Ever since a well-known TV manufacturer started marketing LCD TVs with LED backlights as LED TV’s there has been confusion over LED terminology. The following is only a guide as no one seems to stick to terminology with 100% consistency:
- MiniLED is most commonly used by the LCD TV industry to refer to a moderately high-resolution LED backlight to an LCD display designed to provide higher contrast. The LED video wall industry also refers to mini-LED for its higher resolution LED panels, for example, 0.6mm to around 1.0mm dot pitch seems to attract mini-LED descriptions.
- MicroLED: From what I see on the Internet, so far Micro-LED only refers to direct-view LED displays (see next item) and is the next level of high resolution for LED. Competing with other TV display technologies Micro-LED will potentially be a direct challenger to LCD and OLED technologies.
- Direct view LED, or as I have also seen it written, DVLED, refers to LED displays without an LCD in front. A distinction may arise that for large direct-view LED-based displays, the display is made up of many modules tiled to make a complete display. For mobile devices using a micro-LED, and as LED modules get larger, there may be a distinction between single module direct-view LED and tiled module versions.
Whether it is as a backlight technology or as a direct-view display, LED has clearly become the most significant display-related technology. That kind of volume is bound to produce continued development.
