Panasonic's 42-inch HD display brings the big game to your hospital room
The company announced this morning a high-definition, 42-inch display that's UL 60065 Annex Q-certified for use in patient and waiting rooms of health facilities.
The display, memorably named the TH-42LRH50U, is fully compatible with pillow speaker interface systems, which it says makes for easier integration with in-room patient entertainment systems. It's the kind of thing that makes it easier to see bone-crunching hits while you recover from..well, a bone-crunching hit.
The display has a quick boot time -- three seconds, versus the conventional seven -- and an SD memory card slot so that hospital administrators can clone settings across a number of units.
(Just think about changing the settings on every TV in a hospital, one at a time. Yeesh.)
Those settings include initial input/channel/volume and maximum volume settings, as well as a digital rights management system that does away with needing a separate set-top box for HD programming. The unit itself has a viewing angle of 178 degrees, ensuring that you won't be craning your neck to see the next play, and an ambient light sensor that adjusts brightness and gradation (and thus power consumption) to its environment.
Specs for the admins out there:
- 42-inch, 16:9, LCD IPS 1080p (WSXGA, 1920x1080) display
- 3-second bootup
- 39.1-lb. weight, 4.2-in. depth
- 178 degree viewing angle
- Inputs: HDMI, Composite, YPbPr, RGB (VGA)
- Receiving System: ATSC/QAM/NTSC (MPEG2, MPEG4/H.264 support)
- Pro:Idiom: Integrated b-LAN
- Power Consumption: 205W (Energy Star 5.3, CEC)
- 50,000 hour life cycle to half brightness
- Warranty: 3 years parts and labor
- Safety Regulation: UL 60065 Annex Q and UL 6500 Ver 2
- Compatible with all VESA standard mounts
It'll run about $950 starting this month. Patient comfort? We'll take it.