Twin LED displays enable creation of 100 inch touchscreen table

It is generally accepted that the film Minority Report was responsible for the popularisation of touchscreen technology in the mainstream market, even if it took a few years for the real world devices to catch up to the sci-fi dream.

With multitouch LED displays featured on popular smartphones like the iPhone, fingertip inputs are now an entirely commonplace way of interacting with gadgets and even home PCs.

But cinematic fantasy has of course moved on and there are plenty of blockbusters around which feature touchscreen displays on a much larger scale, typically as part of some table-top integration with augmented reality features.

Once again, manufacturers have found a way to make this a reality, as evidenced by the recently revealed Ideum Pano Touch Table.

This device features two LED displays, each measuring 55 inches across the diagonal, which are combined into a flat, 100 inch surface, with a total resolution of 3840x1080.

The LED displays are covered by a layer of touch sensitive glass, that is capable of detecting up to 40 simultaneous inputs, which means you can get several people around the table and allow them to interact with a program, without bringing the system to its knees.

Power is provided courtesy of an Intel Core i7 CPU and an Nvidia Quadro 600 GPU, although oddly the manufacturer has chosen to preinstall the Windows 7 operating system, rather than the much more touchscreen-friendly Windows 8 software.

Although consumers can buy the Ideum Pano Touch Table if they wish, this is the kind of setup that is increasingly going to be used for public exhibitions and the purpose of digital signage, since it lends itself to group interactivity and information provision more than it does living room entertainment and casual interaction.