David Keene--LED walls have been around for years, so it can be hard to get excited about new product launches. Historically LED has been some combination of too expensive, physically heavy, and energy-sucking to make many inroads from its perch in the world of sports stadiums and a some rock concerts to the broader world of digital signage. This is changing — case in point, last week’s debut of a broad line of new LED products from NanoLumens at the Customer Engagement Technology World show in New York.
NanoLumens has been showing a few products at trade events for the past couple years, but last week’s news brings them to a new level. They showed last week a new line of products that demonstrate depth and breadth — both outdoor and indoor LED, from 10mm down to 4mm resolution. And NanoLumens’ displays are carving a fairly new niche — they are flexible, literally. They have options where you can bend the displays around walls, cylinders, and more. Furthermore, when you bend a Nanolumens LED display, the pixels remain at the same intervals from each other — a nice trick, keeping a “single bend line” to the pixels, that the company claims is patented and sets them apart. Looking at the displays the other day in New York, I was also struck by the very flat nature of the surfaces. In other words, the LED diodes, in their RGB clusters, seem upon touch to blend into the substrate, not protrude out or recess inward. This is different from a lot of the older LED designs where often black plastic or metal “shelves” or shades were designed into the surface to act against direct sunlight in outdoor applications for example (which often led to off-axis viewing degradation).
This is the press release from NanoLumens, last Wednesday:
NanoLumens has announced it will introduce an expanded line of Flex Displays, as well as its first line of Non-Flexible Displays, at the 2011 Customer Engagement Technology World (CETW) conference and exhibition taking place in New York at the Jacob Javits Convention Center.
In doing so, the company will take a giant leap forward in its quest to fully commercialize its “digital wall paper” technology that literally turns any surface into a powerful communications platform — while eliminating virtually all of the weight, installation, energy, and cost efficiency issues associated with traditional large format digital displays.
First introduced in 2010, NanoFlex and new NanoWrap flex digital displays remain the only solution of their kind. They conform to fit any surface, are thin, lightweight, energy efficient and can be mounted as easily as a work of art.
“Our Flex technology can now be assembled to satisfy any shape and size requirements, so any location can now become a dynamic and dramatic video display,” said Rick Cope, president and CEO of NanoLumens. “At the same time, our new line of NanoSlim and NanoShape non-flexible displays, available in 6mm, 5mm, and 4mm pixel pitches, will offer customers a more cost-effective alternative when flexibility is not a requirement.”
According to Cope, NanoLumens is the only company in the world able to reliably manufacture ultra-thin and lightweight, easy-to-install and maintain, seamless 6mm pixel pitch flexible digital displays in virtually any shape or size to meet each customer’s unique requirements.
The company’s patented display technology allows customers to select from 4mm up to 10mm pixel pitches (depending on the model).
“Now, any surface can become a compelling display surface as simply as hanging a mirror,” Cope emphasized. “This product line is going to forever change the rules of the game when it comes to creative customer engagement.”
In addition to being ultra-lightweight and energy efficient, NanoLumens displays feature a seamless, edge-to-edge picture quality (up to a brightness of 5,000 nits) that can be viewed from any angle or any distance without color shift or picture drop-off. Designed and engineered to be energy efficient, NanoLumens displays consume significantly less energy per-square foot than conventional digital displays. The NanoLumens displays are composed of up to 50 percent reclaimed materials, and are completely recyclable. Some new NanoLumens displays can be serviced from the front, making maintenance easier than ever before possible.
Designed and assembled entirely in the United States, NanoLumens displays are now available in both flexible and non-flexible frames in four product lines: NanoFlex and NanoWrap flexible displays; NanoSlim non-flexible rectangular displays; and NanoShape non-flexible round, square, and triangular displays.
