Hassle-free LED display financing
Ultravision LED has several financing options for your LED display project.
12-month factory financingUltravision LED helps companies and organizations finance their digital displays with simplified 12-month terms. Through our years of experience and the cooperation of our manufacturing vendors the company financing option is a simpler way to begin realizing the advantages of your new LED advertising display.
With today’s advanced features, LED signs can be costly, causing many companies to select Ultravision LED’s one-year factory financing or five-year outside financing to secure their purchases. Financing LED signs with a company that has experience in financing LED signs is a key to successful profits.
Banks typically finance what an asset is worth to them. They do not take into account the cash flow and profits generated by an LED display. Banks finance from a position of a low asset value of the display, typically around 40% to 60% of the actual value of the sign, which means that owners would then have to use their cash for the balance.
Unlike banks that are unfamiliar with the industry, we know what each sign, billboard, scoreboard, or display is really worth and how much cash-generating potential each sign has. We finance our signs based upon cash-flow! That is why we can finance your sign for 12 months at zero down, at prime interest rate plus one percent (based upon the sign).
We can provide the support you need to acquire your display. With approved credit, Ultravision LED can accelerate the financing arrangements for you today, so you can begin generating a steady revenue stream right away. Five-year bank financing optionFive-year bank financing (with approved credit) is another convenient financing option we can assist you with. Because we work with banks that have seen the profits generated from our signs and are familiar with the value of each display, we can more easily help you secure financing with people who know us and understand the business.
Take advantage of our many years of experience with working with banks that finance a variety of LED display purchases. With a low down payment, you can finance your sign with one of our preferred lenders for five years at competitive interest rates.
Venture Financing
Ultravision LED also has sources for venture backed financing for approved projects.
Contact us for a friendly consultation at 214-260-4500 or use our handy electronic form and an electronic media consultant will help answer your questions about financing LED displays.
When considering an LED display video monitor such as an electronic sign, electronic billboard, or electronic scoreboard, resolution is an important factor for selecting the right display. Resolution refers to the number of pixels in the display. Higher resolution provides additional definition and clarity.
The average computer monitor has a pixel resolution of 600 high x 800 wide for a total of more than 480,000 pixels on the viewing screen, with 0.25mm space between pixels. That is almost indiscernible to the naked eye. High-definition (HD) televisions and computer monitors can have upwards of two million pixels within the display. A standard video signal (NTSC) has a native resolution of 640 x 480 pixels. HD resolutions vary from 720 H x 1280 W or 1080 H x 1980 W.
In electronic LED signs, billboards, and scoreboards, resolution is based on two primary factors, the matrix area and pitch. The level of detail the LED display produces is reflective of the number of pixels that are used to create the image. The smaller the pitch and larger the matrix area, the greater the resolution will be.
Typically, pixel pitch for indoor displays are 5mm, 6mm, 8mm, and 10mm. Typical pixel pitch for outdoor displays is 6mm, 8mm, 10mm, 12 mm16mm, 20mm and 25mm. Outdoor displays are engineered to be larger than indoor displays because the expected viewing distance is much greater.
The matrix area, also known as the pixel matrix, corresponds to the total number of pixels within the display area. The matrix area is determined by multiplying the number of pixels vertically by the number of pixels horizontally, such as 16x32. The matrix area determines how many pixels there are, and overall size is a key factor in determining the number of pixels available to produce an image in a given space constraint.
The pitch is the distance measured from the center of one pixel to the center of the next pixel. Pitch can also influence the pixel matrix for a given surface area. For example, a 16mm pitch will allow a 5x7 matrix area, but a 10mm pitch will allow an 8x11 matrix area for the same physical area because the 10 mm pitch is a tighter grouping of diodes. A small pitch has less empty space between pixels than a large pitch. The lower the pitch, the greater number of pixels per the height and width of the display, creating a higher display resolution.
For example: 9ft x 16ft LED Display
18mm pitch: 144 x 256 pixels and display resolution
36mm pitch 72 x 128 pixels and display resolution
Ultravision LED has determined through 20 years of experience and various types of diodes and displays that the optimum minimum and maximum viewing distances are calculated as follows:
Minimum distance = 2’ x pitch; Example: 2’ x 12mm = 24’
Maximum distance = minimum distance X 7; Example: 24’ x 7 = 168’
But it is important to keep in mind the various images that are to be displayed. Static graphic images do not necessarily require the higher resolution that full motion video images require. Most buyers of electronic LED signs and scoreboards make a buying decision based on the actual image reproduction and desired impact.
Keep in mind these guidelines:
VIEWING DISTANCE
Minimum 1 inch tall character per 50 feet distance
Character: 8 pixels tall; 6 pixels wide
TYPE OF CONTENT (TEXT, ANIMATIONS, VIDEO)
Text: 8 pixels tall per line of text
Animations: 48 pixels tall x 64 pixels wide
Video: 144 pixels high X 256 pixels wide (16:9 or 1.78)
144 pixels high x 192 pixels wide (4:3 or 1.33)
LED diodes are now being used in many different markets, which has allowed the manufacturers to mas produce the diodes in larger quantities. This means the cost of the diodes has come done significantly over the last few years. For this reason it is more cost effect to purchase a higher resolution LED display. Therefore the trend in the LED display industry to purchase higher resolution displays.
LEDs mostly fail by fading over time. The life expectancy reflects the time passed before the LED fades to half its original brightness. Light emitting diodes fade at a significantly faster rate after they reach their half brightness.
As mentioned in another blog, over time, a digital sign will lose its intensity and its quality will diminish. Known as degradation, it’s a natural phenomenon. It will occur in all electronic signs, but the effects can be worse for some manufactured LED signs than others. After the first 2000 hours of use, a high quality diode will lose about 20% of its initial brightness, and then degrades at a slower rate until its half-life, when the diode fades at a substantially faster rate until its life expectancy is reached, at about 100,000 hours of use (about 10 years).
Red fades the least, then blue, and then green. But some will fade faster when manufacturers overload inexpensive or cheaply made diodes with more power than they were designed to handle, to enable a lower cost display to be manufactured showing extremely bright performance at a lower price. The drawback to this of course, is the faster fade, or degradation, of the diodes, causing earlier replacement and greater expense in the short term and the long term.
Also, these manufacturers have not found ways to engineer their cabinets to compensate for the added power consumption of diode overloading and the additional heat that builds up within the cabinets, causing overheating problems to other components.
Some signs will look patchy because of use of different diode manufacturers, causing uneven colors and shades. Other times they will burnout and have to be replaced because of cheap or inferior diodes and component parts used in the manufacturing process. Others diodes may have been manufactured for different electronic wavelengths that are within tolerances of some countries’ electrical current but not others, and that causes problems.
Ultravision LED has designed its panels with superior diodes within highest and strictest standards. Our diodes are all purchased from the same diode manufacturer to ensure consistant colors. Ultravision LED purchases LED’s that have a matched radiation patternwhich means there is no color shift on different viewing angles.. With its revolutionary panel design, the newest models of LED panels from Ultravision LED do not overheat and are free from the problems inherent in older cabinet technology.
What could be better than a well-built electronic sign that outlasts the others and provides years of hassle-free service?
Over time, a digital sign will lose its intensity and its quality will diminish. That is known as degradation, and it’s a natural phenomenon. It will occur in all electronic signs, but the effects can be worse for some manufactured LED signs than others. After the first 2000 hours of use, a diode will lose about 20% of its initial brightness, and then degrades at a slower rate until its life expectancy is reached at about 100,000 hours of use (about 10 years).
Some signs will look patchy because of use of different diode manufacturers used, causing uneven colors and shades. Other times they will burnout and have to be replaced because of cheap or inferior diodes and component parts used in the manufacturing process (probably somebody got a great buy on some cheap diodes). Still others may have been manufactured for different electronic wavelengths that are within tolerance of some countries’ current but not others, and that causes problems.
Diode research and development is focused on miniaturization, low-power consumption, higher integration, and compact packaging. Cost-effective production is a major competitive factor in the diode manufacturing business.
The three biggest companies manufacturing diodes are Cree, in North America, Nichia, in Japan, and Everlight, in Tiawan. These main suppliers are the best because they have the highest, most dependable quality control in the industry. But as excellent as these companies are, Ultravision LED raises the bar on standards for what it uses in its LED displays that customers do not necessarily receive from other companies.
There are several reasons to expect more from the LED displays, scoreboards, and billboards from Ultravision LED.
Ultravision LED purchases diodes in specific bins of diodes with similar brightness. It’s similar to buying carpeting in the same mill run or paint in the same batch. It makes for more brightness uniformity.
And Ultravision LED never, ever uses diodes from two different manufacturers in the same panel display. Other displays have had the sad experience of incongruent diode performance; different hues or unwanted pink-looking casts have been seen, and shadow-like inconsistent images instead of even, crisp, brilliant color in type and images.
Why would anyone consider anything less than the highest value LED products from Ultravision LED?
About Ultravision LED: William Y. Hall is President of the privately owned company based in Addison, Texas with offices in China. Ultravision LED specializes in turnkey LED display integration from the LED display, to installation, service, maintenance and even affordable factory financing. Ultravision LED's technological advancements continue to transcend digital communications systems for wide-reaching industries including sports and entertainment, retail, urban spectaculars and digital advertising companies. Information about Ultravision LED and turnkey integrated solutions for schools, retail and advertising applications can be found at www.ultravisionled.com or by calling 214-260-4500.
Why is it that some electronic displays have such a narrow viewing angle so that when passing by, suddenly the image disappears from sight, whereby others seem to follow you and communicate their messages for a much longer duration?
The answer is the wide-angle LED signs made from specially manufactured wide-angle diodes (the tiny light bulb components that emit the colors). These marvelous wide-angle diodes spread their light across, above, and below the horizon so that the image is consistently visible in uniform colors and brightness throughout the maximum viewing range of the display.
When planning to install and use LED displays, engineers take into account the type of traffic and the distance as well as the viewing angle and amount of time the audience is expected to be receiving the displayed messages. To ensure the most audience exposure and reading time with the brightest and most accurate color quality, Ultravision LED uses wide-angle diodes in its signs, displays, and scoreboards with higher than industry standards and recommendations.
When selecting and purchasing the correct electronic display for your particular use, it is important to understand the actual make-up of the diodes and the design and manufacturing of the display that you are choosing to achieve your advertising results. Being brighter is not necessarily the answer.
Be careful of other manufacturers that use less expensive diodes and narrow the viewing angles to increase the brightness. While they may meet a 6500 nit brightness measurement, they have dramatically narrowed the viewing angles to enable the brightness.
Luckily for Ultravision LED customers, the higher quality diodes used (specifically from the same batch-manufacturing runs and tested for precision) are all built into the high-quality LED displays it sells. The company finds it is less expensive to only use the best quality diodes with concentrated density, and builds its signs and displays for the greatest light output at the widest possible angles: 160 degrees horizontal and 110 degrees vertical; especially important in stadium displays. This ensures many more years of trouble-free life and a display that outperforms the rest.
Is there really any savings achieved for buying or using a cheaper electronic display when the advertising goal is to communicate with a bright, vibrant display with superior viewing angles?
Knowing pitch and how it helps determine the correct LED display for your specific uses can ensure the success of your display for many profitable years. Determining how the LED display sign is to be used will help you decide how to ensure that you are receiving your money’s worth.
Pitch refers to how close diodes are grouped together. The closer the grouping the more vivid the image and the farther apart the flatter, or duller the image may appear. For example, if you walked by a property that had a flower bed with few flowers in it, the colors may seem subdued. From a distance it would probably be unnoticeable. But walk by a property with a flower bed packed with white flowers and the color is pronounced and visible from a distance as a patch of white in a green lawn!
The pitch for typical indoor use, such as an LED display in an elevator or a bus terminal, ranges from 6mm, 8mm, and 10mm. That means the center of one pixel to the center of an adjacent pixel is only 6 millimeters, 8 millimeters, or 10 millimeters apart. This tight grouping ensures color intensity and detail needed when viewing images up close as you would want in a high-definition television for home viewing. For the correct resolution in your LED display, select the correct pitch for your particular application. Specifying a smaller pitch will result in higher resolution which means better image quality.
The pitch of outdoor LED displays, ideal for viewing on buildings from one story away, is typically 20mm to 25mm, meaning that the center of the one pixel is 20 millimeters or 25 millimeters away from the center of adjacent pixels. Depending on how close the intended audience is expected to be from the LED display, pitch recommendations for outdoor signage can vary from 12mm, 16mm, 18mm, 20mm, and 25mm. A large pitch translates to a larger text or character size. It would not be cost-effective to have a high resolution LED display that is expected to be viewed from a half mile away, and the detail would be wasted, as would the energy usage to power the display images.
When viewing from great distances, a wider pitch is more desirable to a narrow pitch because they cost much less to use and to buy. High-pitch LED displays are manufactured with fewer diodes per surface area than the low-pitch LED displays for the same reason that reading a slogan on the side of a building has more distance between the letters than the headlines of a newspaper; up close the newspaper has tighter, closer groupings of letters at fractions of an inch apart, where the letters of the slogan on the side of the building may require several feet of space between them to be legible from a distance.
Proportionately, they are closer than you might think, but the unknowing person who doesn’t understand pitch and wants to purchase an LED display sign, could be sold the wrong sign or a more expensive sign than necessary.
In the LED display industry, image contrast represents emitted light images on a black field, and the blacker the surrounding area the more brilliant the colors appear. The contrast ratio on an LED display is a critical factor for obtaining a brilliant looking display. A poor contrast ratio will decrease the sharpness of the images on the LED display.
Contrast ratio is the difference between the brightest whites to that of the darkest blacks that a display can produce. Just as in high-definition television monitors, the contrast ratio is a significant aspect of any display. The higher the ratio, the more vivid the colors appear, or so the logic tells us.
The contrast ratio has also been thought of as the number of shades of gray between full white and full black. Manufacturers can test the contrast ratio in specific testing conditions, usually in a room where there is no light reflection from objects within the room or the walls of the room. But the ratios are subjective and not based on any kind of a standard.
These measurements can be misconstrued because the light of the diodes can be artificially increased and the diodes separated further apart so light emitted from one will not interfere with the measurement to achieve a better ratio which appears good on paper. But the reality check is in comparing on display to another, just as you would when shopping new high-definition televisions for your home.
Ideally the LED display’s background material must trap the darkness and deliver the deepest light-robbing effect while also being resilient to the elements and resistant to UV fade over time.
The blacker the background surface, the better the image and the lower the requirement of illumination to produce a quality image displaying deeper and richer image colors. A constant rich, black background improves the overall quality of the screen in all ambient light.
Anything that is placed outdoors for a period of time suffers from the environment. For digital displays, the cleanliness of a sign is directly proportional to the quality of the image. Even the tiniest dirt particles may impede the optical characteristics of projected light.
Consequently, dirty signs appear to be flawed, even though they are operating at peak efficiency. It is not unusual for a repair technician to be dispatched to determine the nature of a distorted LED image, only to determine that a thorough cleaning would allow the expected quality image to emerge again.
Ultravision LED helps owners of their electronic signs and LED displays with a scheduled maintenance check and cleaning at intervals appropriate to various climates. The city grime of large cities like New York, or the wind-blown, dusty environments of the southwest states each accumulate dirt over the diodes and the surface of the black background of the sign. Maintaining contrast with the color emitted from the diodes becomes a matter of routine cleansing.
Did you ever look extra closely at a newspaper image? Using a magnifying glass, a photo in a newspaper appears as a series of dots, and indeed that is all they are. The image is only an illusion between the ink on the paper and the amount of light that is reflected through the area of the image showing up as shadow and light.
These dots are similar to the illusion of clusters of diodes (pixels) in an LED sign. The closer the pixels are to each other (pitch) the finer the image appears (resolution). Just as you would not read a newspaper using a high-powered magnifying glass that translated the images as clusters of dots, so too is it important to choose the correct LED display pitch for the intended audience viewing distance.
If the pitch is too high (25 millimeters apart from diode to diode, for example) and you are very close to the display, the images will be difficult to distinguish. They would look pixilated or grainy. It is therefore important to choose the correct pitch for the correct viewing distance.
For example, you walk into a restaurant, and there are people in front of you waiting to place their order. You see from a distance a menu that is sharp and easy to read. The letters and numbers and symbols are crisp and sharp, and as you get closer and closer to the sign, you can begin to see the display for what it truly is: pixels separated by space.
Chances are the LED signs inside restaurants have a low pitch (5 millimeters (mm) to 8mm, perhaps) meaning that the diodes are grouped very close together at only 5mm to 8mm apart from their centers; a very high resolution. Even though high resolution is desirable, the effect can be achieved in different circumstances with much more cost-effective applications. As you can imagine, the more diodes built into the sign, the more expensive the price.
In many outdoor LED displays that are used on or near street level such as telephone kiosks, subway displays, or retail billboards, a pitch of 8mm to 12mm is used.
Driving on a highway, the driver only has a few seconds in most cases to view, read, and comprehend the LED sign, and usually from great distances. In this scenario, the pitch can be greater (more space between the pixels), and not affect the quality of the sign’s value. The viewing distance from the sign in effect, compresses the distance of space between the pixels and the illusion is created of pixels closer together than they actually are.
It is, therefore, unnecessary to have a massive billboard with a pitch of 12 millimeters when that high of resolution is lost in the distance of the driver in a car traveling 55 miles per hour. The human eye could never distinguish that fine of detail, especially at that brief moment. The more sensible purchase would be for a sign with a pitch of 16mm to 25mm depending again on the distance and angle of direction that the drivers are expected to view the sign at.
RULES OF THUMB:
Understanding the viewing distance, time, angle, and pitch of the sign will help you determine the correct configuration for your particular needs. If you have questions about the correct LED display, billboard, sign, or scoreboard that you want, talk to the experts at Billboard Media Group.
Ultravision LED displays are manufactured under strict specifications and quality controls. Ultravision LED utilizes a 10-step quality control process before any product is shipped from China. All of the final inspection and assembly is completed in the United States. Ultravision LED also stands behind all of the warranty and maintenance for the LED display.
One of the most important considerations for purchasing the correct display is where you will be using it. Less expensive usually means less bright LED display. A sign manufactured with diodes that emit less intensity is fine for some indoor uses, but would be disastrous outdoors where the sunlight would overpower the image.
Have you ever wondered why it is so difficult to view your cell phone display on a bright, sunny day? It’s because the intensity of the sun’s light is many times more powerful than the light emitting through the device display in your cell phone. In order for an LED sign to be properly visible in outdoor daylight conditions it must have a minimum rating of 2,000 NITs, which is proven to offer premium daytime visibility.
Not understanding this important aspect could leave the buyer bewildered and disappointed when, at first, he or she thought that they were getting a fantastic bargain only to have purchased the wrong display. So, how do you know which is appropriate?
NIT is a measurement of visible light intensity as measured at the light source. Your computer screen probably has 200 to 300 NITs of visible brightness. If you were to try and see your computer screen outdoors in the sunlight it would be very difficult if not impossible. That’s because your computer screen doesn't have enough “visible light intensity”. Your LED Sign must have enough light intensity or it won't be as visible in outdoor lighting conditions as your competitor’s.
5,000NIT minimum is the average for exterior LED displays, while Ultravision LED requires 6,500NIT of its displays. Indoor brightness is typically 2,000NITs.
Be very wary of those that will claim 8,500NIT! More likely than not, these bright displays are the results of overdriving the diodes with extra power. Power is boosted to achieve a “false” NIT reading; a less expensive diode not built for the extra power surging into it day after day is likely used and the lifespan of the diodes are cut in about half.
The displays may be more intense and brighter but the added power driving the diodes will shorten the life of the diodes by about half. Typically, the lifespan of a correctly powered light emitting diode display is about 100,000 hours, or about 10 years. And the energy consumption for the LED display will also be more expensive.
For over 15 years Ultravision LED has been developing and building working relationships with manufacturers worldwide for its high-quality LED display products. Ultravision LED has learned that it may cost a bit more, but having inspection sources located at or near the source to ensure exacting standards and quality are assured is more than worth the expense and effort.
Without years of experience the average buyer of Chinese-manufactured products will likely not understand the importance of exact, precise specifications that the manufacturer must use, and without after-care follow-up and follow-through to see to it that the manufacturer abides by the specifications set forth, the buyer will likely experience an inferior product and dissatisfied customers.
Why? For several reasons. Consider the case of video and LED displays used in scoreboards, digital advertising, and digital signs. An American company contracted production of two LED display products, and placed a huge down payment with the order, and agreed to pay the remainder after the initial product approvals were secured.
The shipped products appeared to be satisfactory, but proved anything but. Customers returned the defective items for a number of reasons:
When emailed, called, and confronted, the Chinese manufacturer would not acknowledge these problems. The Chinese firm resisted any attempts to replace the units.
The buyer must then contact someone in the middle of the night due to the time differences, and hope they reach an English-speaking person to transmit the message. Then the buyer has to repackage, and re-ship the merchandise at their own expense, and wait 30 to 60 days for a new shipment to arrive. During this time, the customers may have decided to use another source. Even if the customers remain, the credibility of the retailer is tarnished.
Often the Chinese manufacturers are unwilling to settle the dispute, and simply offer the foreign company a small amount to reconcile, leaving the foreign business with the problem of meeting orders and rebuilding the items. Sometimes items cannot be reworked and the time and investment nets a total loss to the business.
And if the Chinese company or the sub-contracted company closes and disappears, then the foreign buyer has little, or no, recourse action.
These fly-by-night businesses come and go with the breezes, closing one morning and reopening under a different name a few hours later. With these companies the only thing they can guarantee is a cheap price, and you are sure to get just what you paid for.
Part of the problem exists because entire towns profit from employing people to manufacture fake products. In China there are no knock-off protections—no quality control standards. Under Chinese law, a person cannot be prosecuted only because he sells a small quantity of fake products. Some 35 million uneducated workers cling to these jobs.
Local Chinese government entities, acting like mobsters, often have a direct financial interest in the illegal trade and charge monthly management fees to the businesses that sell these illegal goods, and are either directly or indirectly involved in supporting the trade in counterfeit goods.
China subsidizes its own companies at trade shows, for example, paying for travel and set-up of booths, booth personnel, entertainment—the works, in order to assist its manufacturing base to sell products.
Light Emitting Diodes (LEDs) are plastic capsules containing a specific chemical compound on a microscopic wafer that emits light when subjected to an electrical current. A clear (or often colored) epoxy case enclosed the heart of an LED, the semi-conductor chip. The two wires extending below the LED epoxy enclosure or the "bulb" indicate how the LED should be connected into a circuit. The negative side of an LED lead is indicated in two ways: 1) by the flat side of the bulb, and 2) by the shorter of the two wires extending from the LED. The negative lead should be connected to the negative terminal of a battery. LED's operate at relative low voltages between about 1 and 4 volts, and draw currents between about 10 and 40 milliamperes. Voltages and currents substantially above these values can melt a LED chip. The most important part of a light emitting diode (LED) is the semi-conductor chip located in the center of the bulb as shown at the right. The chip has two regions separated by a junction. The p region is dominated by positive electric charges, and the n region is dominated by negative electric charges. The junction acts as a barrier to the flow of electrons between the p and the n regions. Only when sufficient voltage is applied to the semi-conductor chip, can the current flow, and the electrons cross the junction into the p region. In the absence of a large enough electric potential difference (voltage) across the LED leads, the junction presents an electric potential barrier to the flow of electrons. What Causes the LED to Emit Light and What Determines the Color of the Light? When sufficient voltage is applied to the chip across the leads of the LED, electrons can move easily in only one direction across the junction between the p and n regions. In the p region there are many more positive than negative charges. In the n region the electrons are more numerous than the positive electric charges. When a voltage is applied and the current starts to flow, electrons in the n region have sufficient energy to move across the junction into the p region. Once in the p region the electrons are immediately attracted to the positive charges due to the mutual Coulomb forces of attraction between opposite electric charges. When an electron moves sufficiently close to a positive charge in the p region, the two charges "re-combine". Each time an electron recombines with a positive charge electric potential energy is converted into electromagnetic energy. For each recombination of a negative and a positive charge, a quantum of electromagnetic energy is emitted in the form of a photon of light with a frequency characteristic of the semi-conductor material (usually a combination of the chemical elements gallium, arsenic and phosphorus). Only photons in a very narrow frequency range can be emitted by any material. LED's that emit different colors are made of different semi-conductor materials, and require different energies to light them.
Individual LED's are available in many grades of quality and shades of color. Ultravision LED uses high grade red, green, and blue.When red, green and blue LEDs are clustered together and shine at their full brightness, the combined light emission appears white to the human eye. Varying the intensity of the three colors creates all the other shades.Red or Amber LEDs are used for monochrome displays.A single cluster of LEDs is used as a pixel."Pixel" is short for picture element; the smallest individual unit or piece of a video display image. A pixel represents an individual dot in a video display.Each pixel has its own color and brightness attributes.
"Contrast ratio" represents the difference between the brightest whites and darkest blacks that a LED panel can display. But claimed contrast ratios can be misleading. It is a subjective observation that varies according to the person evaluating the display.
One ad might list a contrast ratio of 5,000:1 for one LED Display, for example, while another display boasts about a ratio of 1,000,000:1. That's 200 times better, right? No!
There are many ways to measure contrast ratio, and the results aren't comparable. Also, they might be based on settings that wouldn't work in actual use, with picture brightness set too high. Maybe one display has less LED's per pixel which would provide more black on the screen yet another company claims that they have a blacker shader or potting solution housing the diodes. Once again it’s all subjective.
The real truth is the best way to evaluate an LED boards contrast ratio is compare it to another LED board and see which board is has the biggest difference between the white and the black. So the next time some companies start beating their drums about contrast ration be it known that what they are saying is strictly subjective and not based on any kind of a standard.
Contrast ratio is perhaps the most misleading and overhyped data when it comes to LED displays. In theory, contrast ratio measures the difference between the brightness in the super-bright portions of a screen vs. the super-dark portions. A 1000:1 contrast ratio would mean that a perfectly white pixel is 1000 times brighter than a perfectly black pixel.
That's the theory, anyway. The problem is that these brightness levels are hard to calculate, and they're subject to all sorts of interpretation. Ultimately, contrast ratio has become little more than marketing-speak, and the numbers are now largely meaningless. Things have gotten out of control to the point where various vendors have claimed 1,000,000:1 contrast ratios. It's getting to the point where escalating contrast ratios are now an industry joke, though not a very funny one.
Of course, it may not. The numbers could be calculated differently, inflated, who knows. You'll need an independent source to get a real sense of a LED displays' contrast, but even then the numbers probably wouldn't be very meaningful because of the difficulties in performing such a test.
Ignore manufacturer's contrast levels and focus instead on how a LED display looks to your eyes.
Have you ever noticed that large LED displays appear pink, when the color should be white? Finally, there is a way for advertisers to resolve this frustrating problem. Cree has manufactured red, green and blue LEDs that match, which consequently reduce the pinkness displayed on digital billboards. Cree is the only company that manufactures this new LED technology that boasts high-brightness 4-mm and 5-mm oval LEDs in blue, green and red. These oval LEDs feature optically-matched radiation patterns that produce superior image quality for digital billboards and full-color sign applications. Cree has created a unique matched-radiation pattern, with the red pattern inside the blue and green, resulting in a blended cool-white light. Now white will appear as it should, instead of the pink shade that comes from unmatched LEDs.The oval LEDs come in a variety of intensities and colors. Since Cree's oval LEDs provide a wide viewing angle and enhanced contrast, these LEDs are ideal for the digital signage market. Research has shown that the use of LEDs in signs and displays can help lower power consumption, which ultimately cuts down on electric bills and maintenance expenses when compared to other outdated technologies."Customers can now purchase the brightest blue, green and red ovals from a single supplier-Cree," said Norbert Hiller, Cree VP and GM, LED Components. "These products offer superior intensity for the rapidly growing video-board and signage markets. This will give customers additional flexibility to design-in the precise part they need - spanning a range of sizes and brightness levels."
The basic elements of an LED (light emitting diode) display are the LEDs that make up the pixel. The minimum requirement for a pixel to produce a full color image is a Red, Green and Blue diode. There are two types of diode used; Discrete or DIP and Surface Mount (SMD).
The two main differences between these diode types are size and brightness.
Discrete LED's are individually mounted LED's that are larger and brighter than SMD diodes. These types of LED's are therefore predominantly found on outdoor screens where high brightness is required to combat the effects of sunlight. These outdoor screens are normally large and viewed from long distance so medium to low resolution is only required. The diodes are arranged in groups to provide the required brightness and resolution for the display. These groups typically contain 3 diodes in a triangle or 4 in a square. For lower resolutions the group could contain 5 or more diodes to obtain the required brightness levels.
SMD diodes are generally grouped together in a single package containing a red, green and blue diode encapsulated under one lens. As they have a reduced light output they are mainly used for indoor applications. Due to the small size of each diode they are mounted very close together in the package making it look like one single light source capable of producing a full range of color. This also means that high resolution displays can be produced that suit the needs of indoor displays with short viewing distances.
Due to the difference in construction an SMD display with the same resolution as a discrete diode display can be viewed from a closer distance before pixel separation is visible. A rough guide would be that you need to be 25% farther out from a discrete diode screen with the same resolutions as an SMD in order to have a good content view of the layout.
Discrete diode displays have been available for much longer than SMD so you will see these in all applications both outdoor and indoor. SMD displays now dominate the high resolution indoor display market as they can reach much higher resolutions. The technology and performance of SMD diodes is improving so expect to see them used in more applications for medium resolution indoor displays and outdoor and their brightness capability improves.
