News

Samsung drops retail-ready transparent and mirror OLED displays in Hong Kong showcase

Samsung Display Co. Ltd. unveiled its new Mirror and Transparent OLED digital signage displays in a showcase held this week in Hong Kong. The exhibit with Intel features what Samsung is calling 'the first retail use of advanced commercial OLED panels.'

June 11, 2015

Samsung Display Co. Ltd. unveiled its new Mirror and Transparent OLED display panels in a showcase for personalized shopping and informational browsing, held this week at the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre, the company announced. The exhibit features what Samsung is calling "the first retail use of advanced commercial OLED panels" – a "virtual necklace" display for the Chow Sang Sang jewelry company.

The new OLED panel technology provides a digital viewing platform for making the consumer purchasing experience more visually engaging, the company said. When Samsung's OLED display technology is integrated with Intel Real Sense technology, an interactive closet or "self-modeling" wardrobe is created that can enable consumers to virtually "see" clothes or other retail items from an extremely realistic, customized perspective, according to the announcement.

Together, the two technologies create a "virtual fitting room" that can be used to help consumers see themselves wearing apparel, shoes or jewelry that they might wish to buy. The Intel technology combines consumer-grade 3D cameras with an automated library of stored "perceptions" to simplify camera enhancement efforts for software developers.

Samsung said its Mirror Display "may also replace home mirrors in the future, providing digital information services to sophisticated consumers in the same space where they now just have a traditional mirror."

Samsung Display's Mirror OLED display panel features a more than 75 percent reflectance level, a color gamut over 100 percent and a contrast ratio  of more than 100,000:1, as well as a response time under 1 millisecond, the company said. The new mirror display technology does not need an ambient backlight for displaying on-screen images.

Like the Samsung Mirror Display, the new Samsung Transparent Display will visually accentuate the gesture and voice control of Real Sense 3D-rotatable viewing systems, with OLED full-HD video playback. Collectively, these features could enhance consumer-facing displays in car dealerships and other signage applications in public information and transportation environments, as well as at retail and hospitality/hotel locations, the company said.

The full-HD Transparent OLED display panel has a color gamut of 100 percent, transmittance of 45 percent and clarity through a wider range of viewing angles, Samsung said, and it features a transparency level of more than 40 percent.

"Samsung has a long legacy of leadership in technology innovation for digital signage, as well as for other applications, and we are now leading the next wave of digital signage advancement with our Mirror and Transparent OLED display solutions," said Oseung Yang, vice president, Samsung Display Company, in the announcement. "We are very excited to help bring a new interactive dimension to the world of multichannel shopping through the integration of our newest OLED displays with Intel RealSense technology."

Samsung Display said its new OLED display panels will "open up new possibilities for optimizing the potential for visually interactive computing technology." In this showcase, Intel Real Sense features a front-facing camera that captures facial movements, tracks widely varying finger and hand movements, and clearly distinguishes between backgrounds and foregrounds, according to the announcement. In addition, the Intel technology includes a rear-facing camera that can scan and measure rooms and objects, and a snapshot camera that can alter a photo's background after a photo has been taken.

"Samsung Display's revolutionary Transparent and Mirror OLED display solutions will drive retail and digital signage leaders, and their customers, to further innovate through greater manipulation of the Intel RealSense platform," said Jose Avalos, worldwide visual retail director, retail solutions division, Internet of Things group, Intel Corp., "in order to deliver highly differentiated, exquisitely personalized customer experiences."