its perspective on trends in the LED industry and where we are headed in 2019.

January 22, 2019 by Digital Signage Today

LED technology is growing by leaps and bounds, as market leaders continually push out innovative products, such as MicroLEDs, Crystal LED and others. It can be difficult to get a handle on what is happening in this side of the digital signage market, especially as vendors continually push out new products. You can, however, get a clear picture of current and future trends in LED by listening to leaders in the marketplace, such as Sony.

 Digital Signage Today spoke with Sony, a leader in LED technology, to get its perspective on trends in the LED industry and where we are headed in 2019.

Q. What are some big trends in LED tech?

A. LED has become the dominant display technology in both the consumer and professional markets. Back-lit LED is used mostly in smaller displays and direct view LED is used in hand-held devices and very large displays such as large digital signs and video walls. What consumers see in the latest television offerings is often driven by what's already being used in digital signage and video walls.

Some of the trends in the digital signage space, and across visual markets, are increasing resolutions, MicroLED's, unique installation techniques and high-dynamic-range. LED displays have increased the pixel density, thereby increasing the resolution. As the industry moves toward 4K adoption, customers are looking for UHD options that meet a number of different needs and support a diverse range of applications, proving versatility is another consideration for digital signage customers.

MicroLED is quickly becoming the buzz word in LED technologies as companies race to try and catch up to Sony’s Crystal LED which comes in at 100-times smaller than traditional LED. In the case of Sony's CLED technology, the size allows for the surface area to be predominantly black, which offers unsurpassed contrast ratios.

Creating seamless displays for scalable technologies has always been a request from the end users. While mounting techniques try to tighten the gap between display units, Sony has gone beyond that with its proprietary alignment jig that uses microscopic cameras to get never before seen tolerances between units.

Another trend being driven by the professional market and infiltrating into the consumer space is HDR, which is an expansion of the difference between black and white light outputs. On a display, the image produces a more realistic and natural representation of colors that mirrors human perception – showcasing the deepest blacks and brightest whites, all in one image.

The wider color gamut HDR employs and sharper imagery it creates is rapidly becoming a production requirement and offers an opportunity for the digital signage space. In addition, high frame rate imagery is becoming more prominent for smoother slow-motion with less blur. Together they're evolving content creation and visualization, and the demand has made HDR and HFR a necessary option and capability for digital signage.

Q. What is Sony's role in this market?

A. Sony has always been a leader in technology. As a company that prides itself on innovation, Sony's digital signage choices take advantage of the latest trends and developments including 4K, HDR, HFR, cloud, software integration, APIs, and modularity, so users can tailor a solution to their unique requirements. From BRAVIA televisions to Pro BRAVIA Displays and the Crystal LED direct-view display, from HD to 4K and HDR, and with a range of sizes, installation options, and flexible orientations, Sony has a vast array of options for digital signage applications. This diversity allows our customers to choose a solution that meets their budget and capability requirements and offers them the peace of mind that comes with choosing an innovative brand that is synonymous with quality and legacy. 

Q. What is Sony's current most innovative product?

A. Sony has a number of industry-leading display products but our large-scale, immersive Crystal LED direct view display system has become the gold standard of displays due to its unmatched picture quality, limitless size and flexible resolution. To bring the product to market, Sony developed a new micro-LED technology to address the advancements in content delivery and quality, and is leading the movement toward smaller LEDs. The Sony Crystal LED micro-LED video wall consists of microscopically small LEDs that are 1/1000th the size of typical LEDs. These micro-LEDs are embedded through a proprietary process allowing for 99 percent black area around each pixel.

All other LED wall manufacturers have significantly larger surface mount LEDs which do not allow for a large black area. The Sony embedded micro-LED allows for unmatched contrast ratio, black level, and color gamut yielding the best image of any competitive product. In addition, the HDR capable Crystal LED features 10-bit color depth, a brightness of 1000 nits, a frame rate of 120 frames-per-second and a viewing angle of nearly 180 degrees for the best experience, no matter where you're located.

With amazing contrast, saturated color, brilliant white and deep black, Sony's Crystal LED modular display delivers it all. It's the ideal choice for life-sized displays in architectural and automotive design, and it's the ultimate display for boardrooms, theme parks, museums, broadcast studios, corporate lobbies, real estate showrooms and medical education. Thanks to Sony's unique ultra-fine RGB LEDs, the Crystal LED display establishes a breathtaking benchmark in picture quality.

Q. Where does Sony see this market going in the future?

A. In everything Sony does, we work closely with our customers to understand their markets and workflows and ultimately, their challenges. By working hand-in-hand with our clients, we've been able to develop and design purpose-built products and solutions that address our end user's pain points. We are always improving our offerings through firmware and software updates and new generations, to better reflect the realities of our customers' experiences.

As we learn more about how our products are being used and spend time investigating the professional marketplace, we have come to realize that our solutions, including Sony's Crystal LED display, are expanding beyond the traditional corporate digital signage applications into other professional segments.  We are already seeing interest in the product in digital cinema, which is why we talked to the market to understand their objectives and then sought DCI compliance. The same approach can be said for other verticals.  We show the product, listen to our customer’s needs and design features or complementary solutions to combine with our product to address those needs.

In addition to cinema, Crystal LED is being explored for a number of other complementary B2B and B2C verticals including post-production, advanced visualization, thermal imaging, simulation, residential, and supercomputing, among others. Just like we've done with cinema, we are taking the care to understand the intricacies and challenges of each of these markets, talking to leaders in the industry and taking what we learn to help adapt Crystal LED for the future, ensuring we have the highest performing, most user-friendly and relevant product.

Image via Sony.