Planar Launches LookThru OLED Transparent Display

New product, which will be shown at InfoComm Connections in New York, has applications in retail, museums, hotels, corporate offices and more.

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Touting the product as allowing “never-before-possible applications in digital signage,” Planar has debuted the LookThru OLED transparent display, which company officials say “creates a new category for see-through displays” by “achieving the vision of futurists and science fiction filmmakers who have predicted a world filled with clear displays that present video content.”

Planar’s LookThru OLED adds to the company’s 17-year history of transparent displays and marks “a great way for us to continue to innovate,” says Jennifer Davis, VP of marketing and product strategy. The 55-inch display can be mounted against the wall or to the ceiling and comes in touch or no-touch options, with a base price of $14,995.

The Planar LookThru OLED transparent display allows users to view video content, digital images and text on a virtually frameless glass display while enabling designers to overlay this content onto real objects or scenes that sit behind the glass.

The emissive display means there’s no backlighting required and the LookThru OLED comes with HDMI or display ports, says Davis. She expects it to be particular popular for advertising, retail opportunities and museums, where users can combine physical artifacts with scenes. It also could be used in hotels, corporate offices and myriad other applications.

The LookThru OLED is a full HD display and can be paired with Planar’s content creators’ guide to help them realize all the things the new product can do. Planar is taking pre-orders now on the LookThru and will begin mass production in February.

“It opens up a lot of possibilities,” says Davis. “The main thing is we want people to see the product and pique their interest. It’s important to demystify it and have people realize it acts just like a monitor. Once people understand how it works, they’ll be off and running.”

Check out how it looks in action:

Planar LookThru OLED Transparent Display from Planar Systems on Vimeo.

Here’s more on Planar’s LookThru OLED display:

The large, 55-inch Planar LookThru OLED transparent display is self-emissive and offers brilliant picture quality, exceptional contrast and wide viewing angles. When paired with a Planar image processing solution, the display can be tiled to create large, impactful video wall installations. The new display is ideal for a broad range of applications including retail, corporate and museum settings. It can be integrated into any environment in which glass is used including room dividers, conference rooms, counters, museum exhibits, retail fixtures and ticket booths.

“The advancements in flat panel displays have allowed us to bring in digital content as active architectural surfaces in the environments we design,” said Alan Robles, associate and experience designer in the Retail Studio with the global architectural firm Gensler. “Transparent OLED represents the opportunity to further extend those interactive surfaces into more enveloping interactions where we can put our user in the midst of the content, and the content becomes a transparent layer of their experience. This technology could revolutionize the retail environment by taking traditional components such as fitting rooms and product interaction displays to their next evolution.”

The Planar LookThru OLED transparent display offers the following benefits:

• Truly see-through installations: Unlike projection films and other competitive display offerings, the Planar LookThru OLED is a self-emitting display that requires no backlight or box behind the display, making it possible to create truly see-through installations. It offers virtually frameless screen with 45 percent light transmissivity, creating clear, unobstructed views of objects, scenes or other digital screens behind the transparent display.

• Flexible design options: The Planar LookThru OLED transparent display is available in two mechanical configurations – a model for table-top or ceiling-mounted installations as well as a model for flush-mounted installations. It can be used in both portrait and landscape mode and can be tiled to create large, eye-catching video wall arrays.

Touch interactivity: The Planar LookThru OLED is available with optional touch screen interactivity offering 32 simultaneous touch points. Both models are available with optional touch technology and use the latest touch sensors tested and proven to perform in today’s most demanding environments.

• Brilliant picture quality in a large viewing size: The Planar LookThru OLED transparent display measures 55 inches diagonally and offers bright, vibrant colors greater than 100 percent National Television System Committee (NTSC) performance as well as wide viewing angles with no off-axis contrast or brightness limitations. The display provides Full HD resolution that allows for beautiful graphics and full-motion video.

• High durability: The Planar LookThru OLED transparent display features proprietary Planar® Extended Ruggedness and Optics (ERO) technology, which uses a damage-resistant optically clear Corning Gorilla Glass bonded to the front surface of the display. This high-durability surface can withstand the rigors of high-traffic environments and interactive touch. The combination of Planar ERO technology and Corning Gorilla Glass improves perceived contrast by more than 300 percent when compared to traditional large format cover glass, making the display more readable and impactful even in bright public venues. 

• Source compatibility: The Planar LookThru OLED display comes with standard digital inputs including HDMI and DisplayPort, is fully controllable using RS-232, LAN, Crestron and other control systems, and is compatible with sources ranging from PCs and players to consumer video devices that rely on High-bandwidth Digital Content Protection (HDCP) compliance. The display is compatible with processing solutions from Planar including the Clarity Visual Control Station (VCS) for tiling applications or advanced source management.

Planar Systems will showcase the Planar LookThru OLED transparent display at Xlab 2015 on November 5-6 and InfoComm Connections New York on November 11-12.

Click here for more information about the Planar LookThru OLED display.

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