Are High-Bright LCD Window Displays The Next Product To Be Supplanted By LED?
July 27, 2022 by Dave Haynes
The commercial LCD display business has gradually been shrinking as solutions providers and their end-user customers opt, instead, for LED versions, and now LED manufacturers are after high-brightness window display deals.
First, LED replaced LCD for video walls, because LED eliminated seams that were negligible but still visible with narrow-bezel LCD walls. Now pixel pitches are getting tight enough on LED product to start supplanting LCDs for things like digital posters in shop and restaurant windows.
Quebec City-based manufacturer Nummax has all the normal stack-and-tile as-needed video wall options for indoor and outdoor, but has also had a knack for developing finished solutions that meet specific needs, like these ring lamps. The company is marketing a set of in-window posters designed to compete with daylight-readable LCD displays.
The finished units have solid backs that hide the electronics and are designed to just screw or bolt into the top-inside of window frames.
There are two sizes of the posters, and two pixel pitches. The 4mm pitch versions are the brightest – pushing 5,000 nits – while there are two variations on the finer pitch 2.5mm version. One is 3,000 nits while another is 1,500 nits. The latter is very bright, but DOOH media companies tend to say they are looking for 3,000 nits or brighter to fully counteract the visual impacts of direct sunlight on a screen.
If a screen isn’t bright enough to overpower glare, it’s going to be a bit pointless in some scenarios.
At 2.5mm, these posters meet the technical definition of fine pitch LED. But they’re still meant for bigger visuals and text, to be seen from across the street or down the block. They can’t compete with LCD for resolution and the ability to display granular images and legible small text. These would be fine for promoting a new smoothie, but not so much for listing all the smoothies on a digital menu.
I dunno how these LEDs compare with high-brightness LCDs on cost or energy consumption, but guessing at least with cost that LEDs are competitive if not less costly. Display size is, of course, a big variable.
There are undoubtedly some or many Chinese LED manufacturers making and marketing similar products for their domestic market, but Nummax pitches that it is North American-made and supported.
Given the thermal load management issues of the In-Window LCDs out there, if Nummax and others can solve for brightness and cost, they can definitely stake out a nice market for themselves. Agree with your comments on the 1500 nit option. OK in the shade, but Murphy’s Law says all windows are south-facing with full solar loads.