How Pitch determines that ultra high-definition in Billboard Media Group’s LED displays 

Knowing pitch and how it helps determine the correct LED display for your specific uses can ensure the success of your display for many profitable years. Determining how the LED display sign is to be used will help you decide how to ensure that you are receiving your money’s worth.

Pitch refers to how close diodes are grouped together. The closer the grouping the more vivid the image and the farther apart the flatter, or duller the image may appear. For example, if you walked by a property that had a flower bed with few flowers in it, the colors may seem subdued. From a distance it would probably be unnoticeable.  But walk by a property with a flower bed packed with white flowers and the color is pronounced and visible from a distance as a patch of white in a green lawn!

The pitch for typical indoor use, such as an LED display in an elevator or a bus terminal, ranges from 6mm, 8mm, and 10mm. That means the center of one pixel to the center of an adjacent pixel is only 6 millimeters, 8 millimeters, or 10 millimeters apart. This tight grouping ensures color intensity and detail needed when viewing images up close as you would want in a high-definition television for home viewing. For the correct resolution in your LED display, select the correct pitch for your particular application. Specifying a smaller pitch will result in higher resolution which means better image quality.

The pitch of outdoor LED displays, ideal for viewing on buildings from one story away, is typically 20mm to 25mm, meaning that the center of the one pixel is 20 millimeters or 25 millimeters away from the center of adjacent pixels. Depending on how close the intended audience is expected to be from the LED display, pitch recommendations for outdoor digital signage can vary from 12mm, 16mm, 18mm, 20mm, and 25mm. A large pitch translates to a larger text or character size. It would not be cost-effective to have a high resolution LED display that is expected to be viewed from a half mile away, and the detail would be wasted, as would the energy usage to power the display images.

Why is pitch so important?

When viewing from great distances, a wider pitch is more desirable to a narrow pitch because they cost much less to use and to buy. High-pitch LED displays are manufactured with fewer diodes per surface area than the low-pitch LED displays for the same reason that reading a slogan on the side of a building has more distance between the letters than the headlines of a newspaper; up close the newspaper has tighter, closer groupings of letters at fractions of an inch apart, where the letters of the slogan on the side of the building may require several feet of space between them to be legible from a distance.

Proportionately, they are closer than you might think, but the unknowing person who doesn’t understand pitch and wants to purchase an LED display sign, could be sold the wrong sign or a more expensive sign than necessary.