Panasonic‘s 103in. plasma screens are displayed in all their glory at the company’s booth (C2401) as those big, bad boys continue to proliferate into the digital signage realm. We covered one of their earliest applications a while back at a California casino, and now company officials are offering up several case studies involving those screens. It’s all part of moving them into what Panasonic calls “high impact spaces” for digital signage–using giant displays in digital signage situations that consumers can’t possibly be used to from their home or business interactions with flat-panel displays. They told me about the first ones going into public mall spaces recently–one in New York (The Westchester Mall in White Plains) and one in New Jersey (the Newport Centre Mall in Jersey City), and promise more are on the way.

This, of course, raises all sorts of issues regarding training installers and contractors on how to handle, move, lift, mount, and successfully install the giant units. Matthew Prisco, marketing manager for Panasonic’s Professional Display unit, says its an issue the company is taking very seriously, and Panasonic now routinely dispatches engineers to do on-site surveys, working closely with installers, when such installs come their way. Prisco told me about one site that couldn’t carry the screens in its elevators–requiring a craning situation instead.

Meanwhile, check out the demo for Panasonic’s new CMOS-camera-based touch panel at the company’s booth. That seems to be an interactive screen display technology of growing promise.

And a pretty curved screen is showing off the impact of the new PTDW 12000-lumen projector the company is offering with built-in geographic enhancement (warping) and all sorts of other interesting capabilities that we’ll be covering in the near future.

–MG