Backlighting is a fairly important element of television displays. TV manufacturers often create their own names for the types of backlighting used in their TVs, although in practice there are only two main types of backlighting.
In the first type, the backlight LEDs are placed around the edges of the display. In this case, backlight control is limited, and only large areas of the screen can be dimmed, usually no more than eight zones.
In the second type, the backlight LEDs are placed behind the screen across the entire display area. Lenses are used to distribute the light evenly. In standard displays, there may be only a few dozen LEDs, while Mini LED displays use much smaller LEDs, allowing several hundred LEDs to be installed. Because of this, the backlight can be divided into multiple zones, with each zone controlled separately.
In 2019, Samsung began specifying the backlighting type in some TV models as Direct Full Array 8×3 or Direct Full Array 16×3. The term Direct Full Array means that the LEDs are located behind the entire screen, but many users wondered what the additional 8×3 or 16×3 designations meant.
In reality, Direct Full Array is no different from the previously used Samsung Full Array Backlight designation. It is mainly a marketing name introduced by Samsung. Since there are very few major changes in modern TVs, companies often reuse existing technologies under new commercial names to attract attention and stimulate sales. Manufacturers also regularly register new marketing terms for technologies that already existed before.
Direct Full Array
In the Direct Full Array 8X parameter, the following characteristics are included: the number of backlight zones that can be controlled. This value is displayed not as a direct number, but as a formula. In this way, Samsung can patent a new commercial name.
The designation can be explained as follows:
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, which is related to control and binding to the number of bits (8).
If you follow the logic of this formula, Samsung TVs contain no more than 512 dimming zones. Since 8×5³ = 1000, there should already be 1024 zones for control.
Direct Full Array 16×3
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. перепиши красиво
