Neoti At NAB Touting What It Calls First LED Display To Be PANTONE Validated
April 15, 2024 by Dave Haynes
Indiana-based display manufacturer Neoti is at the big National Association of Broadcasters trade show in Las Vegas this week showing off what it says the first direct view LED display to get officially validated for supporting PANTONE colors and skin tones.
The Bluffton, IN company says PANTONE’s approval and licensing applies to its new UHD Pro XF+ LED product line, which has pitches ranging from 2.5mm down to super-fine 0.9mm.
The PANTONE Matching System is a globally known and supported standard for color reproduction that dates back to the 1960s, and for many year was a tool used by the creative community for producing material that had highly accurate color, as specified through a proprietary numbering system and a palette of color chips.
The most referenced color is Coke Red, but there’s also an Amazon Orange, a Starbucks Green and specific blues and yellows for Ikea, among many.
As marketing has extended beyond print, and the creative production behind that, PANTONE support has gone beyond color chips and reference books to higher quality display monitors and laptop screens that have integrated color correction into their technology. A Fujifilm printer is PANTONE Validated, for example, and even a specific Samsung Quantum Dots OLED display.
About five years ago,Taiwan-based BenQ announced the launch of what it said was the world’s first digital signage display series to be PANTONE Validated. That involved LCD flat panels, and Neoti says it is the first LED company to go through the process that was completed with PANTONE Validation.
“It’s time the LED industry be held to higher color standards, much like the print industry,” says Neoti CEO Derek Myers. “No matter the content, it’s intended to be displayed with very specific color fidelity, and to maintain this standard over time. Thanks to InfiniteColor technology, UHD Pro FX+ delivers true color across every vertical.”
“Our color experts worked together with Neoti to test and validate their ability to authentically reproduce Pantone Colors and Skin Tones,” says Iain Pike, Senior Global Director of Product and Licensing at Pantone. “These are distinctive marks that Neoti can share with their customers to demonstrate they deliver true color fidelity.”
Neoti has a stand at NAB, which opened yesterday and runs through Wednesday in Vegas. That presence at NAB is a bit of an indicator for the target market here – professional environments like broadcast and movie production sets, design studios and brand-focused spaces in which accurate color has a heightened importance. The displays have 26-bit color depth and multi-image framesync properties, but are not all that bright – maxing out at 800 nits.
Ciolor matching is not an area I know a lot about, but as the digital signage and pro AV world gets past what’s been years of fixation on the finest pixel pitch and highest contrast, super accurate colors and validation from a body that all creatives know about seems like a good little selling point. I’m not sure it would be THE key box that would get ticked by many buyers, but it’s certainly helpful.
This is huge!