Touch™ touchscreen controller is a fully functional multimedia and control platform. It interfaces to the chair motors, chair heater, lighting system, and any other chair control features. It also includes a fully functional Ethernet interface and 2-port switch. With Ethernet interface as well as general IO connections, the Touch is able to interface with any 3rd party product. For example, it has inputs available for the Tremor FX system.

The market for this product is driven by the industry move to higher end seating and experience in the theater. The Touch is targeted at a broad range of recliners due to its ability to interface with any motor, any recliner feature such as heating, as well as being able to interface with the theater network. This opens up a broad range of possibilities appealing to any theater as well as to home theater systems, including the ability to select from available languages.

BENEFITS

Due to the networking interface and computing power of the Touch, the ability to select different movie
audio languages is now a possibility. Currently, all theaters receive 3 separate audio tracks; full surround, visually impaired, and hearing impaired. There are many different language tracks available, as studios already create many different languages for the same movie. Theaters have expressed interest in being able to offer a different language at the chair.

Another very appealing feature of the Touch is its ability to automatically reset individual chair settings. One feature of recliners that is often requested is the ability to open or close all the chairs. If all the chairs could automatically open after a movie to ease the cleaning crew’s job, and then close again when they are finished, this would save the theaters significant time. This avoids having the cleaning crew opening and closing each chair one at a time. Several theaters have requested this feature and you can see many of the chair makers looking for a good and affordable solution.

The Touch can be programmed over the network. This means each theater can add their own screens, change the look of the screens, and add or modify functionality as they like. Theaters have expressed interest in being able to implement concession sales screens, personalize screens based on loyalty customer logins, create their own look, and add seat marker numbers to the default screen. The Touch is able to accomplish all of these.