Smartphone-Style Touch Sensing On an 82-Inch Screen

An anonymous reader writes "Those giant touch screens used by CNN anchors look slick, but have to be several feet thick to make room for the cameras that track the touches. Perceptive Pixel, which makes the screens, has now figured out a way to use capacitive touch (like on an iPhone or tablet screen) at a larger scale, and says giant touch panels with 82-inch screens but just six inches deep will appeal to many businesses."

I'm sure they'll be in huge demand.

[blankinthefill]

I'm sure they'll be in huge demand. At least, they'll be in demand till Apple hears about the 'iPhone-Style' touch and sues them out of existence!

Re:

[GNUman]

Well, the corners are not rounded out, so Apple won't be able to get the same deal in Europe.

Re:

[Dr Max]

I wouldn't put it past apple to try and stop it; but the $4000 microsoft surface is about the same thickness, does the same job and been out for a while, although its not 82 inchs.

Re:

[wjsteele]

...although its not 82 inchs

Microsoft's Surface uses a technology called PixelSense, which can scale to any sized device simply because each pixel also contains an infrared sensor.

Bill

Re:

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

At least, they'll be in demand till Apple hears about the 'iPhone-Style' touch and sues them out of existence!

As you lot are so fond of pointing out, "putting the word 'mobile' on it makes it a brand new patent!" So, no, this product is safe. Please stay consistent.

Perceptive Pixel

[intellitech]

For anybody who doesn't recognize the company name, they're the same guys behind this old footage:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ysEVYwa-vHM [youtube.com]

They're not slick, poo bear

[7-Vodka]

Those giant touch screens used by CNN anchors look slick

No, they really don't. Can we please go back to when professional artists made the graphics and let the mouthwhores go back to reading their teleprompter rather than faffing around with a big screen.

Re:They're not slick, poo bear

[Solandri]

During the nuclear crisis in Japan, watching NHK coverage was a treat. I had expected the Japanese to be well ahead of the U.S. in fancy computer graphics during news broadcasts. Instead, they had a hand-made 3D model of the nuclear plant, giant posters for various charts, and the weather reports used cardboard cutouts drawings of clouds, sun, rain, etc. which the weather lady stuck to a cloth map with velcro. Very quaint, and for the most part just as effective as the CGI stuff.

Um

[symbolset]

Shuttle hits Warp 2 [wisc.edu] Graphics might come out of my butt [copydesk.org] Definitely not gay [minutest.com] Team Name Team Name [gawker.com].

(NSFW) The weather penis is actually an entire category: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=djItGln6IxY [youtube.com]

Yeah, let's stick with professionals. For the lulz.

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[nedlohs]

Yeah that and regurgitating twitter messages (because I really want to here what idiots on the internet are saying about world events rather than maybe an expert or two) are my pet hates of the current news fads.

Seriously, they can't afford an intern to press buttons off camera and control the damn screen instead of wasting airtime with the a presenter dragging windows around a screen...

Holy form factor, Batman!

[Rik Rohl]

How the hell are you supposed to fit something that big in your pocket? ;-)

Re:

[davester666]

Well, it does fold in half.

Re:

[Lieutenant_Dan]

Well, it does fold in half.

FIVE times.

Re:

[CastrTroy]

If it doesn't fold in half at least 8 times, I don't want it.

Re:

[suutar]

13 or no deal!

Can't call it "table" mounted on a wall

[symbolset]

So how about "surface"?

No, really, there are a number of ways to solve this problem.

There exists a musical instrument, a theremin, that alters tone based on 3-dimensional proximity. A pair or triplet of them should give a nice no-touch input in 3d space with appropriate digitization and calibration without the lag of the 3-d camera approach.

Resolution is lacking

[Solandri]

It's a 1920x1080 HDTV [perceptivepixel.com] with touchscreen capability. That resolution is fine for viewing from 10-15 feet away, or if you're broadcasting it on TV. But if you're right in front of the screen touching it, it works out to an underwhelming 27 DPI. The pixels are nearly 1 mm square. I'm not sure this will work as the whiteboard replacement they're envisioning.

Why not?

[Sycraft-fu]

While the presenter is near the pixles, the viewers are not so it works out fine. Please remember that existing digital whiteboard tech like Smart boards make use of normal DLP projectors, and so are often 1024x768. It is fine up close. Yes you can see the pixels but you can still see what you are doing.

Also I would presume they wanted to bring it to the market for a price people might actually buy. 4k displays are retardedly expensive, like $50,000-$100,000, and I'm not even aware of any in the 80" range.

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[Grizzley9]

Our last Marriot hotel we stayed at had a large touch screen tv in the lobby, I'm guessing it was 47 or 52. It had a nice overlay of weather, news, local events etc that you could all interact with as you'd expect. Some of the big network morning shows use this as well. I'm not seeing what the big deal is here, is it b/c of it's size? Doesn't MS's Surface scale to just about any size? True, once you get too big your resolution is lacking if you are standing too close.

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[Yamioni]

Shit. I totally would have bought one to play games on.

great- and we just got them smart boards...

[TWX]

More tech that some teachers will think they need in the classroom now that it's mass producable. Mind you, they use the current smartboard as a screen only or just to let the kids amuse themselves after the lesson has concluded, and the document camera serves only as a replacement for the transparency and overhead projector. Let's take an already overpriced, underused setup at ~$300/2000hr bulb and instead install a setup that's probably many times that, so little Skyler can virtual-fingerpaint at the front of the class instead of using chalk on a board or dry-erase markers.

Some teacher is writing a grant proposal right now, mark my words...

HUH? Whats new here?

[maxwells_deamon]

The article seems to think that anything more than about the size of an ipad has to be inches thick. The computer I am using at the moment is about 3 inches thick and that includes the CPU/disk/memory. It is a 23 inch HP touchsmart. It has two finger multi-touch and some Microsoft surface apps running on it.

What am I missing? I can not think of a reason you would need more than at most 4 contact points unless you wanted to finger paint. I rarely use more than one finger at a time and in most cases just

Re:

[Overzeetop]

Instead of increasing their display tech to use lower power and have less noise, they've thrown money at the challenge of filtering out the excessive electrical noise to sniff the low level capacitive signals. IMHO they have missed something.

In the process, they've lost the entire large format graphics industry. I would like to have about a 64(+/-) inch display which has both finger and stylus input - though admittedly at 72-125ppi. Why? Architectural drawings. The largest practical paper set is 30x42", wh

Already in use

[JimDabell]

Just this Monday we were filming for a TV programme and we used these guys [touch2view.com] to demo an iPad app on a giant touchscreen. It's still early days for the technology, but it works well for that use case already.

Can't wait

[smohk]

to play angry bird on THAT one.!!!