
ISE Preview: Expected Themes For Digital Signage
February 3, 2025 by Dave Haynes
ISE starts tomorrow and techs are madly putting stands together today at the Fira Gran Via in Barcelona, getting ready for the doors to open.
The airlines cooperated and I am on the ground in the city. It rained here Saturday afternoon, but Sunday it was back to mostly sunshine. You could tell the locals from the Canadian visitors. They had layers on and scarves. We were walking around in shirt sleeves and drinking on rooftop patios.
The digital signage week kicks off with tonight’s mixer and the global Digital Signage Awards, and then a very full first day tomorrow wandering the show and being on the other side of the mike for several interviews.
Here’s what I think will be the major themes at ISE, from the context of digital signage:
More True MicroLED – Last year, damn near every vendor showing off its “microLED” display was showing something that was not microLED – just miniLED the vendor marketers decided to call micro anyway. This year, there should be numerous true microLED displays from numerous vendors – with product that comes out of Taiwan and often with ties to AUO. But there will be some Chinese product, as well.
If you want to annoy sales people and get them verbally tap-dancing as they show their (probably not) microLED products, ask them the size of the LED light chips in microns or micrometers … and ask for both dimensions. Example, 30 by 60 microns is microLED. 60 by 110 is not, as both measures should be sub 100 microns. There are other more exotic definitions for true microLED like the substrate used, but the LED chip size is the main one. If the sales person says it is microLED because the pixel pitch is sub 1mm or whatever, they’re just making up shit or working off their prepared talking points.
What’s used – micro or mini or whatever – does not really matter all that much. Things like visual quality, price and purpose matter more, but truth in marketing is always welcomed.
Glorious Non-micro LEDs – The thing about LED is that while microLED displays can be very impressive, the technology is still mainly in R&D mode, and the few large format displays that are commercialized are wickedly expensive … the stuff of ‘hard no!’ answers from CFOs. There are more conventional video wall products that involve technologies like miniLED and Chip On Board that look amazing, are well past the R&D stage, and ready to ship … usually at substantially less cost.
As noted in the past, the digital signage and pro AV industries don’t need to get to microLED to FINALLY have great-looking video wall products. In the short term, probably the only real commercial applications for microLED are things that require as much detail as possible – like medical imaging or some military stuff we will never know about. The microLED walls that have been going in tend to be “look at me!” jobs for companies and individuals with too much money.
MicroLED may have its day when costs really come down. Read this Q&A with Chris Riegel to get a sense of where he sees the prospects for microLED (he’s building a factory in Oregon).
Giant LCDs – The CES show in Las Vegas included revealed some absolutely massive TVs – rivaling the size of all-in-one LEDs – that looked stunning. While they are almost ridiculous in size for homes other than mansions and starter castles, they’d fit nicely in a lot of corporate and retail settings. Big TV manufacturers like TCL and Hisense will likely have or be looking at releasing pro versions (TCL has a B2B division called Moka) of these jumbo TVs. I know TVs and pro displays are different, but not all that different – and there are lots of use-cases where a TV does a pro job just fine, thank you.
OLED Not Dead – OLED has never really caught on as a commercial display product, for a variety of reasons that include brightness and operating life, as well as cost. But it’s a technology that has steadily evolved, and key properties like brightness have got a lot better. LG has been trying for years to find a scalable use-case for transparent OLED, and I expect (guessing) we’ll see a demo of real-time language translation done on a clear screen – for scenarios like ticket windows. I am hoping the LED chandelier thingy LG did at CES is replicated in Barcelona.
Lotsa E-Paper – Agile Display Solutions and DynaScan will have large format 75-inch color e-paper displays positioned as high-bright LCD alternatives for outdoor DOOH screens, and both LG and Samsung may also have versions … all of them using E Ink’s Kaleido tech. Those will be interesting to see, but what I have seen from Kaleido is muted colors that I think limit the attraction for brands who worry about color accuracy and image. For directories, these things absolutely work. I am more interested in seeing what Agile and some other companies are doing with E Ink’s Spectra 6 displays, which are smaller and more expensive, but look really good. The ESL company Solum, a spin-out from Samsung, will have a presence at ISE for the first time, and has larger products than shelf tags.
Practical AI – I suspect many to most stands will try to make some reference to being powered in some way by AI tech. Last year, I saw demos that weren’t a lot more than using ChatGPT to generate not-very-good royalty-free images and layouts. This year, I’ll be looking for more tangible demos and uses – like what Netspeek is doing with AI to speed up and improve responses in AV/IT operations centers. Boring, sure. Relevant, yup.
Management Software – There are a pile of software companies scattered through the Gran Via halls, and I’ll be interested in what they’re doing that’s genuinely new, and is staying current with what’s going on with platforms. The traditional SaaS model is very arguably seeing an existential threat from AI, as in “Does my company really need a general and broad function CMS when we have a very specific and narrow need that could be coded in AI and dropped on a headless or maybe even just a device management platform?”
Put more simply, does a restaurant chain or company with a services counter need a full CMS with scores of features it will never use, when AI tools could code a menu display for next to nothing?
Start-ups – I’m always curious about new companies with tiny stands or tabletops at these mega-shows. I first came across now successful and substantial companies like SignageOS and Wallboard when they had micro-stands at ISE, when it was still in Amsterdam. I always walk up to these start-ups hoping they are doing something different – especially when it comes to CMS software – and once in a while they genuinely do have interesting twists. If they say we’ve developed something that’s easy to use, affordable and ready to use for anything, I just quietly think, “Oh dear.”
Tariffs – It is not something that gets exhibited but I am sure there will be a LOT of show floor and cocktails chatter about tariffs being imposed by the White House. Who knows what the impacts will be, but most economists – the people who actually think about and understand this stuff – seem to be suggesting it will be bad. I don’t know how or if tariffs get applied to services, like SaaS software, but the electronics that almost all originate from China just got at least 10% more costly, as did the cost of cloud computing, shipping and on and on.
If you are at ISE this week, see you there. I plan (we’ll see after some late nights and too-early mornings like today … jet lag is my constant companion) to do daily roundup posts. If you bump into me in the halls and would like a long chat, I’ll apologize now. I’m going all day, each day. I generally have time for Hi and Bye. The after-hours social events are better.
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