LED Display & NovaStar Glossary

Plain-English definitions of the LED wall and NovaStar control terms you'll run into — each linked to the right products and free tools.

Pixels, resolution & panels

Pixel pitch: The distance in millimetres between the centres of two adjacent LEDs (e.g. P2.9 = 2.9 mm). A smaller pitch packs more pixels into the same area for a sharper image and closer viewing. Estimate yours with the LED wall calculator.
Resolution: The total pixel count of a screen, width × height. It equals the physical size divided by the pixel pitch. A 6 m wide P2.9 wall is about 2,069 pixels wide.
Pixel density: Pixels per square metre — a quick way to compare sharpness between pitches. It is 1,000,000 ÷ (pitch × pitch).
Cabinet (panel): The modular building block of an LED wall — a frame holding several LED modules plus a receiving card. Walls are built by tiling cabinets in a grid.
Module: The smallest replaceable LED tile inside a cabinet, carrying the LEDs and driver ICs. A cabinet contains several modules.
SMD / COB / GOB / MicroLED: LED packaging types. SMD mounts separate R/G/B chips per pixel; COB (chip-on-board) and GOB (glue-on-board) encapsulate the LEDs for durability; MicroLED uses microscopic LEDs for very fine pitches.
Nits (brightness): A measure of brightness in candela per square metre (cd/m²). Indoor walls run ~600–1,200 nits; outdoor walls need 4,000–8,000+ nits to fight sunlight.

Sending card / sending box: The device that takes a video source and encodes it to the cabinets over Ethernet or fibre. Browse NovaStar controllers and sending cards.
Receiving card: The board inside each cabinet that receives data from the sender and drives the LED modules. Its configuration lives in an RCFGX file. See receiving cards.
All-in-one controller: A unit that combines a video processor and sender in one box (such as the NovaStar VX and MX series), so you can scale, switch and send without a separate processor. See video processors.
Video processor: Scales, switches and manages input sources for an LED wall — handling resolution conversion, layers and seamless switching. See video processors.
COEX: NovaStar's all-in-one control architecture (the MX series) that unifies control, processing and presets, and pairs with Armor-series receiving cards.
Media player: A standalone device that stores and plays content directly to an LED screen without a PC, such as the NovaStar Taurus series.
Data port (Gigabit Ethernet): An RJ45 output on a controller that carries pixel data to the cabinets. One Gigabit port handles roughly 650,000 pixels, which sets how many ports a screen needs — calculate it with the LED wall calculator.

Scan rate / scan mode: How many rows of a module are lit at once, written as a ratio like 1/8 or 1/16 scan. Lower scan (e.g. static/1) is brighter and more stable; higher scan is cheaper. You can read it from a config with the RCFGX viewer.
Refresh rate: How many times per second the panel redraws its image, in hertz. Broadcast and camera work needs a high refresh (3,840 Hz or more) to avoid scan lines on camera.
Grayscale / bit depth: The number of brightness levels per colour. More bits (e.g. 14–16 bit) give smoother gradients and better low-light detail.
Gamma: The curve that maps input signal to LED brightness, shaping contrast and how natural mid-tones look.
Frame rate vs refresh rate: Frame rate is how many video frames per second the source sends (e.g. 60 fps); refresh rate is how many times the LED panel redraws each frame internally (often thousands of Hz).
Low latency: Minimal delay between input and display — critical for live events, broadcast and xR so on-screen action stays in sync.
HDR: High Dynamic Range — wider brightness and colour range for more lifelike highlights and shadows.
Image Booster: A NovaStar receiving-card technology that improves grayscale, colour gamut and low-grayscale uniformity through precise calibration.

Calibration: Per-pixel or per-module correction of brightness and colour so the whole wall looks uniform. Whether it is enabled is stored in the receiving-card config.
Low-grayscale uniformity: How even the image looks at very low brightness, where cheap panels show blotches and colour shift.
Seam correction: Fine brightness adjustment along cabinet and module edges to hide the joins between panels.
Driver IC: The chip that switches the LEDs on a module (e.g. MBI5253, ICN2053). It sets capabilities like PWM grayscale and refresh. See the driver IC reference.
PWM: Pulse-Width Modulation — rapidly switching LEDs on and off to control brightness and produce grayscale.

Fibre / OPT: Optical transmission used to send LED data over long distances (hundreds of metres) without signal loss. See fibre converters.
HDMI / DisplayPort / SDI / DVI: Common video inputs on controllers. SDI is standard in broadcast; HDMI and DisplayPort are common for computers and media servers.
5G receiving system: NovaStar's high-bandwidth control ecosystem (Armor-series cards and matching controllers) for higher resolutions and refresh rates.
Redundancy / backup: A second data path (backup ports or loop) that keeps the screen running if a cable or card fails — essential for live shows.
Genlock: Synchronising the LED system to an external reference signal so multiple screens and cameras stay perfectly in time.
Mapping / screen configuration: Telling the controller the physical position of every cabinet so the video lands in the right place. NovaLCT saves this as a configuration file.
RCFGX file: A NovaStar receiving-card configuration file exported from NovaLCT, storing a cabinet's full setup. Open one free with the RCFGX viewer or compare two.
NCP file: A NovaStar "cabinet package" — a vendor-supplied file that bundles a cabinet's configuration, firmware and display modes so it can be loaded in NovaStar's software in one step. What is an NCP file? →

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