Custom Audio/Video installer here. (Well, I was for 10 months. School starts Monday so I just had to quit). I've installed a few systems from Planar that are more-or-less border-less (2x2 arrays and several digital mosaics). They make them, they just aren't very common. There are difficulties involved in making sure there is no pressure around the LCD screens as well when they have no border. We generally keep to the 1/32" rule when we install them super close.
Installation of these systems is a much more involved process than many would realize. The mounting systems are tricky even for a static wall placement, much less some kind of mounting system that is conducive to gaming/desk work.
EDIT: I've worked with anything from 20" 1:1 aspect ratio screens to 56" panels in arrays. I've also installed arrays with IR sensor borders that instantly turn the array into a touch screen.
Here's another example of a stylized mosaic that we recently installed at a university.
I'm not sure why, but they wanted it like this. I will admit that it turned out working much better than I expected. If you play a video with a car driving across, it all lines up and your brain kinda fills in the missing parts. We used an excel spreadsheet at very high resolution and different color/number cells to line everything up once we installed it on the wall.
there's always an annoying border that breaks continuity, I've seen many video walls out there, why not make a borderless LCD screen? it doesn't have to be all four borders, maybe just the lateral ones. I'm sure the market would definitely go for it.
I'm a programmer of a video wall software (that will remain nameless) and have thus worked with many video walls and helped out at installations. The biggest problem I've seen with the borderless LCDs is like you said, any sort of bang, knock, or pressure can damage what is a very expensive screen to begin with. On a project that was 3x9 55" screens (two storeys tall) they had to swap out 9 screens before they were all working correctly.
Former display scientist here.
Ok so a modern LCD is a series of layers, a cover plate, several layers of polarizers and DBEF films, the LCD proper, more polarizers and films, then the light source.
Holding the whole thing on the sides prevents stressing the LCD. If you lack a bezel you need to put the stress on the LCD and films which overtime will cause the entire thing to die as the pixels go. Not to mention that the LCD panel generally has the electronics on the edge of the panel because those layers make it so only the sides are accessible.
There's various schemes out there to make an overlap. But generallly its moving everything to the top and bottom bezels.
Truly bezeless monitors require putting the inputs to the LCD drivers in the optical layers and would degrade performance. We can make the Bezel's really small, but we can't get rid of them with LCD's.
Emissive displays like OLEDs can in theory eliminate them, but they've got other issues.
It'd be nice, but as a relatively new dual monitor owner, really the only time it seems like much of an issue is when I'm looking at my dual monitor wallpaper, which is a small fraction of the time I use my computer.
If there are any games that support dual monitor use, borderless monitors would be almost required unless you have three monitors, depending on the type of game, but I haven't yet encountered a game which can be displayed on both monitors simultaneously.
Also have duals at my software development job; there the borders don't hinder/bother me in the slightest.
Former dual monitor user for a long time, but no longer desktop owner here. There's a setting somewhere where you can basically make windows treat them like one big monitor. Taskbar spans entire desktop, maximize maximizes across both etc. This makes any game run dual monitors. Good for some RTS, likes sins lf a solar empire (not StarCraft though, need to see the whole screen at once fire that), terrible for any FPS.
I don't remember where that setting was, I think it was in nvidia control panel (had an nbidia card). It was annoying most of the time though, because usually I had one app maximized on one screen and internet and command line on the one with the start menu
Everyone who doesn't actually work in the display industry needs to stop trying to comment on why they don't make these.
Bezels are used for many purposes. One is protection (glass edges are very fragile). The rest are due to how these panels are made. They're manufactured on glass sheets more than 2 meters on each side. Each display is cut out of these sheets. All routing wires, bond areas, occasionally thin film circuitry, etc. need to be placed on these glass panels around the display area itself.
The primary reason LCD monitors need bezels (borders) is: LCD panels consist of more than a single layer of material. They are not glued together for obvious reasons. Without the bezel (the border), there would be nothing holding these multiple layers in place.
They also have a bezel so:
- You can carry and move the LCD screen without putting finger prints all over the place
- LCD panels are made of a glass-like material. For transportation purposes, more packaging (and special handling) would be needed to protect the edges as even a tiny chip would cause a problem. This all adds to cost for a monitor that only a small niche market would be willing to pay for
- Touch Screen Digitizer For TomTom tom one xl Canada 310 4.3-inch Ecran Tactile
This means that at the edge of the light emitting part of the display, you need area on the glass for: circuitry, wiring, gluing, and cutting. That adds up. They're very, very, very good at it, and only getting better, but with current tech you're still looking at at least a 1 to 2 mm frame around your emitting area where you can't place a pixel (and more on at least one side for bonding a flex PCB). There are research ideas and patents on ways around this, but they're still in R&D at the big display companies.
So a bezel is there for structural and packaging reasons, but also because there's a necessary region of dead glass around every single display that they want to cover up. Trust me, as soon as a company can solve these issues, you'll see bezel-less displays on the market immediately.
Source: someone who actually works in making display backplanes and attends the top conferences.
