Integrated Systems Europe (ISE), a major AV systems integration show, was held between January 31 and February 3, 2023 in Barcelona, Spain. As the first international event of its kind after the COVID pandemic slowed down, the 2023 ISE event has garnered widespread attention among relevant businesses. The event attracted more than 850 exhibitors, among which video wall companies have high expectations for market development in 2023-2024.

LED Video Wall

At ISE 2023, Samsung showcased all of its LED and LCD video wall solutions. The product line included The Wall, All-in-One The Wall, indoor display, and outdoor display. The Wall comes with pixel pitch settings of P1.68, P1.26, P0.84, and P0.625 and are engineered with COB, anti-reflection film, black seal, and many other technologies. Samsung’s video walls all boast exceptional color uniformity and contrast with high molding uniformity.

LG Electronics presented its 272” 8K P0.78 MAGNIT displays and 136” K P1.56 all-in-one LED displays along with virtual production and glasses-free 3D displays.

A product strategy analysis shows that SONY’s emphasis on sustainability-related issues and focus on commercial LCD video walls, while LED video walls center on virtual production use.

At ISE 2023, Leyard centered on the Great Space / LUXE (TXS series) for the ultra-fine pitch (≤P1.0) market. In addition to the Corporation & Education and Retail & Exhibition sectors, a few of its all-in-one LED displays have been introduced to the home theater market.

As for virtual production, Unilumin developed in partnerships with Pixotope and ARRI—are able to deliver exceptionally immersive viewing experiences with high color accuracy and contrast through high- and low-frame rate comparison.

Targeting at high-end rental markets, ROE Visual has gained favor with virtual production clients thanks to a large AV customer base, exceptional product usability and durability, and high installation accuracy.

Absen created two themes for its ISE 2023 booth, namely Mini LED video walls and virtual production. Specifically, it demonstrated COB-based Mini LED displays with pixel pitches of P1.2 and P0.9. Like most display manufacturers, Absen adopted the GOB and anti-reflection film technologies to enhance color uniformity, contrast, and molding uniformity.

At ISE 2023, BOE exhibited its 162” 4K P0.9 active matrix (AM) and passive matrix (PM) displays, which had made appearances in numerous events in 2022. Specifically, the AM-based display, the MLED AM COG, has garnered widespread attention. The product is certified by TÜV SÜD for high visual comfort as well as by TÜV Rhineland for low blue light and flicker-free performance.

QSTECH installed numerous LED displays at the entrance of the ISE venue, providing guidance for attendees and facilitating smooth running of the event. With features like innovative applications, high integration, low power consumption, lead-free nature, wide color gamut, exquisite image quality, and simple installation process, the displays—supported by energy efficient technologies—caught existing clients’ and industry experts’ attention.

At ISE 2023, Christie demonstrated its P0.78-P1.25 LED displays powered by the 4-in-1 Mini LED technology. Notably, the 0404 LED used in the P1.0 display enables exceptional performance in color uniformity, contrast, and molding uniformity and make the product comparable to those engineered with Mini LED COB.

Ledman showcased its entire product lineup of UHD LED display, including COB UHD LED display, outdoor SMD LED display, COB glasses-free 3D display, and All-in-One LED display, which were highly acclaimed by customers on the site.
The 324-inch 8K Ledman Micro LED UHD LED display was the most impressive product, absorbing many visitors’ attention via its exquisite picture quality. Built on Ledman’s proprietary COB integrated packaging technology, the 324-inch display embodies a thin frame and exceptional product performance such as high greyscale at low brightness, high reliability, wide color gamut, making it a great fit for UHD smart display application industry in the era of 5G.

Moreover, Ledman’s glasses-free 3D display creates a strong visual impact, which is characterized by high resolution, wide viewing angle and vivid color. By integrating 8K UHD display, glasses-free 3D and AR interaction into one, it can be customized to be an innovative LED display solution for exhibition display, film production, advertising & media, and scientific visualization, gratifying various customers’ demands in different application scenes.

LED, Driver IC, and Controller

Seoul Viosys received the Display Innovation Award at CES 2023 with its WICOP Pixel technology. The company revealed that it will strive for large-scale production based on the technology as well as relevant marketing and application expansion campaigns.

Kinglight divided its products into three themes, namely virtual production, glasses-free 3D display, and 0606 / 0505 / 0404 LEDs. As for virtual production market requirement, the black-surface design increases the contrast ratio of displays by 30% with clearer details and lifelike, immersive viewing experiences. The displays come with a high LED viewing angle, hence a wide field of view that is favorable for building a virtual production studio with 360-degree panoramas. Featuring high brightness (1,800 nits) and low power consumption, the products help reduce the cost of virtual production plus better display performance.

Chipone exhibited mainly five type of products, all of which feature grayscale-adaptive color trimming. The ICND2250 targets at P0.7-1.5 virtual production displays. The 96-channel / 18-scan product has a refresh rate of up to 12,000Hz, is capable of low-grayscale compensation, and is compatible with a 240Hz frame rate design.

To satisfy the market demand for virtual production, Xm-Plus rolled out its driver IC solution, the XM10486, with four major strengths as follows.

1. Low Power Consumption and Energy Efficiency: Made from a 12” wafer (80nm), the driver IC use less energy and power consumption. 2. Its frame rate can be as high as 251Hz. 3. The driver IC can help boost the 1st grayscale refresh rate by up to 16 times without the presence of scan lines. Therefore, the company’s clients do not have to worry about additional controller costs. 4. Without the refresh rate (7,680Hz) being cut, the driver IC per se can achieve 18-bit grayscale to reproduce images with more realistic colors and finer details.

Macroblock created more business opportunities for virtual production under the theme of “Creating the Reality”.
MBI5762 is designed with Macroblock’s patented common cathode architecture and new XR LED display features. To reduce power consumption, the common cathode architecture along with Dynamic+ Power Saving feature may reduce the heat from XR LED display system up to 30%. The new XR LED display features, PWM Enhancement Plus and Hyper Vision Calculation, may boost the visual refresh up to 7,680Hz at 16bit HDR video source as well as reduce flickers at low-grayscale images. Therefore, MBI5762 can greatly optimize display performance not only high frame rate from 120fps to 240fps or higher, but great uniformity at low-grayscale images for high-end virtual production need.

NovaStar brought a product portfolio for a full range of spotlighted application, including 5G & 8K UHD LED Display Solution, COB Display Solution, Virtual Production Solution, MG Series AV over IP System, One-stop Centralized Management and Control Solution, NovaStar Cloud-Display Operation & Management Solution, NovaStar LED Display Innovative Control Solution.

LED control solution for virtual production, aiming at the special functional design of virtual shooting and the unique image quality improvement technology, can effectively solve the problem of shooting scanning line, color irregularity and detail loss, to make sure of clearer image display, more accurate color and immaculate image shooting, to create a shooting scene that closer to the real light and shadow. What you see is what you get.

The era of 8K requires a tremendous amount of video signal transmission. The video signal should be transmitted to the receiving card at a rate of 5G or even 10G via Gigabit Ethernet and finally displayed on the screen. NovaStar developed an industry-wide first single-port 8K technology. Based on single-port 8K@60Hz 4:4:4 without the need of splicing, LED display control system can achieve single-port input with 8K loading capacity, perfectly offering HLG effect and tackling the problems of terminal display, which is the final and the most critical link during 8K rebroadcasting, and thus provides stunning 8K UHD visual experience. CX80 Pro single-port 8K input plus 5G transmission bandwidth paired with CA50 receiving card can easily make single-equipment loading for 8K large-sized display a reality.

TrendForce / LEDinside’s Prospective

LG Electronics, Sony, ROE Visual, Unilumin, Absen, AOTO, Infiled, Kinglight, Novastar, Macroblock, Chipone, and Xm-Plus had showcased corresponding products in virtual production at ISE 2023.

The COVID-19 pandemic has accidentally triggered a robust development for the virtual production market, according to TrendForce’s survey. As hardware (LED video wall) and software (controller algorithm and camera motion tracking) technologies advance significantly amidst the mitigating pandemic status and opening of global accesses, the virtual production market will march forward with continuous development, and transition virtual filming applications from high-end movie productions to filming of TV, drama, music, and advertisements.

Having benefitted by the high-end market and the demand for special projects in China, Mini LED COB suppliers such as Samsung Electronics, LG Electronics, Leyard, Unilumin, Absen, BOE, Cedar, CREATELED, HCP, Ledman, and MTC have established their respective in-house capacity that actuates a steady growth in the Mini LED COB technology.

Author: Joanne, Janice / TrendForce