With each iteration of the NEC Solutions Showcase the company raises the bar on both the venue and the content. The choice of venue for the fifth Showcase was the best yet, with the former retails units of Tobacco Dock providing the perfect environment for presenting display technology.
The trials of the retail sector are perfectly exemplified by Tobacco Dock. Carried along by the ‘loadsamoney’ culture of the 1980s, the Grade 1 listed property was converted to shop units. This was before the Docklands development was fully realised and as a former habitué of the Square Mile in the late 1980s / early 1990s your reporter can give personal testimony to the effect that the Dock was just that bit too far in the ‘lunch is for wimps’ era.
But retail’s loss is technology’s gain. While there is an obvious irony in a closed down shopping mall being used for the display of retail technology, it demonstrates that retail is a very different space today. NEC Display Solutions, with more than 50 hardware and software partners, demonstrated integrated solutions, ranging from retail to medical, in eleven interactive zones dedicated to eight different vertical sectors.
Many of the individual products on show had been seen at ISE or Digital Signage Expo, but the Showcase is one of those very rare opportunities to get hands-on with solutions integrated around specific applications. Simon Jackson VP, NEC Display Solutions commented before the event: “This year, we have added technology briefings, live demonstrations and a live Q&A forum to encourage more dialogue and provide a greater experience.”
Videowall technology was prominent throughout the event. The PSCo Innovation Videowall package incorporated a 16 screen videowall using 55” (X551UN), 46” (X463UN), 40” (P401), 29” (EA294WMi) and 23” (EX231W) NEC LCD displays, in both portrait and landscape orientation. These were mounted onto Unicol brackets. Content was driven by one PC at Quad HD resolution by Dual Link DVI plus four Datapath display wall controllers and a Datapath dL8 Quad HD distribution amplifier. The solution demonstrated the potential for videowalls to visually excite and inspire audience attention in experiential campaigns and events, as well as retail, corporate communication, education, leisure applications and more.
Innovations
One of the highlights of the event was the demonstration of NEC’s new D-cinema laser projector in the subterranean level of Tobacco Dock. The new projector was hooked up to a 4k workflow, in which a live dance performance was captured on video, edited, exported and displayed on videowalls and the laser projector at Ultra HD resolution.
Also new were DisplayLite’s zero bezel large format multi touch displays. The zero bezel range is based on NEC’s X series of LED full HD backlit displays. Available in screen sizes up to 84 inches, DisplayLite is offering to brand screens with logos to produce them in specific colours “quickly and at very low cost”. The first three products in the range are available now in screen sizes of 40, 46 and 55 inches can be table or wall mounted, and supports up to 10 simultaneous touch points allowing users to collaborate as standard. The touch screen controller can also be enabled by DisplayLite during manufacture to support up to 40 simultaneous touches.
Zero Bezel is fully compliant with Windows 8 and responds to two digit scrolling flicks, pinch zoom and other complex gestures, as well as edge swipes that require a high level of edge detection to reveal the Windows 8 charms and open apps bars. Swipes in from the edges of the screen are particularly difficult to implement with bezel touch displays as traditionally the edges of the screen are where touch sensitivity and accuracy drops off.
Aside from display hardware, Omnivision chose the Showcase for the official launch of its Indoor Way Finding Software. Omnitapps Indoor Way Finding enable customers to create their own way finding solution by importing a high resolution floor plan and a CSV or Excel database. The solution offers a lot of features to personalise the software and adapt it to customer needs. The software is customisable with logos, colours, text and button shapes. Customers can configure unlimited facilities, use other language keyboards and offer advertising opportunities Omnitapps Indoor Way Finding Software runs on Windows 7 and Windows 8. It is optimised for large touch screens with a resolution from 1920×1080.
In the zones
Other retail oriented solutions on show included both those that improve the consumer’s experience and those which generate data that enables the retailer to improve operational effectiveness. The AV News’ video of the Solutions Showcase shows your reporter checking out a basketball shirt in front of a mirror. The shirt is tagged with an RFID chip programmed to suggest other products that the customer can buy with the shirt, like a baseball cap.
In another demonstration in the Innovation Zone of the Showcase a solution designed to capture data from visitors passing a camera fitted to a display was interesting but clearly needs more wake. It consistently underreported the ages of the female members of our party and overstated the ages of the men – in my case by 15 years.
In the Corporate Zone, Smart showed a properly configured installation of the vendor’s implementation of the Microsoft Lync Room System. We first saw this at UC Expo in March when the first system had been in the UK a matter of hours. At the time we expressed reservations about the camera position and the resulting image in the collaboration workspace. Showcase visitors to the SMART stand in saw a much-improved result and could see how Steljes’ collaboration solutions provide interactive endpoints that make voice, data and video conferencing easier, more engaging and more effective.
With other Showcase Zones including Education, Media and Broadcast the above represents a small selection of what was on show. For a fuller account see the June 2013 issue of AV News and the video of the event produced by the AV News’ video news team.
