Driverless Touchscreen LCDs

Planar just published an ebook - Going Driverless: How HID Compliant Touchscreen LCDs can help when depoying large scale POS and POI installations. Some people don't realize how long it can take to load a driver onto their computer to run a touchscreen LCD; imagine doing it for 50 or more units! So what if you didn't have to load a driver just for basic touchscreen operation? Think how fast the installation would go! Check out the entire ebook at PlanarTouch.com and also the HID Compliant resistive and capacitive products in the Planar portfolio.

Turn your skin into a touchscreen!

This goes beyond Minority Report! Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University and Microsoft's Redmond research lab are investigating how to turn your body into both a touchscreen "display" and input device using an arm band with a pico projector embedded inside. Blogger Barb Dybwad asks if people are interested in turning their bodies into touchscreens. I think it'd be interesting for demonstration purposes, but I wouldn't be interested in everyday living. What do you think?

Optical Bonding Facility Meets Growing Demand

Have you searched for a vendor to help with your optical bonding display requirements? Planar's optical bonding lab is fully functional and able to assist with all of your optical bonding projects. And, we've created an optical bonding vendor checklist to make your selection easier.

It's important to choose an optical bonding vendor that can provide comprehensive quality and engineering systems and has processes in place to certify their work. Planar's state-of-the-art optical bonding facility is a Class 10,000 certified cleanroom and has ISO 9001, MIL-Spec and FDA level quality systems in place.

Why do you care about optical bonding? Well, because it provides protection, clarity and viewability, improves resistance to shake and shock and fills the gap between the protective glass and LCD to keep out dust and moisture. And, you can learn lots more about the benefits of optical bonding in Planar's Optical Bonding FAQ.

Are you wondering what display applications would benefit from optical bonding? Displays used in avionics, digital signage, vehicle navigation, outdoor television, and hand carried electronic devices can generally benefit from better readability than is representative of the standard TFT offerings. In ambient light conditions, improved display contrast enables displays to be more readily seen without increasing backlight brightness and the associated unwanted higher power and higher operating temperatures.

Let Planar guide you through your optical bonding requirements and let us know what other performance films and coatings would be useful to your display project.

http://www.planarembedded.com/custom-lcd/optical-bonding/

Planar Announces LED-Illuminated Video Wall Displays

Planar has announced its Clarity™ LED Series rear-projection video wall displays, ideal for control room video walls that require 24/7 reliability & brilliant life-like images. The Clarity LED Series features superior video wall performance with a maintenance-free illumination system, up to eight times the life of traditional lamps.

Learn more about the Clarity LED Series & Planar video walls at:
http://www.planarcontrolroom.com/video-wall-displays/clarity-led-series

Active vs. Passive 3D glasses

Planar 3D Monitors utilise passive 3D glasses whereas the Avatar 3D movie experience depends on active shutter glasses. What does that mean? Went to see the Avatar 3D finally and got this question from my friend. So, here's the explanation:

The structure of the glasses is different. The passive glasses are polarized. Planar’s glasses have linear polarization, which is different in each lens by 90 degrees, for example, so that one lens has horizontal and the other vertical polarization. In the case of Planar’s 3D monitors, the StereoMirror technology is utilised to show two different pictures from two different displays so, that each eye gets a different image – simultaneously. Difference here compared to the Avatar 3D experience with the active glasses is, that there is no flicker: in Avatar your eyes are basically getting an image alternating in left- and right-eye. This can give a slight feeling of dizziness and the view seems darker as one eye only sees at any one time. When going to see Avatar 3D, I noticed slight feeling of disorientation during the commercials but it vanished after the eyes adjusted to the shutter glasses.

One main difference is, that active shutter glasses require power of some sort, whereas passive glasses don’t. This adds to the design: active shutter glasses look bulky whereas passive glasses can be light almost like the smallest of sunglasses. This is why they also easily ”vanish” at exhibitions where we’ve demoed the Planar 3D monitors: people mistake them for sunglasses. Well, now you know: they are not (so please return them, when you next see us at the show!).

The most memorable difference for me as the user - at least in the case of Planar’s passive 3D glasses versus active or so-called shutter glasses used to view the 3D version of the film Avatar - was the pain on the nose! Yes, for me at least, the active 3D glasses proved heavy and hard on the nose. Had to sit with my index finger stuck between the glasses and my nose for some part of the film... The passive glasses are nice and light in comparison!

Oh, and have a look at the latest in 3D displays: Flyfire - no need for the glasses NOR the display itself! Wonder when they start making movies with THIS solution...?