At VDI 2026, at the Tianma booth, Chris Chinnock interviews Mr. Chen, covering several OLED display technology demos along with hidden surfaces, microLED HUD and narrow bezel display:
- Anti-reflective (windshield reflection elimination) OLED display
- A 17-inch OLED (already used in a shipping product, referenced as going into a specific vehicle model/platform) shown with a new feature: eliminating windshield reflections from the display’s light.
- Demoed side-by-side: one half shows visible reflection in the windshield, the other shows none — important for center-information/console displays where reflections are distracting.
- Unlike a conventional light-control/louver film (which typically loses ~20% of brightness/luminance and adds cost as an added layer), Tianma’s approach builds this function directly into the panel structure itself, using a black mask layer integrated with the display rather than as a separate applied film. Since OLED panels already commonly use a black mask (sometimes to replace polarizer functions), this integration adds little to no incremental cost when a black mask layer already exists.
- Hidden display (wood-grain/decorative surface style)
- A display that appears as a wood-textured surface when off and shows content when on, achieving a claimed transmissivity of roughly 50–80% depending on configuration.
- Requires careful optimization on two fronts: perceptual/texture accuracy of the “hidden” surface material, and measured image resolution/clarity, since decorative films/structures can degrade display clarity. Tianma has published research/measurement work on this optimization (referenced as presented at this conference), including attention to surface reflectance (aiming for very low, matte reflectance).
- Narrow-border display (mass-production-representative panel)
- Demonstrates a very narrow bezel: 1.5mm from the active area (AA) to the edge of the glass, and 4mm from the active area to the module’s outer border.
- While narrow borders have some technical/chemical-limitation origins, Chen emphasizes the primary current value is perceptual/aesthetic — customers see narrow-border displays as more premium and attractive, particularly for center console and rear-seat display applications (though not limited to those locations).
- Tianma’s ongoing focus areas for display development are narrow border and transmissivity, with the latter also helping reduce power consumption and ease heat management.
- High-brightness Micro-LED-based HUD
- A HUD with what’s described as a “junior hybrid” micro-LED approach, achieving roughly 120,000 nits — about 120x brighter than a typical OLED (~1,000 nits).
- This demo was previously at CES, calling it impressive.