August 11, 2011

The Interior Design Continuing Education Council (IDCEC)* has certified the Planar course “Designing Media Walls: Imagery, Video and Information on Digital Canvases.” Now, members of the IDCEC will receive continuing education credit for completing the free, one-hour course. Interior design is increasingly colliding with technological innovation. So, Planar has developed free continuing education courses geared specifically for designers on how to integrate highly functional media-display walls into well designed spaces.

Long gone are the days when integrating technology into your home or office meant giving up on aesthetics. The beige boxes and giant tubes that plagued earlier generations have been supplanted. Now sleek, stylish flat-panel displays are tied to powerful hardware that’s tucked away out of sight. But since this is a relatively new development, designers need to learn how to apply the tools of this brave new world.

In this course, Jennifer Davis of Planar explains the basics of video wall technology and provides a guide to the myriad specifications and components that designers need to know. Then the fun begins; the wide range of design considerations and options are discussed against the backdrop of real-world case studies. Cap it all off with an overview of the current trends in video walls, and any interior designer will find themselves well prepared to meld stunning technology with attractive design.

Planar understands that design isn’t about hammering together disparate elements; that approach is closer to Dr. Frankenstein’s work. Rather, true design, is a blending of form and function into a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts. Join us in learning about how to blend those parts with our continuing education classes.

*IDCEC continuing education units are accepted by the American Society of Interior Designers, the Interior Designers of Canada and the International Interior Design Association.

June 17, 2011

In balmy Orlando, the InfoComm audio-visual conference has now wrapped up. All of the top names in digital signage were on hand to show off exciting new technology. One of the big trends this year was the multi-panel video wall system. According to Christine Persaud, writing for the Market News:

“At InfoComm 2011 the second clear trend on the commercial end is video walls; whereby a series of flat panel TVs are daisy-chained to display a single image, or series of images that work together through a centrally controlled network. These can range from single 2 x 2 or 3 x 3 designs, to an infinite number of panels to take up a wall in a stadium, for example. We already see the trend toward video walls at shows like CES and CEDIA. But it’s the commercial sector that will really realize its growth potential.”

Planar is well ahead of the game when it comes to video wall technology. The Clarity Matrix video walls are powered by remote, rack-mounted video processing units and power supplies. Simply, the noise and heat of the video wall aren’t on the wall.

With the new Clarity Matrix 55 inch panels, the video walls are enormous and lovely. Each panel is full 1920-by-1080 high definition, so a relatively small 2-by-2 video wall has a stunning 7680-by-4320 pixels of resolution. The minuscule gap of 5.7 millimeters between panels means that there are only 9 pixels worth of space separating the images on each panel.

A great example of the Clarity Matrix at work in a design environment could be seen at the Berlin Happens Exhibition earlier in May at the Relative Space showroom in New York City. The Clarity Matrix LCD video wall displayed the creative work of award-winning German architect, Juergen Mayer H, recipient of the Audi Urban Future Award 2010, and Relative Space principal Tyler Greenberg.

The Clarity Matrix display isn’t only large and beautiful, but it’s also tough and functional. The Extended Ruggedness Optics (ERO) surface protects the screens from damage so they can be installed in high-traffic areas.

Touch screen interfacing (provided by SMART Technologies) transforms a passive video wall into an interactive presentation center, direction kiosk or command center, with multi-touch capabilities.