Barco's LED Digital Media Canvas Offers More Creative Freedom

Global LED technology provider, Barco, is proud to unveil its "digital media canvas" -- a unique LED screen technology that's radically different than traditional LED displays. Thanks to their thin, lightweight, and bendable design, the R-series attach easily to virtually any surface -- especially on curved surfaces. Compared to today's LED products, the "digital media canvas" is the future for more creative freedom and greatly reduced setup time and cost. Designed for applications in retail, advertising, venues, and visitor attractions, the R-series frees customers from the limitations of traditional LED displays when digitizing their visual communication. Currently offered with a 10mm pixel pitch, the outdoor-rated R10 is the first model of the digital media canvas family that's being introduced, and it will be shipping from third quarter 2016 onwards.

"Venue owners, advertisers, and retailers are faced with the ever-challenging task of catching the attention of consumers and visitors. With our revolutionary R-series digital media canvas, we free designers from the limitations of traditional LED displays, making their message stand out in venues and installations that were impossible before," comments Chris Colpaert, VP LED at Barco. "We are expanding creative possibilities far beyond traditional LED applications. With the R-series, eye-catching LED visualization can now be installed in applications and on surfaces that were previously impossible, like curved façades, subway station tunnels, or creative stage sets. Its bendable, lightweight, and ultra-thin design ensures smooth and quick installation, driving down setup time and cost."

Installation and maintenance are key cost drivers for store façades, museums, theaters, houses of worship, stadiums, and corporate or event venues. Weighing less than 6kg/sqm, the R-series is much easier and faster to install than traditional LED displays, which minimizes installation cost. Offered in sheets up to 4.68m long and only 5mm thick (including louvers), the digital media canvas covers all kinds of surfaces. Cabling, control, and power electronics are fully integrated on every sheet, to remove today's cable clutter. Moreover, the power supply unit can be located remotely for easy servicing.

With minimal need for a supporting structure, the R-series can be glued onto a surface or wrapped around curved shapes. Thanks to its unique bendable design, architectural constraints are reduced and less space needs to be freed up. Plus, there are no visual segmentations or gaps, as is the case with standard tiled LED displays.

Because the total system weight of the R10 is up to 75% lighter than a traditional LED display, Barco's digital media canvas can transform virtually any outdoor surface into a digital screen, at any time. Eliminating the need for heavy weight load support, this opens up a whole new dimension in creative design. Historic buildings, transportation vehicles, and many more objects can now be outfitted with LED visualization.

Driven by Barco's Infinipix image processing platform, the R-series inherits the Barco image quality. This future-proof platform provides a straightforward web-based interface that enables display configuration, control, monitoring, and maintenance -- anywhere, anytime, and from any device. Based on HTML5, different operating systems and mobile devices can be used to control the R-series, both on-site and off-site. The system supports SNMP to export monitoring data, but sends automatic failure alerts and status notifications as well to minimize operational risk.