(29th July) Last Thursday, Macroblock held the " Macroblock & Juxin 2024 LED Display Symposium" at the Four Seasons Hotel in Shenzhen last Thursday. This year's seminar discusses new types of concerts, which means that concerts have moved beyond focusing solely on the single experience of live audiences, and transformed into a multi-event and multi-format commercial sales model, reflecting the development of LED displays.

Macroblock held the " Macroblock & Juxin 2024 LED Display Symposium" to discusses new types of concerts

Larry Lee, general manager at Juxin Photonics (Shenzhen), gave a lecture titled " The key to enter overseas markets – zero defect high quality production". He cited the recently completed MSG Sphere venue in Las Vegas, which cost 230 million U.S. dollars, and Taylor Swift's “The Eras Tour” that brought an economic output value of 4.6 billion U.S. dollars as examples. It is used to express the flawless operation of all equipment systems behind the complex structures of buildings or high-end performances. Otherwise, it will be accompanied by high maintenance costs or huge error compensation. Macroblock launched a comprehensive zero-defect policy since last year, focusing on several aspects of the design, manufacturing, and testing of LED driver ICs, including: incorporating quality control mechanisms into the process of LED driver IC design, providing process data for LED driver IC manufacturing, early failure stress testing in LED driver IC testing, as well as test coverage and outlier prevention and elimination, help customers enhance their market competitiveness, reduce total costs for customers, ultimately increasing customer satisfaction and brand loyalty.

Freddy Lo, LED display product manager at Macroblock, mentioned in his lecture " The status and visual challenges of high-end immersive stage displays" that in the post-epidemic era, physical concerts return to daily life, and the scale and quality will be much higher than in the past. In addition, the business model of concerts has changed. Concerts are remade into movies and "secondary sales" are carried out in theaters and streaming platforms. Because of this change, LED displays in concerts are no longer just for fans to watch, but also for on-site movie-level camera to record and collect materials, which is conducive to resale and use. The phenomenon of filmization has appeared in concerts.

In response to the image quality requirements of high-end displays, Macroblock proposes "19-Bit Grayscale", which helps the display image to have stable low-gray levels and no color shift. The adjustable grayscale level is more refined and the grayscale can be controlled. With more numbers, the display image is closer to the HDR10 color gamut. Freddy also mentioned "wide dynamic range". The so-called "wide dynamic range", the photos or videos we see now on mobile phones or cameras/video cameras, are actually collected by cameras/video cameras, and then captured from the collected image materials. The best parts of the dark and bright parts of the image are finally combined into the photos we see. However, due to the flickering problem caused by insufficient refresh in low-gray areas of the display image, it will also indirectly cause non-uniform brightness in the low-gray areas of the photos or videos captured by the cameras/video cameras. Generally, mobile phones have a "wide dynamic range" function, and cameras for filming movies can detect a wider range of levels, making it easier to capture the detailed flicker of the display, so the low-gray refresh function of the display is even more important.

Macroblock’s third lecturer, LED display product manager at Macroblock, Gary Chang, talked about the layout of Macroblock’s LED display product line “Beyond MBI5264: Blueprint for LED Display Driver ICs”. The key to the success of MBI5264 in XR/VP applications lies in its16-bit grayscale, dynamic frame rate adjustment and 7,680Hz refresh rate. Macroblock is considering how to reach even greater heights after achieving this level of success.

Macroblock's new generation of driver IC products is named "Da Vinci", inspired by the Italian polymath who combined expertise in science and art. These products feature key functions that address four specific issues:
 

1. Function of Adaptive Refresh fixes the issue of black band when shooting: The high refresh rate and change frame rate are required by professional shooting. They also cause black band during camera shooting. Adaptive Refresh Function can flexibly extend LED illumination time between frames, increase the refresh rate, effectively avoid black band during shooting, and improve shooting quality.
    
2. Function of Low-gray Refresh solve the problem of low refresh rate at low brightness level: Limited by the characteristics of PWM dimming technology, when the display is at low brightness, the refresh rate is equal to the frame frequency. Low-gray refresh function of Macroblock provides high refresh rate even when the brightness is low, preventing flickering issue in human sight or scanning line problems under camera shooting.
    
3. Function of 19-bit SPWM solves the problem of color shift: When the LED display is at low brightness, the LED is not fully turned on, so there is a significant difference in color temperature, compared to high brightness. 19-Bit PWM dimming engine of Macroblock solves this problem and provides high contrast effects and low-brightness display without color shift.
    
4. Function of Full current range with Low Knee Voltage reduces power consumption: The trend of low carbon emissions has led to the development towards energy-saving in every electronic product. At this moment, most driver ICs can reduce power consumption when the image is not displayed. As for the new energy saving during display, Macroblock introduces low knee voltage for both high and low current outputs. This eliminates the high power consumption issue associated with high current output, which can reduce the power consumption of the driver IC by 20% during operation.

The above is the four new functions of Macroblock's "Da Vinci" product lines; the detailed description of the driver ICs is as follows,

• MBI5756, the common cathode LED driver ICs for general LED displays, suitable for pitch 0.9-6.0mm, can reach 18mA high current output in both 3.8V and 2.8V power supply, which facilitates low-voltage energy-saving design.
   
• MBI5292, the flagship of common anode driver IC, suitable for pitches P1.0 – P3.9mm, adopts the new 19-Bit SPWM engine, provides high contrast (HDR), and solves the problem of LED color temperature drift at low brightness to meet the highest display requirements of LED display. Macroblock also demonstrated the visual effects of MBI5292 in the exhibition area of seminar.
   
• MBS7264, common anode driver IC for general LED display, suitable for pitch 1.0 – P3.9. It supports up to 64 scan and has standard package with functions of low grayscale refresh and adaptive refresh to improve quality of camera shooting. MBS7264 is also the first Juxin Photonics (Shenzhen) product made in fab of SMIC. It is the best solution for customers who are seeking for high performance to cost ratio.

Macroblock proposes "19-Bit Grayscale", which helps the display image is closer to the HDR10 color gamut.

Macroblock returned to physical events from the epidemic online seminar. The topics spanned industry trends, concert performance equipment technology, and product development plans of important component manufacturers for LED displays, including LEDs, controllers, and driver ICs. Different performance industries in the past have converged into a new type of concert. It is expected that the new business models explored in this seminar will bring a flash of inspiration to the industry guests and experts, thereby driving the vigorous vitality of the LED display market.

Macroblock also demonstrated the visual effects of driver ICs, MBI5292/ MBI5762/ MBS7264 in the exhibition area of seminar.

 

TrendForce 2024 Global LED Video Wall Market Outlook and Price Cost Analysis
Release Date: 28 September 2023
Language: Traditional Chinese / English
Format: PDF
Page: 273