dual lcd panel factory
Are there still possibilities to improve the contrast of an LCD panel? In addition to the use of local dimming and a solid anti-reflection layer, not much has changed in LCD panels for a long time. That could change with the introduction of Dual Layer LCD technology for televisions. A new term, which we explain in detail in this article.
By way of introduction, the technology appears under two different names: dual layer, or dual cell. We prefer to use dual layer, because that term is clearer.
Dual layer LCD is another way to achieve the same result. If one LCD panel can create a contrast value of 1,000: 1, you can create a theoretical contrast of 1,000: 000: 1 by placing two LCD panels one behind the other. That is an idea that has been around for a long time and has already been used in some medical imaging monitors.
This is how it works. In the structure of the LCD TV, a second LCD panel is slid between the backlight and the original LCD panel. That extra panel determines how much light passes through to the original panel, it only works in grayscale. That is why it is often referred to as a light modulator or dimming panel. You can consider it as a special kind of local dimming. Each pixel of the dimming panel counts as a dimming zone. For example, a dual layer LCD TV can have millions of dimming zones.
Theoretically, you would naturally opt for a 4K dimming panel. You actually have about 8 million dimming zones, one per pixel, and you are at the same level as OLED. But we also see that a Full HD dimming panel is chosen, which provides approximately two million dimming zones (one zone per four pixels). The reasons for this are of a different nature. It will undoubtedly be cheaper to use a 2K dimming panel instead of a 4K version. In addition, there are probably also technical reasons: for example, impact on energy consumption. And the extra benefit of a 4K panel may be too small.
We also notice that Hisense still communicated with one million dimming zones at IFA, which would indicate a dimming panel with only the half of Full HD resolution. At CES Hisense spoke of two million dimming zones.
Dual layer LCD TV should be a cheaper alternative to OLED, just like mini-LED. Currently there are professional grading monitors for the film studio of Sony (BVM-HX310) and Panasonic (Megacon). Towards consumers, only Hisense (HZ65U9E) comes out with this technology.
The contrast values currently being claimed vary widely, varying between 1,000,000: 1 and 150,000: 1. This variation is large but not unexpected, since a small difference in black value has a huge impact on contrast. In any case, those values are considerably better than for a traditional LCD TV that is somewhere between 1,000: 1 and 3,000: 1 (without local dimming).
LCD panel manufacturers have another reason to look at dual layer solutions. So many LCD factories have been set up in China that there is considerable overcapacity. Excess capacity reduces the price, which is good for the consumer, but manufacturers prefer to reduce their output a bit. But an LCD factory can be compared to many other factories: if it is not running at full capacity, there is a risk of financial loss. A solution where you can use that overcapacity to make a better product (in this case with two LCD panels) is of course attractive.
Unfortunately there are a few important hurdles for this technology, and the most important ones seems to us the energy consumption. An LCD panel has a considerable loss because the light has to go through different optical layers. We often see a figure of around 6% light efficiency. If we place two LCD panels behind each other, that problem will of course be much worse. That energy consumption will not be underestimated, we could already more or less estimate at the show of the Panasonic Megacon at IFA last year. Even when we were standing a meter from the screen you could still feel the heat coming from the screen. This is of course no problem for a studio monitor, but for a consumer product it is different.
Hisense claims that their panel has an efficiency of 4%. That may not seem dramatically less, but still, that means that you have to generate 50% more light in the background lighting to achieve the same brightness as a traditional LCD TV. Such a TV therefore uses at least 50% more power. That could be a problem given the strict energy consumption standards that will come in 2021.
The construction of such a panel is also a challenge. After all, the two LCD panels must be perfectly aligned, or there will be a shadow effect. If the pixel grid of the dimming panel is not perfectly hidden behind the grid of the second LCD panel, it casts a shadow on the second LCD panel. This requires clarity, but also creates other visible image errors. If too many faulty panels roll off the belt (in other words, if the “yield” is low), then that is reflected in a higher price. It remains to be seen whether the result is still economically meaningful.
Finally, we all want slim televisions, but two LCD panels are obviously thicker than one panel. The manufacturer can compensate for this by working with an edge-LED backlight, but in combination with a FALD backlight, such a TV would clearly be a bit thicker, although we do not expect the step to be very large.
Of course, the possible breakthrough of this technology also revolves around cost. At the moment, the price of dual layer LCD seems to be somewhere between a classic FALD LCD TV and an OLED TV, according to Trendforce analysts (attention, indicated prices are only for the panel, not for the finished TV). They also estimate the price to be slightly lower than that of a mini LED TV.
Dual Layer LCD technology for televisions offers interesting prospects. By sticking two LCD panels behind each other with LCD technology you can raise the contrast to OLED level and the fact that professional grading monitors use it is a clear indicator that the technology has potential. But the consumer market also imposes other requirements on a TV, in particular on energy consumption, and there remains a doubt as to whether dual layer LCD will not consume too much energy.
The technology might also find its way to monitors and laptop computers. displays. BOE (the Chinese panel manufacturer that makes the panels for Hisense) has already announced that it has also developed a 31.5-inch gaming monitor.
Flat-panel displays are thin panels of glass or plastic used for electronically displaying text, images, or video. Liquid crystal displays (LCD), OLED (organic light emitting diode) and microLED displays are not quite the same; since LCD uses a liquid crystal that reacts to an electric current blocking light or allowing it to pass through the panel, whereas OLED/microLED displays consist of electroluminescent organic/inorganic materials that generate light when a current is passed through the material. LCD, OLED and microLED displays are driven using LTPS, IGZO, LTPO, and A-Si TFT transistor technologies as their backplane using ITO to supply current to the transistors and in turn to the liquid crystal or electroluminescent material. Segment and passive OLED and LCD displays do not use a backplane but use indium tin oxide (ITO), a transparent conductive material, to pass current to the electroluminescent material or liquid crystal. In LCDs, there is an even layer of liquid crystal throughout the panel whereas an OLED display has the electroluminescent material only where it is meant to light up. OLEDs, LCDs and microLEDs can be made flexible and transparent, but LCDs require a backlight because they cannot emit light on their own like OLEDs and microLEDs.
Liquid-crystal display (or LCD) is a thin, flat panel used for electronically displaying information such as text, images, and moving pictures. They are usually made of glass but they can also be made out of plastic. Some manufacturers make transparent LCD panels and special sequential color segment LCDs that have higher than usual refresh rates and an RGB backlight. The backlight is synchronized with the display so that the colors will show up as needed. The list of LCD manufacturers:
Organic light emitting diode (or OLED displays) is a thin, flat panel made of glass or plastic used for electronically displaying information such as text, images, and moving pictures. OLED panels can also take the shape of a light panel, where red, green and blue light emitting materials are stacked to create a white light panel. OLED displays can also be made transparent and/or flexible and these transparent panels are available on the market and are widely used in smartphones with under-display optical fingerprint sensors. LCD and OLED displays are available in different shapes, the most prominent of which is a circular display, which is used in smartwatches. The list of OLED display manufacturers:
MicroLED displays is an emerging flat-panel display technology consisting of arrays of microscopic LEDs forming the individual pixel elements. Like OLED, microLED offers infinite contrast ratio, but unlike OLED, microLED is immune to screen burn-in, and consumes less power while having higher light output, as it uses LEDs instead of organic electroluminescent materials, The list of MicroLED display manufacturers:
LCDs are made in a glass substrate. For OLED, the substrate can also be plastic. The size of the substrates are specified in generations, with each generation using a larger substrate. For example, a 4th generation substrate is larger in size than a 3rd generation substrate. A larger substrate allows for more panels to be cut from a single substrate, or for larger panels to be made, akin to increasing wafer sizes in the semiconductor industry.
"Samsung Display has halted local Gen-8 LCD lines: sources". THE ELEC, Korea Electronics Industry Media. August 16, 2019. Archived from the original on April 3, 2020. Retrieved December 18, 2019.
"TCL to Build World"s Largest Gen 11 LCD Panel Factory". www.businesswire.com. May 19, 2016. Archived from the original on April 2, 2018. Retrieved April 1, 2018.
"Panel Manufacturers Start to Operate Their New 8th Generation LCD Lines". 대한민국 IT포털의 중심! 이티뉴스. June 19, 2017. Archived from the original on June 30, 2019. Retrieved June 30, 2019.
"TCL"s Panel Manufacturer CSOT Commences Production of High Generation Panel Modules". www.businesswire.com. June 14, 2018. Archived from the original on June 30, 2019. Retrieved June 30, 2019.
"Samsung Display Considering Halting Some LCD Production Lines". 비즈니스코리아 - BusinessKorea. August 16, 2019. Archived from the original on April 5, 2020. Retrieved December 19, 2019.
Herald, The Korea (July 6, 2016). "Samsung Display accelerates transition from LCD to OLED". www.koreaherald.com. Archived from the original on April 1, 2018. Retrieved April 1, 2018.
"China"s BOE to have world"s largest TFT-LCD+AMOLED capacity in 2019". ihsmarkit.com. 2017-03-22. Archived from the original on 2019-08-16. Retrieved 2019-08-17.
Alibaba.com offers 3516 double lcd panel products. About 30% % of these are digital signage and displays, 1%% are lcd monitors, and 1%% are lcd modules.
A wide variety of double lcd panel options are available to you, You can also choose from original manufacturer, odm and agency double lcd panel,As well as from tft, va double lcd panel.
There"s no doubt that dual layer LCD is a bit of a hot topic at the moment and one of the comments we got last week after Ken"s article (OLED and Dual Cell TV: The Battle Commences) asked why the technology is needed. It seems to me there are two big factors.
The first is the issue of the supply chain and the development of the LCD industry. The push by the Chinese to dominate LCD manufacture over recent years is continuing and more fabs are going to appear. New fabs make a lot of panels and they will be big panels. However, the Chinese TV brands will also want to move up-market to try to challenge Samsung, LG and Sony in the premium segments and that means competing with OLED, or supplying OLED.
There are also huge technical challenges in making large OLEDs - which is why LG has to use a very inefficient and inelegant method (based on patents that it acquired from Kodak) to make the panels and why Samsung abandoned its first attempt to make large OLEDs and seems to be hesitating about a second attempt. The technical challenges means that Chinese OLED developers are several years behind the Koreans, although they are trying hard to catch up.
So, the Chinese want to compete with OLED in the premium segment, but don"t have the means to do it with their own OLEDs, so they have to exploit what they do have, which is LCD. I do think they will struggle to make products that can meet the energy requirements for TVs in Europe and the US (I don"t know if there are stringent requirements in China - if you do, please leave a comment below). This will especially be the case for 8K sets. As I have already written, (Samsung"s Colour Performance Seems to Have Reduced with 8K) Samsung is challenged already to meet emerging energy level requirements with its 8K sets. Add dual panel and that compounds the problem.
The other issue that is still something of a concern to me and to quite a lot of others is the issue of burn-in on OLEDs. This is a well established problem and is acknowledged in the broadcast industry. In November last year, the EBU issued guidelines (downloadable here) on how content creators can minimise "image retention" in OLED broadcast monitors (although it"s acknowledged that image sticking can also be an issue for LCDs). That includes recommendations that even with SDR content, the brightness of static images is severely limited (to 40% peak white) and 47% of reference white (35% of peak white level for HDR signals using HLG). It also advises that saturated colours should be avoided on static images.
As we reported from IBC last year, Sony has switched to dual layer LCD for broadcast monitors and it seems likely that this kind of issue was one of the factors (along with limited peak brightness and colour volume for OLEDs and probably a better supply situation for LCD) in that decision.
Main Products: LCD Display, LCD Screen, Android Tablet, Touch Screen, Tablet PC, Touch Screen Monitor, Industrial PC, Digital Signage, Smart Board, All in One PC
Main Products: Industrial Panel PC, Industrial Tablet PC, Embedded Panel PC, Panel PC, Tablet PC, Naked LCD Module, Shell-Less LCD Module, Android Industrial Panel PC, Linux Industrial Panel PC, Win CE Industrial Panel PC
Main Products: Interactive Whiteboard, LCD Display, Smart Board, Interactive Flat Panel, All in One PC, All in One Computer, Video Wall, LCD Monitor, Advertising Display, Digital Signage
Main Products: Digital Singage, LCD Video Wall, Touch Screen Kiosk, Touch Screen Monitor, Interactive Whiteboard, LCD Advertising Player, Multimedia Player, Indoor Digital Singage, Outdoor Digital Singage
Main Products: Interactive Whiteboard, Interactive Flat Panel, Electronic Whiteboard, Smart Board, Whiteboard, Smart , Rotate , Screen, 32" Incell HD Screen, Incell Smart Screen, Smart Screen, Incell Touch Screen Rotate
Main Products: Advertising Player, Advertising Display, Digital Signage, Video Wall, LCD Video Wall, Outdoor LCD Display, Outdoor Digital Signage, Indoor Digital Signage, Temperature Kiosk, Hand Sanitizer Kiosk
Main Products: Interactive Whiteboard, Interactive Flat Panel, Electronic Whiteboard, Smart Board, Whiteboard, Smart , Rotate , Screen, 32" Incell HD Screen, Incell Smart Screen, Smart Screen, Incell Touch Screen Rotate
Main Products: Interactive Whiteboard, LCD Display, Smart Board, Interactive Flat Panel, All in One PC, All in One Computer, Video Wall, LCD Monitor, Advertising Display, Digital Signage
Main Products: Interactive Whiteboard, LCD Display, Smart Board, Interactive Flat Panel, All in One PC, All in One Computer, Video Wall, LCD Monitor, Advertising Display, Digital Signage
Main Products: Interactive Whiteboard, LCD Display, Smart Board, Interactive Flat Panel, All in One PC, All in One Computer, Video Wall, LCD Monitor, Advertising Display, Digital Signage
Main Products: LCD Display, LCD Screen, Android Tablet, Touch Screen, Tablet PC, Touch Screen Monitor, Industrial PC, Digital Signage, Smart Board, All in One PC
Main Products: Interactive Whiteboard, Advertising Machine, Digital Signage, Ultra Thin Glass, Glass Panel, LED Display, LCD Display, TFT Screen, Touch Screen
If one LCD is good, two is better, right? I"m not talking about two layer LCD. No, that"s still not quite right. LCDs have lots of layers. How about Double Stuf LCD? Nailed it.
Double Stuf LCDs have the potential to improve the contrast ratio of a display with minimal additional power draw and without needing additional LEDs, like
The problem, and what has always been LCD"s problem, is this method doesn"t block all the light. There"s no such thing as a "black" LCD pixel. Some light always leaks through, which is why LCDs have always had worse black levels and contrast compared to other technologies, like
In Hisense"s prototypes and the current version of this TV (currently only available in China), the second layer was 1080p on a 4K display. Hisense promises that when this tech reaches US shores, both layers will be 4K. This means that essentially it"s an LCD TV with a 8 million zone backlight, far more than even mini-LED has. With two 4K modules, each pixel gets a far greater ability to block the light from the backlight, greatly improving this longstanding LCD issue and improving the contrast ratio.
Price-wise, Hisense is aiming to be cheaper than OLED, though probably similar-to or more than higher-end LCDs. For reference the HZ65U9E, its 65-inch model for sale in China now, is 17,999 yuan, which converts to about $2,500, £2,000, or AU$3,700.
Manufacturers have a lot of money in LCD, and that"s not changing any time soon. They"re always looking out for the next big thing, which is how we got OLED and how we"ll be getting MicroLED. Before we get to the next gen, there"s still a lot of improvement to be made with the current gen. Mini-LED is one aspect of that, and potentially so is dual-LCD. No doubt we"ll hear more about both at CES in January.
To meet strong demand for LCD panels for TVs, Sharp Corporation will double current production capacity at its LCD panel plant (SDP*1) located in GREEN FRONT SAKAI, Sakai City, Osaka Prefecture, Japan, to 72,000 substrates per month.
This LCD panel plant is the first in the world to employ 10th-generation glass substrates. Using Sharp’s proprietary UV2A*2 photo-alignment technology, the plant produces high-contrast panels offering outstanding energy efficiency in screen sizes of 40 inches and larger. These panels have been highly rated by LCD TV manufacturers around the world.
Sharp will be creating LCD panels featuring its proprietary UV2A technology and four-primary-color technology*3 at this state-of-the-art plant. In addition, Sharp will strive for further enhancements in cost competitiveness, and will continue to expand the market for large-screen displays, including LCD TVs and digital signage.
DynaScan introduces a revolutionary leap for window-facing display technology. The DW551DR4 is a dual-sided professional ultra-high brightness LCD. This all-in-one solution features back-to-back display surfaces in a single, ultra-slim form factor.
Monitor Display Panel BOE monitor display panels cover a full range of products from 18.5 inches to 43 inches, with high image quality, wide viewing angles, high refresh rate, low power consumption, a borderless design, and other features. Resolution of up to 8K can be achieved. The products are widely used in entertainment, office, professional design, and other fields.
LG Display and Samsung Display are struggling to find their ways out of the deterioration of their performance even after withdrawing from production of liquid crystal display (LCD) panels. The high-priced organic light emitting diode (OLED) panel sector regarded as a future growth engine is not growing fast due to the economic downturn. Even in the OLED panel sector, Chinese display makers are within striking distance of Korean display makers, experts say.
On Aug. 30, Display Supply Chain Consultants (DSCC), a market research company, predicted that LCD TV panel prices hit an all-time low in August and that an L-shaped recession will continue in the fourth quarter. According to DSCC, the average price of a 65-inch ultra-high-definition (UHD) panel in August was only US$109, a 62 percent drop from the highest price of US$288 recorded in July in 2021. The average price of a 75-inch UHD panel was only US$218, which was only about half of the highest price of US$410 in July last year. DSCC predicted that the average panel price in the third quarter will fall by 15.7 percent. As Chinese companies’ price war and the effect of stagnation in consumption overlapped, the more LCD panels display makers produce, the more loss they suffer.
As panel prices fell, manufacturers responded by lowering facility utilization rates. DSCC said that the LCD factory utilization rate descended from 87 percent in April to 83 percent in May, 73 percent in June, and 70 percent in July.
Now that the LCD panel business has become no longer lucrative, Korean display makers have shut down their LCD business or shrunk their sizes. In the LCD sector, China has outpaced Korea since 2018. China’s LCD market share reached 50.9 percent in 2021, while that of Korea dropped to 14.4 percent, lower than Taiwan’s 31.6 percent.
Samsung Display already announced its withdrawal from the LCD business in June. Only 10 years have passed since the company was spun off from Samsung Electronics in 2012. LG Display has decided to halt domestic LCD TV panel production until 2023 and reorganize its business structure centering on OLED panels. Its Chinese LCD production line will be gradually converted to produce LCD panels for IT or commercial products. TrendForce predicted that LG Display will stop operating its P7 Plant in the first quarter of next year.
Korean display makers’ waning LCD business led to a situation in which Korea even lost first place in the display industry. Korea with a display market share of 33.2 percent was already overtaken by China with 41.5 percent) in 2021 according to market researcher Omdia and the Korea Display Industry Association. Korea’s market share has never rebounded in for five years since 2017 amid the Korean government’s neglect. Seventeen years have passed since 2004 when Korea overtook Japan to rise to the top of the world in the LCD industry. Korea’s LCD exports amounted to more than US$30 billion in 2014, but fell to US$21.4 billion last year.
A bigger problem is that Korean display makers may lose its leadership in the OLED panel sector although it is still standing at the top spot. While Korea’s OLED market share fell from 98.1 percent in 2016 to 82.8 percent last year, that of China rose from 1.1 percent to 16.6 percent. Considering that the high-end TV market is highly likely to shrink for the time being due to a full-fledged global consumption contraction, some analysts say that the technology gap between Korea and China can be sharply narrowed through this looming TV market slump. According to industry sources, the Chinese government is now focusing on giving subsidies to the development of OLED panel technology rather LCD technology. On the other hand, in Korea, displays were also wiped out from national strategic technology industry items under the Restriction of Special Taxation Act which can receive tax benefits for R&D activities on displays.
Back in 2016, to determine if the TV panel lottery makes a significant difference, we bought three different sizes of the Samsung J6300 with panels from different manufacturers: a 50" (version DH02), a 55" (version TH01), and a 60" (version MS01). We then tested them with the same series of tests we use in all of our reviews to see if the differences were notable.
Our Samsung 50" J6300 is a DH02 version, which means the panel is made by AU Optronics. Our 55" has an original TH01 Samsung panel. The panel in our 60" was made by Sharp, and its version is MS01.
Upon testing, we found that each panel has a different contrast ratio. The 50" AUO (DH02) has the best contrast, at 4452:1, followed by the 60" Sharp (MS01) at 4015:1. The Samsung 55" panel had the lowest contrast of the three: 3707:1.
These results aren"t really surprising. All these LCD panels are VA panels, which usually means a contrast between 3000:1 and 5000:1. The Samsung panel was quite low in that range, leaving room for other panels to beat it.
The motion blur results are really interesting. The response time of the 55" TH01 Samsung panel is around double that of the Sharp and AUO panels. This is even consistent across all 12 transitions that we measured.
For our measurements, a difference in response time of 10 ms starts to be noticeable. All three are within this range, so the difference isn"t very noticeable to the naked eye, and the Samsung panel still performs better than most other TVs released around the same time.
We also got different input lag measurements on each panel. This has less to do with software, which is the same across each panel, and more to do with the different response times of the panels (as illustrated in the motion blur section). To measure input lag, we use the Leo Bodnar tool, which flashes a white square on the screen and measures the delay between the signal sent and the light sensor detecting white. Therefore, the tool"s input lag measurement includes the 0% to 100% response time of the pixel transition. If you look at the 0% to 100% transitions that we measured, you will see that the 55" takes about 10 ms longer to transition from black to white.
All three have bad viewing angles, as expected for VA panels. If you watch TV at an angle, most likely none of these TVs will satisfy you. The picture quality degrades at about 20 degrees from the side. The 60" Sharp panel is worse than the other ones though. In the video, you can see the right side degrading sooner than the other panels.
While we didn"t test these TVs for gray uniformity, black uniformity, or out-of-the-box color accuracy, these can also vary between individual units due to manufacturing tolerances. Still, we can make some assumptions that the experiment bears out:
It"s unfortunate that manufacturers sometimes vary the source of their panels and that consumers don"t have a way of knowing which one they"re buying. Overall though, at least in the units we tested, the panel lottery isn"t something to worry about. While there are differences, the differences aren"t big and an original Samsung panel isn"t necessarily better than an outsourced one. It"s also fairly safe to say that the same can be said of other brands. All panels have minute variations, but most should perform within the margin of error for each model.