Signage and Hospitality from Philips

 June 15, 2012, Infocomm, Las Vegas—We talked with Philips about their multiple offerings. They are focusing on commercial signage and hospitality functions in their displays.

One new product a converter for glasses-free 3-D conversion. The 42- and 55-inch displays have built-in real-time conversion software that generates from 5 to 28 view points for a wide angle of view and a full 3-D experience. The full line of glasses-free displays are available now.

For home entertainment in a hotel, a new family is the X-Cite series, with integrated DirecTV. This TV uses the same interface as home DirecTV, so users get access to 100 channels through the standard program guide. The new TVs also run in HD, unlike most hotel TVs that are made for HD, but are playing SD content that is stretched out to fit the screen. The integration of the DirecTV tuner into the set also eliminates the set-top box and any other media gateways and servers needed in other installations.

One aspect of their operation is the return service. They now offer replacement units that ship in advance of the return, so the location is only without a TV for a short time.

Moving out of the hotels, the new Touch Series was developed for various retail and customer facing industries. The displays are available in 32- to 65-inch formats and have commercial-grade reliability. The optical sensors can accommodate two simultaneous touch points while the IR version can handle many touch points.

For digital signs, the latest displays are Open Pluggable Specification compatible. By adding an OPS PC to the display, the user is able to deploy systems faster and in higher volume.

Since not everything in the system is a display, they have a gateway network manager. This unit controls all of the TVs in a facility over existing coax cables. The unit sends an ID to control power on/off and channel setting, providing remote control to those TVs that are not easily accessible.