Planar featured three prototype ultra-fine-pitch LED displays titled “The Great Space” in their booth at CES in Las Vegas this week. One was a 216-inch display with 8K resolution and a 0.625mm pixel pitch. The other two displays featured 4K resolution. One of these also had the 0.625mm pixel pitch with a 108-inch diagonal size and the other had a 135-inch diagonal size with a 0.781 pixel pitch. These prototype displays were produced by Epistar, with whom Planar, through their parent company Leyard, have recently formed a partnership to further develop and produce Mini LED and Micro LED display technology at a newly constructed project base in China. The new products are expected to be available by mid-2020.

These new displays will be added to Planar’s family of direct view LED products with a full range of pixel pitches. The display with the smallest pixel pitch in that lineup is the DirectLight^® X DLX-0.7 with a pixel pitch of 0.781mm. With the off-board Planar Video Controller, the DirectLight X series embeds advanced video processing directly into the product. Planar DirectLight X series displays are 27” cabinets with a 16:9 aspect ratio designed for UHD resolution. They include the wall-mount, full front service access, off-board hot swap power supplies and web-based management and control software. The DLX-0.7 provides 4K UHD resolution in a 5×5 configuration.

PMA Research, the large-format display experts, reported a surge of direct view LED video wall display sales through the U.S. distribution channel during the second half of 2019. Indicators point to continued growth for this type of display in 2020 and beyond.