LiquidView has been turning heads in the CI industry for the past few years, and it isn’t hard to see why with its interior designer- and homeowner-pleasing ability to add windows in areas where it would normally be impossible. Of course, these are not true windows, but window-shaped high-resolution displays that feature 24-hour views of spectacular locations that synchronize with the user’s time of day and are shot by National Geographic-level cinematographers in 8K video.
With LiquidView, basements and interior rooms can have views of the Pacific Ocean, NYC’s Central Park, or seven other aspirational locations, with more on the way. And, in addition to the design improvements it brings to a room, Stanford University has released data on the health benefits of LiquidView windows that shows how these digital windows “trick the brain” and make people feel they are actual windows and provide similar wellness benefits [see sidebar].
We spoke with LiquidView’s CEO, Mitch Braff, about its product, how dealers can get involved with the company, and what it has planned for the near future.
RESI: Now that you’ve been in the industry for a bit, can you give us any insights as to what dealers think about your product and some use cases?
MITCH BRAFF: We’re still a young company and are still putting things together, but we sold about 100 windows last year and we expect to do multiples of that this year. We’ve had a huge amount of interest.
Cantara in Orange County, California, sold a Panorama [which is three windows sync’d to a single image] to a customer in San Diego, who used it for their home gym. It has 24-hour matching circadian rhythms, so they see the sunrise when they’re up early. The same couple has a second place in Colorado with another gym, and they’re putting one in there now.
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We had another customer in Wyoming who had a bison ranch with a cabin. They didn’t want to change the profile of the cabin as they were expanding, so they built a windowless bedroom underground. They put a Panorama in the bedroom and liked it so much that they put two more Panoramas in another house they have. That same family runs a medical center in Gillette, Wyoming, and they’ve bought six Panoramas that we’re installing soon!
Let’s get into the technology behind LiquidView — both in display and in capture.
For displays, we are using the Sony BZ40L Series commercial LCD monitors in portrait mode because they’re rated to be on 24/7. Right now, these displays come in 55-, 65-, 75-, and 85-inch sizes. Leon is our OEM for the cases around the monitors. The 75s and the 55s are the main sizes that we offer, and we call the SKUs the SLV4 which is for the single 75-inch LiquidView, and the SLV2 for the 55-inch model. The Panoramas are called the PLV2 and PLV4. We are using Intel NUCs for content playback, which are small Windows computers with a 4 TB SSD for storage.
For content, we’re shooting with a Sony Venice 2, which is an 8.6K motion picture camera — the same model they used for Avatar and Top Gun. The resolution’s amazing. We color correct it and we create a stereo sound design.
Right now, we have nine different 24-hour views, and we’re building a view library. We have two content packages. Our basic package, which we call Limited, gets three 24-hour views. There’s no subscription — order it and you’re done. If you get the Unlimited package, you’re going to have access to all nine 24-hour views, and that’s just the beginning. With Unlimited, you’re basically frontloading a three-year subscription, and you’re going to get all the content later this year. Plus, we’re going to be shooting one new view every month. So, Unlimited members will have this huge library of 40 or 50 views in 36 months.
We don’t sell directly, so the integrator would give them an option to either join Limited and pick their three favorites and or to pay a subscription in order to continue getting one new view a month and access to the library. After the initial three years are up, the Unlimited subscription for the single window will be $35 each month and the subscription for the Panorama models will be $99 each month.
You said you are capturing audio as well…
We are capturing stereo sound so you can get the sounds of the beach rolling if you want it — or you can mute it. My background is in film, so if you’re doing a project at the beach and you’re shooting a 30-second scene and a diesel truck comes by, you wait till the truck passes and then you shoot the scene. We have a 24-hour view, so we can’t wait for anything to pass. So, we record the entire soundscape as a reference but, in reality, some of the sounds during the 24 hours aren’t pretty, and we need to enhance the recordings. We then create an idealized soundscape.
For example, we have a beach in Northern California, Rodeo Beach, where when you record it sounds like you’re in a wind tunnel because this is a typical Northern California beach. So, we record the sound, but then we have to add our own version where the wind is not as loud. We can’t record the sound of the waves without the wind, so our sound team hand-syncs each wave going up and down the beach.
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By default, we’re using the speakers in the display. However, if you want to you could just get the audio out of the media player and plug it into whatever you want.
I know you’re a young company and probably haven’t reached the end of your first cycles yet, but what is the projected lifespan of the product?
The displays are made by Sony, and they’re warrantied for five years. We haven’t had any issues with anything. We’re a content company, and that’s why we use Sony displays and Intel media players — we’re not trying to make our own electronics. We are designing the window cases to be compatible with future display designs as well.
How do you work with the custom installation dealers? What kind of support do you provide?
We get a lot of inbound interest coming in from our website that are mostly end-users. If we have a dealer relationship with a company in their area, then we’ll pass it on. If we don’t have a dealer relationship, we would call one of our partners, like Leon or Sony, to find out who’s a strong integrator in that location. We want to find a dealer that is reputable because, if the customer calls us directly, we want to give them an A+ dealer.
Most dealers have never installed our windows, so we have videos, technical documents, and our support team to walk someone through it. We first introduced an in-wall model, where you would have to fur out the wall — you need 7.5 inches, so it is a small construction project. Now we also have an on-wall model where you hang the display and then hang the window case on a backboard we designed. It takes about 90 minutes to install it once you have the electrical and the Ethernet run.
We’re trying to make it an easy experience with the on-wall model, but most of the framing work for the in-wall model is usually done by the GC anyway.
What is next for LiquidView?
We are doing a few things this year in terms of product development. We’re developing iPhone and Android apps. We’ll have APIs later this year to match with other control systems. We have nine views that we shot already, and later this year we will be shooting one new view every month.
We’ve had some integrators ask for large-screen versions of our content for customers who have invested a lot of money in LED walls or a home theater. So, we’re going to have a version of it where you could play our content on a pre-existing video wall. We will have that by the end of Q2.
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We are a content company. Eventually, we will become the Netflix of ambient content so customers can access our content in a variety of ways. It’s a different experience than it is if you are having the window case and recess in the wall and looking at something that looks like a window, but we see that there’s an opportunity there to bring in 24-hour views into many more locations. We’re going to explore it and find the best way for us to deliver content to our customers. One day, if you want to have this content on your TV at home while you’re making dinner, you could have that, too. But that’s going to be a little bit down the line.
For more information, visit www.theliquidview.com.
The Stanford Study and LiquidView
Do digital windows have the same effect on health and wellness as real windows? That’s the question asked by the Zeitzer Circadian Research Lab at Stanford University, and is currently being answered in a study that uses LiquidView windows and whose first results are now available.
Not to spoil the suspense, but in the introduction to the study, the research team writes:
A new, ongoing study by Stanford University is exploring the impact LiquidView digital windows have on human physiological responses to different types of light. If the expected outcomes are proven, it will have a significant impact on architecture and design in both residential and commercial spaces.
The Zeitzer Circadian Research Lab at Stanford University studies the use of light and its impact on sleep, circadian rhythms, cardiovascular function, endocrine activity, balance, and cognition. The initial results suggest that exposure to LiquidView digital windows improves mental health and well-being.
The study, named “Understanding the Physiological Responses to Different Types of Content Displayed on LiquidView Digital Windows,” can be downloaded here.
