Nova Nebula helps LED display overcome challenges in diverse scenarios

The LED display control system is like the "brain" of LED display technology, which directly determines the upper limit of the image quality of the entire screen and the stability of its operation. However, in the face of increasingly complex and diverse application scenarios, traditional display control technology is encountering bottlenecks at the physical and algorithm levels.

At the recently held 2026 TrendForce New Display Industry Symposium (DTS), Lin Xianmeng, laboratory director of Nova Nebula Academia Sinica, gave an in-depth analysis of the new challenges faced by display control systems in multiple scenarios, and shared in detail how Nova Nebula continues to break through the limits of visual presentation through algorithm evolution, software and hardware collaboration, and innovation in the underlying driver architecture.

Lin Xianmeng, Laboratory Director of Nova Nebula Academia Sinica

Nova Nebula has rich technical reserves to cope with multiple display control challenges

In the field of professional display, the application scenarios of LED display technology are extending from traditional large screens to ultra-large screen displays, creative special-shaped displays, virtual production and LED cinemas.

In ultra-large screen applications, a big problem is the complexity of their deployment. In terms of data transmission, traditional 1G network cable laying faces huge space occupation and transmission stability problems. For example, an 8K display may require up to 64 network cables, and with the use of more devices and network ports, the number of network cables will be greater.

In order to ensure zero loss of on-site display effects, Nova Nebula adopts 5G and 10G high-bandwidth transmission technology solutions. For scenes with relatively loose image quality requirements, Nova Nebula has launched latent compression technology with a compression ratio of 4x to 24x, which not only achieves visually lossless display, but also greatly simplifies equipment deployment and reduces cost consumption.

Creative display is another major growth point in the professional market. From large screens to ultra-large screens to creative screens, users have put forward higher requirements for the stability and delivery efficiency of display control systems. Lin Xianmeng emphasized that creative displays often face problems such as pixel misalignment and visual aberration, especially in non-planar scenes such as curved surfaces and spheres. How to create a true sense of immersion for the audience is the core pain point.

In this regard, Nova Nebula has built a complete creative display solution, equipped with convenient configuration tools. The tool supports arbitrary line extraction, point extraction, and free editing at the pixel level. Such pixel adaptive technology was applied to the snowflake screen at the Beijing Winter Olympics.

In addition, through the sector conversion tool and special-shaped screen correction technology, debuggers can realize the splicing and one-click precise alignment of creative screen images without the need for complex formula calculations, significantly improving debugging efficiency. In terms of spherical screen correction, Nova Nebula has made a key breakthrough. For example, for a spherical screen with a diameter of 7 meters, Nova Nebula can complete all display processing and correction work within one day.

LED virtual production has also been a hot application in recent years and has gradually entered a mature stage. Lin Xianmeng mentioned that the technical research in the past few years has mainly focused on opening up links and solving space, time and color calibration issues such as scanning lines and color distortion.

However, with the deepening of application, the crew put forward new requirements for the consistency and stability of the display effect and the comfort of the working environment. For example, the high heat emitted by the floor screen often causes the prop plants on the shooting scene to wither, affecting the consistency of artistic expression.

In this regard, the thermal compensation solution launched by Nova Nebula uses pixel-by-pixel thermal compensation technology to control the overall color temperature deviation within 100K. Combined with Infinity PWM+PAM hybrid drive technology, the power consumption and temperature rise of the screen are effectively reduced, allowing more energy to be used for emitting light rather than generating heat, ensuring the stability of the actors and the shooting environment.

At the front end of the film and television industry, after passing the stringent DCI certification, LED movie screens are facing the next key proposition: how to improve the friendliness of long-term movie viewing. Since the human eye is most sensitive to low-gray ranges, traditional jitter or insufficient low-gray refresh can lead to viewing fatigue or even visual impairment.

To this end, Nova Nebula also uses a PWM+PAM hybrid drive method to accurately regulate the current in a low-gray state, quickly increasing the refresh rate to 3840Hz under 64-level gray levels, fundamentally eliminating the stroboscopic feeling and providing users with a stunning and visually friendly viewing experience.

Wuji Infinity solution accelerates the entry of LED display into the consumer market

With the optimization of Mini/Micro LED technology and cost, LED display technology is accelerating its penetration into consumer markets such as all-in-one machines and home theaters.

Lin Xianmeng believes that in commercial display and home entertainment scenarios, the core requirements of display control systems are high integration, chip-based and low power consumption. And unlike the professional market, the consumer market cares more about the visual experience of LED display effects. End users care about whether the immersion and visual impact brought by the display are worth their high investment.

Against this background, the Infinity full-link ultra-high image quality solution emerged as the times require. This solution helps maximize the screen capabilities of Mini/Micro LED and enter a larger consumer market.

Through the deep integration of control system, intelligent algorithm and pulse width modulation (PWM) + pulse amplitude modulation (PAM) hybrid driver IC, the Infinity solution brings the "five high and two low" characteristics of high peak brightness, high dynamic range, high grayscale number, high refresh, high color accuracy, low power consumption and low temperature rise, bringing better display effects to MLED screens.

In terms of high grayscale levels, the Infinity solution has the bit depth capability of 16bit PWM superimposed on 8bit PAM. In theory, it can achieve 21bit ultra-high grayscale, with a brightness control accuracy of up to 0.001nit, which can clearly express every detail in the dark area and provide a pure black dark field effect.

In terms of high refresh rate, PAM technology widens the drive pulse width, providing ample time for screen refresh, increasing the 1-level grayscale refresh rate by 4 to 8 times compared with traditional solutions, ensuring that the screen does not flicker.

In response to the consumer market's pursuit of high dynamic range (HDR), the Wuji solution uses PAM technology to further increase the current when the picture is partially highlighted, achieving local overshoot, so that the peak brightness can jump from the traditional 1000nits to 1600nits or even more than 2000nits, making the picture more dazzling.

In terms of high color accuracy, this solution suppresses wavelength drift caused by current changes through precise color management, controlling the color temperature shift within plus or minus 50K to 100K, and the color accuracy ΔE is less than 2, achieving a better match between the video source and the display.

While achieving excellent image quality, the Infinity solution also performs well in energy conservation and emission reduction. Relying on the screen-off energy-saving and dynamic energy-saving design of the driver chip, the measured power consumption can be further reduced by about 20%, effectively controlling the temperature rise and enhancing equipment reliability, which is crucial for large-size home theaters and long-running all-in-one machines.

It is worth noting that Infinity is not a single technology or chip. It covers a full-link solution of video source, control system, core algorithm, intelligent correction and hybrid driver IC.

At present, Infinity has been successfully used in high-end scenarios such as TCL Huaxing's 163-inch MLED COB display products, and was unveiled in the home living room exhibition area at the InfoComm China exhibition, marking the perfect migration of professional display control technology to the mass consumer market.

Lin Xianmeng concluded that the advancement of LED display control technology is pushing MLED displays to cross the boundaries of professional fields and fully enter the trillion-level market at the commercial and consumer levels. In the future, Nova Nebula will continue to uphold the spirit of innovation, delve into the underlying algorithms, empower global customers through core technologies such as Infinity, and jointly open up the future of ultra-high-definition display. (Text: LEDinside Irving)

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