How popular is the emerging applications of LED video wall? The ISLE (International Smart Display & Integrated System Exhibition) 2023 recently held in Shenzhen of Guangdong Province in South China visually showed the answer. 

Emerging Applications of LED Video Wall Come to the Fore

According to LEDinside, a research institute of TrendForce, xR Virtual Production,  Glasses-Free 3D Display, 5G+8K UHD Display, LED All-in-One, and Creative Displays swept the exhibition hall of ISLE 2023, where visitors lingered for a long time to experience the immersive visual effect and take photos.

On the scene, LEDinside learned that LED video wall manufacturers are brimming with confidence in the development of burgeoning markets. For instance, companies like Unilumin, Leyard, Absen, Aoto, and Infiled have attached much more weight to developing xR Virtual Production market, which they expect to boost business growth. 

Apparently, their expectations are in line with current market development trend. In light of TrendForce’s “2023 Global LED Video Wall Market Analysis Report”, nascent markets including xR Virtual Production, LED All-in-One and Glasses-Free 3D Display continued to boom in 2022. This year, the global market size of LED video wall for xR Virtual Production surpassed USD 400 Million, representing an increase of over 50% YoY. LED All-in-One also enjoyed robust growth in shipments and incrementally opened commercial display market.

Against this backdrop, while the pixel pitch of LED video wall is further shrinking, ≤P1.0 LED video wall technologies have grown significantly mature, which can be exemplified by the image quality of P0.9 LED video walls demonstrated by many exhibitors at ISLE 2023.

Based on TrendForce’s analysis, ＞P2.5 LED video wall is expected to grow mildly while fine pitch and micro pitch display to mushroom, and the market size of micro pitch display will grow at a CAGR of up to 36% from 2021 to 2026. In the long term, it’s estimated that the market size of LED video wall will increase to USD 13 Billion in 2026, fueled by the growth of fine pitch display and Mini LED video wall.

Source：TrendForce

LED Driver IC Faces Multiple Challenges in the Pursuit of High Performance

In LED video wall markets like xR Virtual Production and Glasses-Free 3D Display, users commonly pursue high-quality shooting and visual effect, and in those like medicare, education & corporation and monitoring center, they go after the highly visualization of information and communication. That means LED video wall is required to feature complicated characteristics, covering HDR, high refresh rate, high contrast ratio, high grayscale, high uniformity, high reliability, high frame rate and low power consumption, etc.

In xR Virtual Production application, for example, HDR, high frame rate and high grayscale are indispensable in meeting the demand for premium image quality, vivid color and smooth display. According to production scene and budget, LED video wall for high-end virtual production as a background is required to deliver high brightness (>1,500nits), high resolution (P1.2-P1.6), high grayscale (16bits), high refresh rate (3,840/7,680Hz), high frame rate (60Hz) and wide gamut (DCI-P3).

However, LED video wall is still at the preliminary development stage in emerging markets and certainly is facing some problems in practice. On one hand, power consumption and temperature of the video wall will greatly increase as pixel pitch shrinks while brightness improves. On the other hand, the inherent low grayscale effect problem of LED video wall remains as a bottleneck. On top of that, there are many other problems related to grayscale, such as coupling at high grayscale and discontinuous grayscale, to name just a few.

On a user experience basis, high power consumption and high temperature will influence product reliability and lifespan. If it’s used for virtual production, high temperature will also make the person being photographed uncomfortable. Low refresh rate at low grayscale will bring about moire effect and flicker, which impact photographing and shooting effect.

To tackle these problems, LED drive IC is of vital importance. In terms of power consumption, LED driver IC’s power consumption can account for up to 72% of the whole in a P0.9 COB 4K video wall. Currently, LED driver IC using common anode structure is in a majority, but it delivers high power itself, which restricts LED video wall from conserving energy. 

In addition to power consumption and display effect, how to arrange LED driver IC presents a testing challenge. There’s not enough room for placing more LED drive ICs with low channel and low scanning as pixel density increases. In a bid to accomplish precise control, high-channel and high-scanning LED driver IC has become a requisite, which implies that LED driver IC manufacturers will find the design more complex and encounter more technical issues. Synchronously, the difficulty of wafer fabricating process will scale up. As a whole, the challenges facing LED driver IC manufacturers are manifold.  

Xm-Plus Distinguishes itself by High Refresh Rate at Low Grayscale ans HDR

Challenges bolster the morale and new opportunities give birth to new products. At a time when LED video wall industry gradually opens a new Blue Ocean, highly integrated LED driver IC based on common cathode structure has gained a foothold, enabling terminal customers to better tap market potential of the emerging applications. In recent years, main LED driver IC players worldwide have rolled out solutions to satisfy new demands. Among them, Xm-Plus launched three knockout products, namely XM10486G, XM10480G and XM11202G.

Xm-Plus’ driver ICs outclass other products in the market on the performance of grayscale and calibration at low grayscale. They solve eight problems commonly seen in LED video wall, including crosstalk effect, caterpillar effect, ghosting effect, color deviation at low grayscale, dark line in the first row, coupling at high contrast ratio, coupling and gradients color temperature between different boards.

More importantly, the driver ICs is said to be the unique one in the world to boast exceptionally accurate calibration scale. The smallest calibration scale of XM10480G and XM11202G is respectively 0.75ns and 3ns. In a P1.2 flip-chip LED video wall project, first grayscale is totally uneven at brightness of 0.02 nit before calibration, but it turns to be fully uniform after calibration and brightness only increase to 0.05 nit. In actual application, end users can use their own algorithm and camera along with Xm-Plus’ LED driver IC to achieve the same effect of calibration at low grayscale.

As to high power consumption and low grayscale problem, Xm-Plus zero in on two aspects: PM (Passive Matrix) and AM (Active Matrix). On PM mode, Xm-Plus combined the 12-inch 40-80nm process with the high integration design (High channel, high scanning, a built-in time schedule controller and unique circuit design) as an approach to reduce the proportion of power consumption. In this way, the power consumption percentage of Xm-Plus’ drive IC declined to around 36% in a P0.9 COB-based 4K display while that of other companies’ products was over 70%. Meanwhile, the new design also helped realize superior low grayscale effect under low current condition and maintain remarkable color depth at high refresh rate. On AM mode, Xm-Plus have joint hands with its client to develop Micro IC to match glass substrate.

By far, under 80nm process, Xm-Plus’ XM10486G specially designed for virtual production application can live up to low power consumption, high refresh rate (7680Hz), high color depth (18 bit), high refresh rate at low grayscale (As high as 960Hz), dynamic frame rate range (23-251Hz) and variation below 5% at the highest brightness. Moreover, scanning order can be randomly selected on the integrated structure of row driver. All these characteristics make it a perfect fit for xR virtual production application demanding HDR and high refresh rate at low grayscale. In this field, Xm-Plus’ product is being verified by customers and is expected to be used in actual projects in a short time.

In other applications, Xm-Plus has already received positive feedback. For instance, Unilumin’s P0.78 LED video wall integrated XM11202G, which were installed in the conference room and monitoring center of SGCC (State Grid Corporation of China). HCP Mini COB P0.9 video wall adopted XM10480G, supporting 40 scanning, 7680Hz refresh rate, 16-bit color depth and a brightness of 1000nits, applying to high-end applications such as command center, security monitoring, virtual production and private cinema. 

On the strength of the leading edge in HDR and high refresh rate at low grayscale, Xm-Plus is well positioned to help video wall customers improve product quality and accelerate LED video wall adoption in applications like virtual production, education & corporation, security monitoring, and outdoor commercial display. Also, by virtue of its comprehensive deployment of technology, product and IP, Xm-Plus has braced itself for exploring more markets like automotive display and wearable devices, by which it is believed to expand its global footprint.

(Author&Translator: Janice)