Direct Full Array 8x, Direct Full Array 16x

Backlighting is a fairly important element of television displays. You should know that TV manufacturers come up with their own names for the types of backlighting in their displays. Of course, there are only two types of backlighting:

Backlight LEDs are placed around the edges of the display, in which case the backlighting is controlled, only large areas of the screen can be dimmed no more than 8 areas.
Backlight LEDs are placed on the back over the entire area of the screen, lenses are used to disperse the light flux, but these LEDs can be only a few dozen, this is a standard display. In the mini LED displays LEDs are smaller and there may be several hundred. Thanks to this arrangement, it is possible to divide the backlight into zones and separately control the backlight of each zone.

In 2019, Samsung began specifying the backlighting type for some TV models as Direct Full Array 8×3 or Direct Full Array 16×3. Direct Full Array backlighting, it’s clear that the backlighting in a TV goes all over the screen and the LEDs are on the back, but what is Direct Full Array 8×3 or Direct Full Array 16×3

Direct Full Array, this designation is no different from the previously used Samsung Full Array Backlight. It’s just a marketing ploy from Samsung. Since there are no particular changes in TVs lately, to stimulate sales, companies very often practice the same technology, call it by different names. Also, companies patent new commercial names.

Direct Full Array 8×3 expained

In the Direct Full Array 8X parameter, the following characteristics are included. The number of lighting zones that can be controlled, this value is displayed not as a number, but as a formula. This is how Samsung can patent the new name.

• 8×3 it can be explained like this
  • 8×1³ = 8 backlight zones
  • 8×2³ = 64 backlight zones
  • 8×3³ = 216 backlight zones
  • 8×4³ = 512 backlight zones

As a rule, the number of backlight zones is a multiple of 8, to control and bind to the number of bits (8). If you follow the logic of the formula, Samsung TVs contain no more than 512 dimming zones. Since 8×5³ = 1000, there should be 1024 zones to control. 512 zones are enough to control the dimming technology of the TV.

Direct Full Array 16×3 explained

16X³ it can be explained like this

• 16×1³ = 16 backlight zones
• 16×2³ = 128 backlight zones
• 16×3³ = 432 backlight zones
• 16×4³ = 1024 backlight zones

This is a slightly different principle of designating the number of blackout zones.
In these designations works just marketing, if you specify in the technical specifications TV has 128 zones of dimming, sounds trivial, but the TV has Direct Full Array 16x technology sounds more respectable. So there may be other variations, Direct Full Array 12x and so on don’t pay much attention to it.