NOVASTAR TU40 Pro | Player LED 4K Android | 13 Millions de Pixels

The NOVASTAR TU40 Pro is a playback and control processor from the Taurus family. It brings together in a single unit three functions that normally need three separate boxes: standalone content playback, video processing, and sending to the LED wall's receiving cards. There is no computer left in the chain.

Capacity is 13 million pixels across 20 Gigabit Ethernet ports, plus 2 optical 10G ports for long runs between control room and wall. On the source side, two HDMI 2.0 inputs and one HDMI 1.3 with loop-through accept up to 4096 × 2160, for an output resolution reaching 16,384 × 8,192.

What sets the TU40 Pro apart is its embedded Android system: it plays on schedule, on its own, with no machine permanently attached. It also accepts wireless screen mirroring from Windows, macOS, iOS and Android — walk into the room, cast, no cable and no adapter.

Distributed by PIXELIGHT, B2B wholesaler of LED displays and Novastar controllers, with stock held in France, controller configuration for your panel fleet and technical support in French.

13 million pixels: what that actually means

The 13 million pixels are spread across 20 Gigabit ports, which is 650,000 pixels per port. That per-port budget, not the headline total, is what determines how the wall is divided up. A 500 × 500 mm panel at 2.6 mm pitch carries roughly 37,000 pixels, so one port takes seventeen of them, and the layout is built from there.

This capacity is quoted at 8 bits and 60 Hz. Raising colour depth or frame rate reduces it proportionally, because what saturates is the data rate: expect about a fifth less at 10 bits, a third at 12 bits, and half at 120 Hz. A wall sized tightly at 8 bits cannot later switch to 10-bit HDR without losing drivable surface.

Why embedded Android changes how the wall is run

A conventional controller needs a source: a computer, a player, a control room. Something has to stay powered and connected. The TU40 Pro carries its own system — content is loaded, scheduled and played by the unit itself. Across a multi-site estate, that removes one machine per site to maintain, update and troubleshoot remotely.

Wireless mirroring answers a different need: the meeting room, the showroom, the sales floor. Someone walks in with a laptop or a phone and is on screen in seconds, with no cable, no adapter and no admin rights. On that kind of installation it is often this, rather than pixel capacity, that decides the purchase.

The two 10G optical ports

Copper RJ45 tops out around a hundred metres. Beyond that you need repeater points, which means more boxes and more points of failure. The two 10G optical links remove that constraint: the control room can sit at the far end of the building, with total immunity to electromagnetic interference and fewer cables pulled. In a venue, a stadium or on a facade, this is what makes the project cablable at all.

Standalone player or control-room PC?

The TU40 Pro plays its content on its own, with no computer in the loop: that is the whole point of an asynchronous player. As soon as live layers, NDI sources, a capture card or timecode locking are needed, playback moves back onto a control-room PC running Kompass FX3 Pro. The two approaches are not rivals: they answer two different operating regimes.

Typical applications

• Meeting room, showroom and retail space, where wireless casting from a laptop is the real requirement

• Multi-site estate managed remotely, with no dedicated computer on each site

• Reception or lobby LED wall playing on schedule, unattended

• Installation where the control room is far from the wall and an optical link is required

The TU40 Pro sits above the TU20 Pro (3.9 million pixels) and the TU15 Pro (2.6 million) in the same family, for surfaces those two cannot cover.

Installation notes

• Wire all 20 ports in shielded Cat6a. Beyond a hundred metres, move to the two 10G optical links rather than adding a repeater point.

• Decide colour depth and frame rate BEFORE freezing the layout: going from 8 to 10 bits afterwards costs a fifth of the drivable surface.

• In standalone playback, schedule standby windows — the first lever on both power draw and panel life.

• Wireless mirroring assumes a controlled network. Plan a dedicated display SSID, separate from the guest network, or playback quality will track the venue's Wi-Fi load.

• Across an estate, keep one identically configured spare unit: a failed controller takes down the whole wall, not a section of it.