Panasonic was starting to hear about the ever-increasing need for customers, particularly small and medium-sized businesses, needing and wanting larger screens for their conference rooms, meeting rooms and digital signage platforms.
So, they did what they always try to do when they see a gap in the marketplace: they created a product to plug that gap. In this case, the product is actually two products: the EF1 Series, with 75- and 84-inch sizes, and Panasonic will show the screens at InfoComm 2016 (booth C6308) and start shipping them in August or September.
The EF1 series screens include built-in USB media players and IPS panels, says Rudy Vitti, senior product manager at Panasonic.
The company will also show selections from its AF1 series, a set of rugged digital signage displays that can stay on 24 hours a day, seven days a week without any ill effects to the quality of the images on the screen. A built-in Android operating system works with multiple content providers, says Vitti, who notes Panasonic is looking to add other platforms to help with collaboration efforts.
Visitors to Panasonic’s InfoComm booth will also see the BF1 series of enhanced interactive displays, which simplify the way users interact with the screens. This series is primarily targeted for the K-12 education market, says Vitti, but has other applications as well.
With color universal design, the BF1 series allows teachers or the students themselves change the color palate of tools to help those with some level of color-blindness more easily distinguish those tools for themselves, he says.
Panasonic has also made enhancements to its video wall lineup, launching the VF1 series with 1.8mm bezels, down from about 3.5mm in its previous offerings. These panels are equipped with Digital Link, which allows integrators to daisy-chain the screens with a Cat-5 cable, says Vitti, and a fail-over function that allows integrators or end-users to switch to backup inputs on all screens when one goes out. They’re also equipped with a built-in USB playback function.
Finally, Panasonic is showing its Light ID transmission for the first time in the U.S. at InfoComm 2016. This technology helps the display put out a light frequency to a mobile device or another display that can tailor content to that second device, says Vitti. It’s similar to beacon technology, but without the actual beacon, he says.
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