Why are security giants entering the ultra-fine pitch LED display market?

In June, Tyco, the international security giant, joined hands with the China distributor to release a full range of display and control products under its brand American Dynamics, including DLP/LCD and small-pitch LEDs, and expressed its optimism about the future space of small-pitch LEDs. During the 2016 national tour, Kodak, a leader in video and security, released crystal-clear ultra-fine-pitch LED displays, including two series of products - infinitely spliced ​​ultra-fine-pitch LED splicing screens & LED high-definition large-size displays.

Small-pitch LED displays generally refer to indoor LED displays with a pixel spacing (i.e. pixel spacing = center spacing between two LED lamp beads, represented by P) below 2.5mm. They mainly include P2.5, P2.0, P1.9, P1.6, P1.2 and other models. At present, the minimum spacing has reached 0.7mm, and P0.9 has begun mass production. Since small-pitch LEDs have the advantages of no seams (DLP technology can currently achieve 0.2mm seams), good display effects, and long service life, and their costs have dropped rapidly in recent years, they have the price basis to gradually replace indoor large-screen wall panels. They have gradually entered the commercial field and are expected to enter the civilian field in the future.

Why are security giants entering ultra-small businesses?Pitch LED display market? Small-pitch LED display technology will quickly enter indoor applications in the next few years with its advantages of seamless, excellent display effects, continuous semiconductor technology advancement and cost reduction. It is expected to replace the original indoor large-screen display technology in stages and fill the technical gap. Security and video companies have a better understanding of end-user needs and have no reason not to pay attention to this market.

The evolution of LED display technology

In the field of LED display screens, the earliest single-color and two-color displays appeared, which were composed of packaged lamp beads to form a matrix screen. They were mainly used to display text information and are still widely used in business halls such as trains and bus stations. Compared with other display technologies, LED displays have the advantages of self-illumination, excellent color reproduction, high refresh rate, power saving, and easy maintenance.

With the advancement of LED technology, a packaged device contains three chips of red light, green light and blue light, forming the three primary colors. By adjusting the current of the three chips, each chip can emit light of different intensities, so that thousands of colors can be displayed. And with LThe size of ED full-color display packaging devices has shrunk, and the cost of the entire screen has dropped rapidly. Products with smaller dot pitches continue to enter the market.

Introduction to the LED display industry chain

From the perspective of the LED display industry chain structure, the core components from upstream to downstream mainly include RGB three-color light chips, full-color packaging devices, driver ICs, multi-layer PCB boards, cabinet kits, display cards (sending cards/receiving cards) and video control systems, etc., involving many related companies. Among all components, the highest cost component is the packaged device, that is, the lamp bead. The second component is the PCB board used to carry the lamp bead, the driver IC that controls the lamp bead display (light and dark, gray scale), etc.

my country's LED display market pattern

The application fields of LED small-pitch display products include video conferencing, display, advertising, command and dispatch, monitoring center, etc. of our countryCompanies such as Leyard and Unilumin, the leading LED display companies, not only have a higher growth rate than their foreign competitors, but also the proportion of these companies' overseas business in operating income is on the rise. The entry of security companies represented by Hikvision, Dahua, Keda and Tyco into the market will have a great impact on the market. Because the participation of security companies can better integrate security and other related practices, better grasp customer needs, and promote its application in other fields such as video surveillance, video conferencing, command and dispatch, etc.

The application of LED display in the field of public safety

In order to further improve the level of public safety, the public safety system of the entire city is becoming more and more dependent on video surveillance, and the number of video collection equipment distributed in various places is growing rapidly. The input signal is mainly the video signal returned from the video (camera), which is mainly used to maintain public safety and respond to emergencies.

Indoor large screen display mainstream technology

The current mainstream professional indoor large-screen display technologies mainly include DLP rear-projection splicing, LCD splicing, PDP splicing, projection and fusion technologies. Each technology has its own advantages and inevitable flaws, and each occupies different types of indoor large-screen display application fields.

One: DLP rear projection splicing technology

DLP (Digital Light Processing, digital light processing) rear projection splicing technology is mainly used for professional indoor large-screen display applications. DLP technology was developed by Texas Instruments (TI) scientist Larry Dr. Hornbeck invented it in 1987. After continuous improvement and upgrading, the technology has become mature and is one of the mainstream projection technologies. It occupies a large market share in mid-to-high-end display applications.

Part 2: Liquid crystal/plasma (LCD/PDP) splicing technology

Used in our daily lifeIndustrial-grade products similar to commonly used LCD TVs (LCDs) or plasma TVs (PDPs) are used as splicing units, and are added to the control system to form a large-screen splicing wall. The principles of these two technologies are quite different, but their biggest features are low cost, and they are widely used in the field of mid- to low-end indoor large-screen displays.

Part Three: Projection and Projection Fusion

Projection technology uses optical devices and certain technologies to rearrange and combine the light emitted by the backlight into the image that needs to be displayed, and then projects it onto the projection cloth. According to the position of the person and the projector, it can be divided into two methods: front projection and rear projection. DLP rear projection splicing technology is also a projection technology. To distinguish it, here it mainly refers to front projection.

Comparison of mainstream indoor large-screen display technologies

Comparison of DLP and LED splicing large-screen technologies

The advantages and disadvantages of small-pitch LED display technology

Compared with other mainstream indoor large-screen display technologies, small-pitch LED display has the following obvious advantages.

Solving patchwork problems

The human eye is very sensitive to "different" things. When a complete picture is played on a large screen, users can easily see the "black lines" between display units even on a DLP splicing wall with a seam of less than 1 mm. This is because in addition to the physical distance between different display units, there are also "optical seams": the brightness and divergence direction of light on both sides of the seam are often different. These differences are easily detected by the human eye, and LCD/PDP splicing technology is even more obvious in this regard.

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Semiconductor technology progress and scale effects jointly promote cost reduction

As ​​discussed above, small-pitch LED display technology is an extension of LED technology, and the components that account for a high proportion of its cost are almost all products of semiconductor technology, including chips, packaging devices, driver ICs, control systems (sending/receiving cards), etc. The costs of these have shown a rapid downward trend in the past few years.

Always maintain the consistency of the entire screen display

The current mainstream indoor large-screen display technology is still difficult to overcome the problem of inconsistent display effects across the entire screen caused by reduced light source brightness. For example, for DLP rear projection splicing walls, even if the latest LED light sources are used, There is a situation where the brightness of the light source decreases with the increase of use time, and the degree of decrease of each light source is different, which leads to the inconsistent brightness of each display unit. When displaying human faces, a "yin and yang face" will appear. This problem also exists in LCD/PDP displays.

Has better display effects and color restoration capabilities

Small-pitch LED displays have a wide color temperature adjustment range, which can range from 2,500k to 10,000k, and have strong advantages in some special indoor applications. In addition, small-pitch LED displays have higher gray levels and high refresh rates.

LED display resolution limitations and cost issues

DLP, LCD, and PDP all have higher resolutions and can reach 2k high-definition resolution on a 60-inch display screen. The pixels of the small-pitch LED display are composed of lamp beads, so the resolution depends on the spacing of the lamp beads and the screen size. Taking HD (1,920×1,080) as the standard, a 1.2mm product requires 110 inches. and DLP, LCD, PDPIn comparison, considering cost factors, the current resolution of small-pitch LED displays is not dominant, but it basically meets the needs of high-definition display.

Fine-pitch LED display replaces the original large-screen display

Small-pitch LED display technology will rely on its unique advantages to enter the field of indoor large-screen display, realizing all or part of the replacement of the original technology. In high-end application fields such as command rooms and control rooms, small-pitch LED display technology is completely seamless and can maintain display consistency for a long time, and will replace DLP splicing technology.

In applications in monitoring centers such as public security and smart cities, small-pitch LED displays are expected to become the technology of choice for central main screens. The characteristic of the monitoring center application is that there are huge multi-channel signal sources from the monitoring probes, which are generally displayed on both sides of the central main screen, and each signal is displayed on a small screen. When you need to focus on viewing a certain video signal, or when an emergency situation such as an alarm occurs on a certain channel, you need to connect the signal to the central main screen to view the details. In addition, the central main screen is used for command and deployment, and is used for scheduling and deployment.

For large-scale video conferencing, professional studios and other fields, small-pitch LED displays will rely on their advantages to perfectly replace traditional display technologies. However, each field has different cost sensitivity and display effect requirements.

Flexible size: standard 16:9 specification, flexible splicing, more suitable for mainstream security monitoring and video conferencing video display applications;

"Low brightness and high gray": the gray scale level is still rich at low brightness, suitable for indoor security monitoring and video center applications;

High consistency: The uneven brightness of the LED screen due to shrinkage is distributed individually and divergently, and cannot form an obvious visual uneven area like DLP; rely on the mature "single point correction" technology of the LED video industry to ensure color consistency.

Summary: It is not surprising that Kodak released a small-pitch LED display, becauseWeikeda has two product lines: security monitoring and video conferencing, and both product lines have a large number of large-screen scene requirements. After Samsung, Hikvision, and Dahua, Tyco and Kodak have all launched ultra-fine-pitch LED displays, proving that the "end-to-end" solutions of security companies are increasingly in place. Each display technology has its advantages and disadvantages. The advantages of LED ultra-fine pitch are relatively obvious, but the disadvantages are gradually improving, which will increasingly erode the space of traditional displays and become the mainstream of large-screen displays in the future!