Visteon reveals high-dynamic range display technology at CES 2020

Automotive cockpit electronics company Visteon Corporation has announced its breakthrough microZone display technology that offers significantly higher graphics performance than traditional LCD displays.

According to Visteon, the new, patent-pending high-dynamic range (HDR) display technology offers high contrast and brightness and wide colour gamut that enable automotive displays to achieve parity with consumer mobile devices with life-like imaging capability.

Designed to accelerate the development and commercialisation of more energy-efficient, cost-effective digital display solutions, microZone is considered the first automotive display to offer superior optical performance without sacrificing automotive reliability. Since it is based on mature LCD technology, it passes rigorous automotive qualification requirements without susceptibility to burn-in.

"Next-generation automotive cockpit displays need optical performance that is competitive with mobile devices that consumers have come to expect," said Sachin Lawande, president and CEO, Visteon. "MicroZone is the first display technology that offers premium optical performance at a competitive price point for automakers, without sacrificing reliability or life-span. In that sense, microZone is an effective alternative to OLED for automakers.”

Highlights of MicroZone
Wide Color Gamut: Today’s automotive displays achieve 75-85% of the NTSC (National Television System Committee) colour space. MicroZone can render more saturated colors, up to 110% NTSC.  A wider colour gamut enables microZone technology to reproduce a greater range of the visible colour spectrum, and is compliant with the DCI-P3 color standard for HD.

High Contrast Ratio: Legacy LCD contrast ratio maxes out at approximately 1,500:1, and black is never really black. The microZone contrast ratio is at least 100,000:1, which is about 65-70 times higher than a typical LCD screen.

High Brightness: With OLED technology, displays max out at approximately 600 candelas per square metre (brightness level). By comparison, microZone can achieve brightness comparable to a traditional LCD technology.

Visteon says MicroZone can meet these performance targets at a power consumption on par with traditional LCD technology due to key enabling innovations developed in-house at Visteon. 

“MicroZone surpasses traditional display technologies across several critical categories, including color gamut, contrast and brightness levels,” said Qais Sharif, Visteon vice president, display product line. “This is especially important as vehicle manufacturers look for new ways to reduce power consumption in the cockpit without compromising color contrast, quality and brightness.”

At CES 2020, Visteon will host demonstrations of microZone at its booth (Central Plaza, Pavilion 13), where it will also showcase solutions to speed the transition to an all-digital vehicle cockpit and, ultimately, autonomous driving. From fully reconfigurable instrument clusters and the latest-generation, high-definition (HD) digital display technologies to driver monitoring, ADAS integration and a virtualized instrument cluster domain, Visteon products and solutions underpin the increasing shift toward connected cars and autonomous vehicles.

Also read: Visteon to wow CES 2020 with next-gen digital cockpit tech platforms