The Latest in Displays: SID Display Week 2024

Tue, May 21, 2024

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Anne Corning

The display industry gathered in San Jose, California last week, in the heart of Silicon Valley. Along with the semiconductors that gave the region its nickname, many of the world’s earliest digital displays were also developed here and popularized on personal computers, smart phones, and other devices that have transformed the way we live and work.

Many of the biggest industry names participated in the Society for Information Display (SID) Display Week Exhibition that ran from May 14-16. It was good to see many Asian and Chinese companies with a strong presence at the show after the leaner pandemic years. Samsung, LG Display, Tianma, BOE, Corning, PlayNitride, eInk, Meta, CSOT, AUO, Nanosys, and Visionox were all there. A few highlights from the show floor:

Samsung had a lively station where a humanoid robot performed a range of tasks to prove the durability of the company’s foldable OLED phones. From a scratch test to being dunked in water, these devices demonstrated their “military grade” toughness.

Samsung's robot demonstrated the durability of it's OLED foldable smart phones.

LG Display also featured OLED screens in its booth, including the “world's brightest” OLED display that reaches 3,000 nits peak brightness.

LG Display's 3,000-nit OLED television.

A trend that seemed to be everywhere at the show this year was "naked-eye" 3D displays, so called because they don't require a user to wear 3D glasses or other device--the 3D effects appear to jump right out of the screen. Some of them include cameras and sensor systems that enabled the user to interact with the images, which will move or spin in sync with head and hand movements. A notable example was BOE’s 32-inch light field monitor “which features a retina-grade resolution of 4K per eye…face trace tracking feature and active human-machine interaction system”¹ to deliver interactive 3D visual effects.

BOE's 3D monitor uses a light-field display and various sensor and camera technologies to provide an interactive experience where users can manipulate the image on screen.

MicroLEDs Keep Marching On

Recent moves by Osram and Apple product may have slowed market penetration for the technology, but it hasn’t dampened enthusiasm among manufacturers to continue developing more and better microLED displays. Industry analysts in the DSCC Business Conference (held on Monday May 13 in conjunction with Display Week) also agreed that the outlook for microLEDs remains strong, even if the timeline for mass market adoption may be slower than early predictions.

Members of the MicroLED Industry Association (MIA) met at the event venue, and general consensus was also optimistic for the future of microLEDs. Opportunities for the technology are especially strong in those applications where the brightness and energy efficiency of microLEDs offers an advantage over other display technologies, such as in automotive displays, AR headgear, and other weaerables.

More microLED products than ever were on display in the Expo from the largest—TCL CSOT’s 163" microLED screen—to the tiniest—SIDTEK’s 0.23” microLED microdisplays—and everything in between.

TCL CSOT's 163" microLED display (left) with 3840 x 2860 resolution and 10,000 nits peak brightness compared to SIDTEK's tiny 0.23" microLED microdisplays (right) with 7.8 µm x 7.8 µm pixels densely packed at 3,281 PPI, offering brightness of >10,000 nits.

Visionox showed a modular microLED screen, AUO dazzled visitors with it's multiple transparent microLED displays for retail, home, and automobile (and won the Best MicroLED Display award), and Innolux showed an array of interesting microLED display examples including a gorgeous 106" AM-MicroLED display with quantum dot color conversion.

Innolux 106" AM-MicroLED "free tiling" display intended for cinema/museum installations, with 20 µm x 40 µm monochrome blue LED pixels behind a QD color conversion layer.

As expected, the show also included many exhibits related to AR/VR displays—both their design and measurement—and an array of automotive display innovations. Stay tuned to subsequent blog posts for coverage of these areas.

More Ways to Measure Displays

Just as the display industry never stands still but is continually evolving technology platforms and capabilities, Radiant also continues to innovate new products and solutions to meet industry quality demands. We were at the show again this year showing a variety of display metrology solutions including high- / ultra-high resolution imaging photometers and colorimeters. With sensors up to 61 MP and 151 MP, our systems are ideal for inspecting today’s ultra-high-resolution displays. With the addition of our new 20X microscope lens, manufacturers can inspect the tiny pixels and subpixel elements of emissive displays such as OLED and microLED.

Radiant's ProMetric(r) I-SC integrates a 61MP imaging colorimeter with a spectrometer for precise color measurement with on-the-fly calibration. Paired with our 20X Microscope Lens, it provides measurement and correction (demura) of microLED microdisplays (inset, right).

Using Radiant’s software and advanced algorithms, it has never been easier to perform pixel registration and measurement, calculate correction coefficients, and perform demura to improve the uniformity of emissive displays. Additional demos on display included solutions for backlight symbol inspection, large-format and curved LED screen correction, and several solutions for inspecting AR/VR device displays with varying FOVs.

It was great to see everyone at at the week's events and talk to the many visitors at our booth about your latest display metrology challenges. Radiant again participated in the SID/ICDM Display Metrology Courses. In 2021 we first delivered this material in virtual format due to the pandemic. This year, our CTO Jens Jensen presented live on fundamentals of light and color for display measurement, a condensed version of our original course. Review the complete 2021 virtual course: