In the summer of 2021 the technology world attached itself to a single word. By the time Facebook renamed itself, 5G, VR, cloud computing, ultra-high definition and artificial intelligence had all been pulled into the same orbit, and every combination of the metaverse with tourism, finance, education and agriculture was being announced.
The Spring Festival Gala had been broadcasting for forty years by then, and it has always been where new stage technology appears first. For 2022, the Year of the Tiger, the production built a 720-degree dome out of LED for the first time, wrapping the audience into the stage.
The Nearest Sentinel
At eight in the evening on 31 January 2022 the gala went out as scheduled. Two thousand kilometres away, in a factory building in Dongguan, an identical LED display was running its 72-hour continuous burn-in. The screen that was on stage in Beijing had been designed, built, inspected and packed in that building 150 days earlier.
AET supplied more than 2,000 m² of LED display for the 2022 gala, its third consecutive year as main screen supplier. The main screen alone was the largest in the history of the show.
“The task was heavy,” said general manager Zhao Chunlei. “We pulled together a dedicated team and went through design, tooling and manufacturing with repeated testing and re-verification until it was done.”
From the Edge to the Centre
The relationship with CCTV predates the gala. In 2018 the broadcaster assessed a number of LED companies on technical capability, product quality, production and delivery, and service, and selected AET to take responsibility for the gala main screen. The appointments that followed ran from the edge of the production to its centre.
“The 2020 gala was CCTV’s first 8K Spring Festival Gala, and we designed and built 330 m² of LED for the main venue,” Zhao said. “The stage demands are high, the schedule is tight, the responsibility is large. Through four and a half hours of live broadcast we are the sentinel closest to the stage — the colleagues on site did not move from their positions for the whole show.”
“We delivered it without a single failure, and we did that three years running. That is what the team is proudest of.”
Built to Change the Industry
The pattern is consistent: each gala raised the bar, and the company grew into it. “AET can stay focused,” Zhao said. “Many companies start expanding as soon as they have a result. We would rather finish the product we have than rush into more of them.” He describes the ambition as becoming the extreme innovator in fine-pitch display, and the objective as changing the industry rather than joining it.
Deputy general manager Liang Wenji, who chairs the company’s academician workstation, has more than forty years in the LED industry. Under him the workstation works on Micro LED materials and devices, and the company argues that new materials reach its production two to three months ahead of the rest of the sector.
AET has built a research laboratory of nearly 4,000 m² and works with Peking University, Tsinghua University and institutions in France on next-generation emitting devices.
The Second Mountain
In 2022 the company set out what it calls a second start-up, under the slogan of a new long march. The name is not decoration: AET is the Altai range, which means golden mountain in Mongolian, runs for two thousand kilometres, and marks where China meets Kazakhstan, Russia and Mongolia. A mountain is the image the company uses for itself — stable, durable, unimpressed by fashion.
The assignment list behind that idea is long: 5G 4K transmission testing at a gala satellite venue, 5G plus 8K ultra-high definition, the World Military Games, the centenary programme, the 315 gala, the Lantern Festival gala and the 2022 Winter Olympics, alongside three consecutive Spring Festival Gala main screens.
Running alongside the broadcast work are the standardised Mini and Micro LED architecture, gallium nitride red emission and LED cinema screens — the technology base under the solutions business.
The sales and service network now covers branches or subsidiaries in Beijing, Nanjing, Wuhan, Chengdu, Xian and Hong Kong, distribution across more than 400 cities in 34 provincial-level regions, and marketing teams in more than 90 countries and regions including North America, Western Europe, Russia, India and Korea.
Broadcast and Stage Projects
Contact AET about main screens, XR studios and rental systems for broadcast or live events.
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