That’s Infotainment

Watching television is one thing. Being immersed in the experience is quite another.

And whether you’re at home, at work, or in a public space like a museum or hotel lobby, immersive media walls are re-shaping the way we process and interact with digital information.

 Driving much of this trend is 4K technology, which dramatically increases the resolution of images on the LCD TV screen. The spectacular picture quality – mirroring the high resolution on smartphone and tablet images – makes 4K TVs perfectly suited to high-speed media streaming.

The 4K TV market is hot, with one-third of U.S. households expected to have a 4K set by 2019. And Corning is a leading supplier of the glass that makes up the LCD panels in these TVs.

A natural next step: Bringing multiple TVs together for a versatile, all-in-one infotainment surface.

Using their mobile devices and Bluetooth technology, viewers can turn an entire wall into a comprehensive, informative media center. Infotainment walls at home make it easy to manage room temperatures and lighting throughout the house, play music, check emails and family calendars, stream a movie, do online gaming, and keep an eye on a sporting event, all at the same time.

Or, go the simpler route and choose one stunning, floor-to-ceiling scene – perhaps streaming video of softly falling snow or waves on the beach.

Infotainment designs in businesses, schools, and public spaces are helping reinforce brands and meet a wide variety of customer needs. In a resort hotel, for example, guests could get information about a concert, purchase tickets, and choose their seats, all from a colorful interactive wall.

Here’s a closer look at how Corning is helping enable the immersive media experience for all sorts of spaces.

The glass at the heart of it all

The concept Infotainment Wall that drew crowds at Corning’s 2016 CES booth was made of 10 40-inch displays seamed together with Corning® Gorilla® Glass for a virtually edge-to-edge interactive surface. Each display used two sheets of Corning® EAGLE XG® Slim LCD glass – one for a thin film transistor and another for a color filter.

The glass – a leading substrate in LCD production – is precisely formulated to support the millions of pixels in the delicate LCD circuitry.

EAGLE XG Slim is just the latest successful chapter in Corning’s EAGLE story, which began in the late 1990s. The glass has had ongoing improvements over the years, getting successively slimmer and more cost-effective for manufacturers and consumers.

The cover story

Whether in a busy household or a public space, an infotainment wall needs protection from the inevitable bumps and potential damage coming its way.

Corning® Gorilla® Glass offers a durable, scratch-resistant surface that’s also optimized for the ultimate touch experience.

And at CES, the Infotainment Wall was all about touch. Not only were booth visitors managing the streaming content via a remote tablet -- they were also getting their hands on the large Gorilla Glass-covered screens, expanding photos and information streams and finding other ways to immerse themselves physically in the content.

At one point, the digital drawing function spurred an impromptu round of a popular artistic party game, too. And why not? With brilliant immersive technology like this, creativity is bound to flow.

Fast connections

Since 1970, Corning optical fiber has transformed how people connect and communicate. Ongoing innovations in Corning fiber are an important aspect of today’s high-speed connections for moving Internet, voice, and video data around the world.

Data, not surprisingly, is central to the appeal of the multimedia immersion wall. No matter where they’re installed, such applications draw in complex and data-heavy streams at high speeds – but with backhaul systems of optical fiber and a typical wireless connection, a good immersive experience is the result. A single link of high-speed optical fiber can support 2 million simultaneous high-definition video streams.  

With consumers moving seamlessly between their needs to be entertained, informed, and in control of their environment, the immersive media experience is the inevitable way to integrate those needs. Corning’s long-standing leadership in glass and optical fiber innovation is enabling a new generation of information management and entertainment – for work, home, and fun.

Corning’s exhibit at 2016 CES showcased Corning’s vision on how glass enables a more connected, collaborative, and interactive world. The company introduced that vision in 2011 with the video series “A Day Made of Glass.” Since then,  many leading brands, designers, educational institutions, and others have been inspired to collaborate with Corning to make this world a reality. Through our CES exhibit and our Glass Age campaign, we aim to continue inspiring innovators in the relevant supply chains to make prototypes like these commercially available.