Clarity gives feds a look at the big picture

Clarity Visual Systems Inc. will introduce a new 67-inch digital wall display

later this week, in a move that the company hopes will make it king of the

large-format, data visualization market.

The product, called Lion, is a rear-projection digital display system

that will allow users to display images with 1,280-by-1,024 native resolution.

"For things like military data walls and command and control applications,

the bigger size and higher resolution should fit nicely," said Ed Kiyoi,

product manager for Clarity.

The new product is the first to feature Clarity's advanced performance

liquid crystal display (AP/LCD) technology. AP/LCD consumes less power and

has a longer lamp life than previous LCDs, according to Kiyoi. It provides

1,500-to-1 contrast ratio performance, which is up to 10 times better than

other display technologies. Essentially, higher contrast improves picture

quality by making the dark parts of an image indeed appear dark, as opposed

to gray and washed out. And AP/LCD's greater light efficiency enables the

devices that use it to be as little as 16 inches deep.

Lion also features a multiple lamp setup, a feature that should prove

very valuable in environments that cannot risk system downtime, said Lisa

Vielbig, marketing communications manager at Clarity.

"If one [of the lamps] goes down, it may get a little dimmer, but you

don't lose any information that's on the wall and you can fire up another

lamp with a remote control," Vielbig said. "There is a lot of built-in redundancy."

Clarity is targeting the new product at federal agencies that use a

variety of data visualization applications, including military command and

control and any other environment where a digital wall is needed to communicate

critical information to an audience, Kiyoi said.

Lion will be available this month through the GSA schedule or through

some of Clarity's resellers. Pricing will be about $22,000, Kiyoi said.