"Jeff & his team at GlobalTec
have provided the best customer service - before, during,
and after the sale of my full color LED display. Since the
installation, my room sales have increased daily. It was a
very good investment and a pleasure to work with them."
Meena Patel
Econolodge - Augusta, Ga.
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What is an LED?
Light emitting diodes (LED) are special diodes that emit light when
illuminated by the movement of electrons in the semi-conductor chips.
Advantages of LED Lighting
LED technology is quickly becoming tomorrow's primary light source
and have several advantages over conventional light sources:
- LEDs for sign illumination are rated for continual use for up
to 100,000 hours.
- LEDs radiate a "cold light", meaning they generate very
little heat compared with other lighting technologies. This also
means less wasted energy.
- LEDs are energy efficient meaning they consume less energy to
produce brighter illuminated displays that creates much greater
readability and flexibility of use than traditional signs and
billboards,
- LEDs are manufactured in a full range of colors and with appropriate
mixing schemes can generate billions of colors.
- LEDs are continually declining in price, making LED displays extremely
affordable.
Terminology
Pixel
A pixel (short for picture element) is an image component of an
LED display's overall resolution. The more pixels used to represent
an image, the higher the resolution is to offer greater picture
quality. In an LED display, a pixel can consist of 1 or more LED
diodes. A monochrome or grayscale LED display pixel has 1 or more
LED diodes of the same color. A color LED display pixel either has
LED diodes of different colors or 1 single diode which contains
semi-conductor chips that emits lights with different colors.
Pitch
Pitch is the distance from the center of a pixel to the center
of an adjacent pixel. Pitch is very important because for the
same display area, the pitch determines the resolution of the
display. For smaller, tighter pitches, you have more pixels per
unit area thus a better resolution. Selecting the right pitch
when you are purchasing an LED display may save you money as well
as getting you the appropriate resolution for your particular
application. Please feel free to contact your Global sales or
tech rep to help you select the right pitch for your display!
Matrix Resolution
An LED display's matrix resolution represents how many pixels
there is on the display. A display with a matrix resolution of
320 (h) by 480 (w) means it has 480 pixels from side to side and
320 from top to bottom. The higher the matrix resolution is, the
better an image is represented on the display. As we discussed
earlier, for a fixed display area, selecting a smaller pitch will
increase the matrix resolution of the display which means better
image quality.
RGB Display
Red, green and blue (RGB) are the 3 basic colors human eyes can
perceive. By using an appropriate combination of red, green and
blue intensities, many colors can be represented. An RGB display
simply means it's a full color display. However, how many colors
can be shown on an RGB display depends on many factors. Two of
the most important factors are the input data signal quality and
the display's color processing ability. For example, if the input
video signal only has 8-bit of information per color, no matter
how many colors your display controller can process, the display
will only show 8 bits of shadings per color. Global's current
full color display controller can process up to 16 bits of information
per color, that's total of 281 trillion gamma corrected color
levels. However, most of today's video input signals are less
than 10 bits per color. Therefore the actual color depth showing
on an Global LED display is only as good as the quality of the
input signal.
NIT- Unit of Brightness
NIT is the brightness measurement unit the industry usually uses
to calculate the brightness of an LED display. It is calculated
as the following:
LED Diode Density
LED diode density is a good indicator for comparing LED display
performance, given using similar spec LEDs. Just like your car's
engine, more cylinders generally mean more power. More LED diodes
per unit area generally means higher brightness thus better performance.
Global's vision has always been helping its customers to build/increase
their business. Because of this, Global has always been sacrificing
its profit margin and using more LED diodes from only the best LED
manufacturers to ensure our customers have the brightest attention
grabbing advertising medium outside their business location. A low
brightness, unreadable LED display will not help you increase your
sales because it's less likely for your customers to notice and
read what you have to say.
Degradation
Generally speaking, an LED diode will quickly lose about 20% of
its initial brightness after the first 2000 hours of use. After
that, the LED diode's brightness only degrades at a very slow
and unnoticeable rate, until it dies at the generally estimated
lifetime of 100k hours. This unique degradation curve is the result
of the nature of semi-conductor chips. When shopping for an LED
display, it is important to keep in mind that the manufacturer's
claimed display brightness will drop about 20% after 2 to 3 months
of operation.
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