Author: LG

This just in—LG won the BEST of InfoComm 2016 Award from rAVe [Publications].

rAVe awarded our Dual-View OLED Display for Best Flat-Panel Display (Overall).

Winners were announced Wednesday on the rAVe website, and rAVe will post a story in the rAVe ProAV Edition newsletter that will go out later this month.

According to rAVe, “It’s tough to pick out the best and the brightest from the thousands of products and hundreds of exhibitors introduced on the show floor. After much consideration, our entire team picked what we thought were the best things on the show floor.”

Thanks, rAVe.
We are very proud to accept your award.

 

Have a look at all the rAVe InfoComm videos:

 

 

 

 

Kimun Paik

Senior Vice President of Commercial Displays
LG Electronics USA Business Solutions

 

 

 

Part 2

Last week I presented a few examples of LG’s many B2B (business-to-business) successes in the United States. I attributed much of this success to a foundation of trust.

LG B2B: Built on a foundation of trust

Outstanding product technology and personal relationships are not enough to be successful in the B2B sector. In fact, the B2B market requires solid business relationships, satisfaction, and trust.

Trust underpins a company’s reputation and investing in it serves the future. There is a great need for trust in all areas related to a product, such as operation, shipping deadlines, support, and after-sales service. Our partners work in accordance with their own business schedules from product supply to installation, so we must meet deadlines no matter what to continue to earn their trust every step of the way.

And that trust doesn’t end with the installation of the products; after-sales service is just as crucial. A B2B project is generally a long-term process, and customer relationships based on trust last even longer.

Our Chicago Business Innovation Center in Lincolnshire, Illinois, was launched less than six months ago, and over 30 leading U.S. businesses already have visited to experience LG’s B2B products in action. In fact, some businesses inspired by the products and solutions displayed at the center often come back with their end customers to learn more about the products.

The potential of the B2B market for creating business opportunities is the center’s most notable strength. Customers in need of refrigerators focus on refrigerators only, but B2B customers look at a range of solutions in addition to the products they need.

In order to provide a multitude of solutions, the B2B market involves taking various factors into account, which eventually creates the opportunity to expand the business further. For example, the TVs supplied to a medical facility need to have remote controls that affect only the targeted TVs, not any other TVs in the vicinity. LG Electronics, therefore, develops the products based on such needs. In the process of supplying the products to the end customer, the medical facility, LG learned about a company developing technologies that allow adult children to check the health of their elderly parents in medical facilities from a distance. LG is able to incorporate the solutions provided by the partner into its healthcare TV business, further expanding its business scope.

Also, in one corner of the Business Innovation Center, the LG Styler clothing care system is on display. The LG Styler has started to receive attention from newly built hotels and LG’s existing partner hotels as they consider installing the product in luxury suites and guest clubs. This is an example of how LG’s hotel relationships can lead to future business opportunities, including commercial air conditioning as well.

I believe that LG was able to expand its presence from a B2C (business-to-consumer) company to a B2B company by building on LG’s technical capacity and strong brand identity in the United States. We have products, technology, and customers, but equally important, there is the valuable competitiveness which is our well-respected brand.

Since many of our B2B partners already trust LG as a leading B2C brand, we’ve been able to expand our presence in the B2B market building on LG’s strong brand reputation. In addition, LG possesses diverse professional capabilities in the specialized fields of energy, automotive displays, and batteries, to give a few examples. That means we can gradually cater to the needs of B2B customers in diverse areas.

The U.S market is one of the largest in the world and its industries are continuously achieving sustainable growth. At stake for LG are enormous

In an age when online merchants are offering so much, brick-and-mortar businesses are looking for exciting ways to communicate their value proposition clearly and effectively. Their products and services need to get noticed, and their brand equity must continually be reinforced to maintain customer loyalty. And in order to increase in-store traffic, a business needs to stand out more than ever.

When used strategically digital signage can be a strong differentiator, and now there’s a choice of display options to suit virtually any business. Let’s look at the technologies.

LCD (Liquid Crystal Display) panels offer bright, high-resolution images. LCDs require a light source to illuminate the screen pixels, and the first-generation displays used CCFL (Cold Cathode Fluorescent Lamps). CCFL backlights did a fine job but had a few drawbacks—their physical size required the overall panels to be thick, they used a lot of electricity, and they had a limited life expectancy.

In the next generation, LED (Light Emitting Diode) technology solved the challenges associated with CCFL. Using a LED light source to illuminate the pixels, the display panel could be thinner and use less power. LEDs also have a much longer life expectancy. NOTE: While commonly referred to as LED displays, these displays are actually LCDs that use a LED light source.

LCDs are great for picture quality, especially those with IPS (In-Plane Switching) screen technology. They are available in Full HD (1080p) or Ultra HD (4K) resolution. Full HD is beautifully crisp and sharp, and 4K is amazing for detail, ensuring that every element on the screen pops. 4K also makes it possible for customers to be closer to a big screen without noticing the pixels that make up the image.

Direct View LED displays are something different. These displays eliminate the LCD panel and use a surface array of LEDs as the actual display pixels. Direct View LED displays feature outstanding contrast, vibrant colors and brightness levels several times that of LCDs. They can also be made in virtually any size, including very large sizes of 100 feet or more, making them the perfect choice for outdoor spaces such as sports arenas.

Fast forward to now. Thanks to LG, businesses can display their best on OLED. OLED displays incorporate the most advanced display technologies, and yield an unprecedented combination of picture quality and installation flexibility. OLED (Organic Light Emitting Diode) displays eliminate the need for a separate light source—each pixel emits its own light, and can turn itself off, resulting in a more exact control of image quality.

OLED displays yield incredibly accurate color, perfect black and infinite contrast. They also provide wide viewing angles, a major advantage in larger environments. Fast action scenes are crisp, clear and free from blur, thanks to OLED’s extremely fast response time. It’s the same unrivaled picture quality that consumers recognize from LG’s state-of-the-art OLED televisions

LG’s amazing OLED displays are available in sleek, pencil-thin, open-framed designs that can also be curved and customized into convex or concave forms. Dual-sided OLED displays show images on the front and back of the panel, with the ability to swap and mirror content on either side. In the world of commercial displays, nothing else compares.

The effective use of digital displays can create the differentiation businesses need to better engage their customers, enhance presentations or provide valuable information in attention-grabbing ways. To learn more about the types of digital displays, which applications are recommended for each and how to choose the right displays for your business, please download and read our new eBook: LCD, Direct View LED, and OLED Explained.

 

Kimun Paik

Senior Vice President of Commercial Displays
LG Electronics USA Business Solutions

 

 

Part 1

This is perhaps the most exciting time I’ve experienced for LG Commercial Displays and for LG Electronics’ B2B (business-to-business) area as a whole since I joined the company in 1993. I have never been more proud to be part of this company.

LG has many competitive advantages in commercial displays. But today, LG has another competitive advantage in being the only company to produce double-sided OLED displays, advanced new commercial products that satisfy all of the requirements needed in public displays. Such competitiveness has led LG to lead the commercial display market not only in the U.S., but also globally.

Owing to LG’s competitiveness, the digital signage B2B sector has achieved remarkable success. LG Commercial Displays recently won a contract worth USD 50 million—the largest in the history of the digital signage business—for the replacement of all menu boards in the leading quick serve restaurant chain in the U.S. with our signage displays.

With the success of this project and others, LG’s digital signage business is expected to grow by over 200 percent since last year. More business is on the horizon, as many other restaurants in the U.S. are about to digitalize their menu boards as the U.S. government plans to require restaurants to list calorie information on the menus. In addition, the commercial display market is growing as many retail shops are planning on placing digital displays to set them apart from competitors.

Such a shift to digital signage can also be seen in areas related to transportation, such as airports and bus stations. LG recently won the contract to replace all flight information displays at Orlando International Airport. LG competed with three other companies for excellence in areas such as display color spectrum and viewing angles, and was finally selected as the sole display provider after eight months of rigorous testing and comparative studies. More than 2,000 LG digital displays will be installed at this busy airport in the coming year.

In hospitality, LG has the largest market share in the hotel TV business in the U.S., with double-digit percent growth compared to the last quarter. In fact, over half of the hotels in the U.S. use LG TVs, and in the Chicago area, where we just opened our new LG Business Innovation Center, LG TVs are installed in the majority of hotels.

These are just a few examples of the many successes LG B2B businesses are achieving. I attribute this success to a foundation of trust. Next week I’ll explain LG B2B’s foundation of trust and how the company is bringing innovation to life for commercial display customers from coast to coast.

 

On this July 4^th weekend as we celebrate America’s independence, we can’t help but think about the incredible fireworks shows that will be sparkling skies across the USA. And we want to do it justice with our own celebrations too—ever watch the Macy’s fireworks on an LG video wall? Add a great sound system with rocking subwoofers and it’s one spectacular experience! Now just wait until you see it on our new OLED products. More great things are coming soon.

We hope you have a safe and exciting Fourth. And join us next Friday for part one of a very special blog.

That’s a great question. The answer can be pretty long with explanations of primary layers and functions, but this one will be a condensed, quick read.

First of all, OLED is an acronym for Organic Light Emitting Diodes. The technology is actually not new—OLED was invented by Oleg Losev in 1927. Then in the 1970s the first OLED diode was created at Kodak by Ching Tang and Steven Van Slyke. In 1987 this team reported on materials that created the foundation of today’s OLED technology. OLED has continued to be developed to this day.

Organic means something that is constituted of Carbon, Hydrogen and Oxygen. An Organic Light-emitting Diode is an LED in which the emissive electroluminescent layer is a film of organic compound that emits light in response to an electric current.

The huge benefit of OLED is that it does not require a backlight unit so there is no light leakage, and lower power consumption; it does not require a liquid crystal layer and shutter array so it can provide a wide viewing angle and faster response time; and it is a simple structure with fewer components, allowing for a thin, sleek and lightweight design where the screens can be curved and bendable.

And there’s one more big benefit. LG uses a fourth white sub-pixel for WRGB capability. This gives the LG OLED product better contrast, color and brightness.

LG’s OLED display technology overcomes the limits of the current displays in both picture quality and design. In short, nothing compares to it.

Why you should have OLED in your next display

Your brand deserves the best, in the same way you deliver the best to your customers. With LG OLED you can now create content delivery displays and sculpt customer environments that were never before possible—where engagement turns into astonishment and your pride turns into a badge of recognition that your business truly stands out from the crowd.

We’ve implemented our webOS for Signage in even more commercial displays this year to provide convenient new options for business owners. And now it’s making its way into new and noteworthy software partnerships to evolve our offerings into full-scale enterprise solutions.

As Garry Wicka, head of marketing for LG Electronics USA, explained: “Beyond providing customized and functional solutions for business owners and system integrators, LG’s webOS for Signage now offers business owners a swath of customer experience upgrades, cloud-based solutions, mobile accessibility, screen control, multi-touch solutions with LG’s expanded solution partners.”

What’s webOS for Signage?

In case you’re not intimately familiar with webOS for Signage, it’s our commercial all-in-one hardware and software platform based on our popular webOS smart TV platform for consumers. But webOS for Signage brings a new level of integrated benefits for businesses deploying LG commercial displays. Our displays feature high-performance system-on-a-chip (SoC) which works with webOS for Signage to lower the cost of ownership by eliminating the need for PCs or external media players.

System integrators can download useful content and develop customized applications that fit their exact needs, and update it simply and quickly via a smartphone or tablet.

Meet our new supporting partners:

Industry Weapon – Their powerful yet simple digital signage software, CommandCenterHD, is built for non-technical users and brings capabilities that ease the burden of content creation, manage complex integrations and more.

Scala – Their market-leading platform, combined with webOS and LG’s display quality and ease of deployment, will give clients new first-class options to drive their brand and delight their customers.

Gauddi – The world’s first digital signage platform exclusively dedicated to LG webOS, with a cloud-based solution that’s as intuitive to set up and use as a smartphone. A Video on Demand feature stores content on the display.

PingHD – The EngagePHD™ is an easy-to-use, scalable, Web-based content management and digital signage network monitoring application, with optimized support for LG webOS displays and their integrated beacon technology.

ONELAN – A highly scalable CMS for both on-premise and cloud-hosted deployments. The software is designed for best-in-class media playback, scheduling, offline content playback, multi-media & multi zone, plus more.

Signagelive – This low-cost, fully supported cloud solution runs on webOS for Signage and eliminates the need for external media players to run and manage digital signage campaigns, and is interactive with product displays.

Intuilab – Their IntuiFace focuses on multi-touch content development, allowing customers to build modern, engaging and highly functional interactive experiences with superior wayfinding abilities without writing code.

With webOS for Signage, more is always better. Thanks to these best of the best solution partners we’re looking forward to a future of amazing customer experiences.

On the final day of InfoComm 2016, an on-site panel of AV professionals has selected LG Electronics Dual-View Flat OLED Display and Dual-View Curved Tiling OLED Display as winners of the InfoComm Best of Show Awards for digital signage. The award recognizes new and outstanding products exhibited at InfoComm 2016—the largest, most exciting event in the Western Hemisphere focused on the pro-AV industry, with more than 1,000 exhibitors, thousands of products, and 40,000 attendees from 110+ countries.

We at LG were extremely energized by all the reactions and responses from visitors coming to our booth from around the globe. The buzz was amazing, just like the displays, and these outstanding awards confirm it.

About the displays…

LG commercial OLED displays offer businesses a space-efficient solution for providing their customers with a two-sided media experience in Full HD (1920 x 1080) or 4K Ultra HD (3840 x 2160) resolution, with the ability to swap and mirror content on either side of the screen with a simple press of a remote control button.

These best-of-show displays are pencil-thin and designed to be used in “off-the-wall” ways. Our Dual-View Flat OLED display can be hung from the ceiling or stood on the floor. And our Dual-View Curved Tiling 4K OLED display can be used to form large floor-standing displays that link two, three or four tiles together.

LG OLED displays enable completely immersive and highly engaging environments for customers, like never before possible. It’s an incredibly creative solution for showcasing content that’s as powerful and successful as the business itself.

What’s more, the OLED commercial displays have the same unparalleled picture quality of LG’s award-winning consumer OLED TVs – hailed by industry experts as the pinnacle of display innovation.

In fact, LG OLED represents an entirely new category of displays that deliver awe-inspiring images with perfect blacks and incredible color, even from wide viewing angles unlike any LCD/LED display can achieve. Perfect blacks? Yes. Because each of the screen’s pixels can be turned off, it creates an infinite contrast ratio and brings colors to life in unprecedented ways.

The Dual-View Flat OLED displays will start shipping in July to fulfill the many orders we’ve already received at the show.

LG commercial OLED displays are sure to inspire businesses to try some off-the-wall thinking themselves. And just like the buzz, the displays and the awards, the customer experiences are going to be amazing.

Click here for more InfoComm highlights

InfoComm is next week…are you ready to be amazed? We’ll be at Booth C8308—you can’t miss it, just look for all the wide eyes and dropped jaws.

This promises to be our best show to date—with groundbreaking innovations that can transform ordinary into extraordinary and create a customer experience like never before possible.

You’ll experience our breathtaking new dual-view flat and curved tiling OLED displays. These are absolute knockouts. With perfect black, infinite contrast and incredible color, nothing compares to LG OLED displays.

PLUS, we have something under wraps—with astounding capabilities. And since we’ll be unveiling it at the show, you have to be there. We can’t wait to see your responses!

Also, many of you have been thinking of out-of-the-box ways to use our 86-inch Ultra Stretch signage. We’ll have it a variety of portrait and landscape applications to give you an idea of what seven glorious feet of UHD resolution and IPS screen technology can do. Got tight spaces? Give them a Stretch.

And there will be a lot more, too, including our massive Clover video wall featuring the industry’s thinnest bezels.

This is one show you don’t want to miss. It’s that good.

UPDATE: There’s still time to set up a meeting or booth tour. Sign Up Now

Last week we asked the following question regarding potential applications for digital signage in QSR:

Have you thought about broadcasting live events in the dining area and wrapping your messaging around live TV?

This week we’ll tell you how to do it.

Your dining customers are a captive audience. Think about how to make your dining area more welcoming and entertaining. We’re in a political year. You could broadcast the debates while offering debate night specials. This is an Olympic year. Draw customers inside and offer summer coolers during the events. Local content such as news, weather and sports is always an attractive pastime for dining areas, and consider the idea of creating branded and unique content for your own private television network.

LG makes this application simple for quick service/fast casual restaurants and sports bars, with our affordable new LW540S SuperSign™ TVs. With their built-in TV tuner, SuperSign TVs enable users to have a simultaneous display of both live broadcast TV and advertising/promotional content on one screen.

The SuperSign TVs are available in 43″, 49″ and 55″ class sizes—perfect dining areas and bars. With added features like digital media editing, error monitoring, scheduling, distribution and management capabilities, deploying this digital signage solution is a breeze.

What’s more, SuperSign TVs are cost efficient because there’s no need to buy a media player. Signage content can be created using a PC and our free SuperSign Lite, SuperSign C and SuperSign Simple Editor software. The free software also facilitates revisions on the fly—just in time for daily lunch specials, new menu items, weekend promotions and anything else that comes to mind.

In three easy steps you’re ready to play:

1. Create your content using one of the 74 embedded templates. Add images and text to finish customization.
2. Create a playlist—package the content and set content duration.
3. Plug and play your content via USB flash drive or use the SuperSign network server for multiple TVs.

Finally, SuperSign TV offers the option of remote management by remotely monitoring and controlling up to 50 SuperSign TVs with a PC connected to Internet.

Keep your restaurant and sports bar customers entertained with live broadcasts, informed of your daily specials and enticed by mouthwatering images, all with LG SuperSign TV.