By George McClure
Even the most exceptional residences and offices have windowless rooms, or terrible views.
Not anymore. With LiquidView digital windows, you can promote well-being and elevate a windowless environment with stunning, 24-hour dynamic high-resolution views from around the world, aligning with your circadian rhythms — matching sunrise and sunset every day. The groundbreaking LiquidView digital window platform can transform any space into a room with a view.
“It’s really exciting for me as a filmmaker as we get to use the same 8.6K cameras that they shot the latest Top Gun and Avatar movies with. Not only is the resolution amazing, but the dynamic range is stunning and allows us to make content that is so realistic. We also perform color correction, stereo sound design, and visual effects as necessary to make sure everything is perfect.”
Mitch Braff | LiquidView
Here’s an excerpt from our recent conversation with LiquidView Founder and CEO Mitch Braff.
George McClure: I understand you were a filmmaker before you got this idea.
Mitch Braff: Yes, I’ve been a filmmaker my entire professional life and my work has been on television and in movie theaters all over the world. I also started a corporate communication company and ran that for 10 years, doing work for Yahoo, AT&T and Cisco Systems, a lot of Fortune 100 companies. I eventually started a nonprofit company that made films for schools. I ran that for 15 years and then started another company, which was the precursor to LiquidView, called Liquid Canvas. At Liquid Canvas we would use pre-existing paintings on canvas and bring them to life with animations from the static image. Our customers were high-end residential and corporate clients.
George: When did you get the idea for LiquidView?
Mitch: I’ve spent most of my life living and working in San Francisco. One of my offices had no windows. In my first home in San Francisco, the master bedroom’s window was a lightwell. Under this backdrop I had a customer for Liquid Canvas in San Francisco who had a beautiful home with nice views out of the front and back. But they’re like row houses, and on the side of the house, where the dining room windows were, they were looking at the side of the neighbor’s house and he wanted to change this view to something beautiful We talked about digital windows, where the “window” contains a video display and that we would place outside his existing windows. This became complicated very quickly but gave me the idea that we could have architecturally accurate windows recessed in the wall with a high-quality video display, and the content would be for 24 hours and change with the time of day, just as if you were looking out of a real window. The sunrise and sunset would always match the real sunrise and sunset for the area, so it would match your circadian rhythms. We did a lot of R&D to find the right lens and the right camera angle, and we got lucky when it came to finding a design company. Do you know the design firm IDEO?
George: Yes.
Mitch: IDEO became our design partner early on. They were very generous with their time, and they loved the idea. I had this vision that we could really transform windowless rooms with this technology and content and put together the team to pull it off from designers to engineers. And that was really the journey. It started about four years ago, and three years ago we had a popup in San Francisco where we showed it to architects, designers, investors and such, and it was a real hit.
George: As you alluded to, there’s a well-being component to this.
Mitch: Yes, we got connected with Stanford University and they’re doing a study right now on the health benefits of LiquidView. There are a couple other digital window companies that have a 15-minute loop or another with a 30- to 120-minute loop, but then it just repeats the same content over and over. We’re doing 24 hours of content that matches to your circadian rhythms, and as the Stanford study says, it “tricks the brain” and makes people feel as if they are really by a window, giving them similar health benefits. The study found two important measures, one that lowers your heart rate, and one having to do with something called EDA: electrodermal activity. [EDA can be used to track physiological conditions such as stress levels, sleep quality, and emotional states.] They brought people into a windowless lab at Stanford to get their EDA baseline, and 20 minutes later when they showed them LiquidView windows in the same room, their EDA dropped on average 46.5 percent, which shows definitive evidence of calming and relaxation.
George: How many different views do you have available now?
Mitch: We’ve shot nine views so far — we have four released and we are going to be releasing one view a month over the next several months.
George: Do your clients usually pick one view and then just run that all the time? Or can they switch the setting?
Mitch: Each window comes with two content options – Limited and Unlimited. Limited has three views that the customer chooses and Unlimited has all of our content we have produced and a new view each month. People have the ability to change views via the web app on their phone.
George: I understand that you shoot it all in 8.6K, high-resolution.
Mitch: Yes. It’s really exciting for me as a filmmaker as we get to use the same 8.6K cameras that they shot the latest Top Gun and Avatar movies with. Not only is the resolution amazing, but the dynamic range is stunning and allows us to make content that is so realistic. We also perform color correction, stereo sound design, and visual effects as necessary to make sure everything is perfect. We deliver it to our customers on our Media Player (made by Intel) with a four-terabyte SSD. All the content is stored locally, and each 24-hour view is around 250 gigabytes from a 50 terabyte master.
George: What’s the technology on the actual screen?
Mitch: Well, we love Sony products. We’re using high-end commercial 4K Sony displays. It’s a signage display, so the same kind of display you’d see in the airport that’s meant to be on 24/7. That’s what we’re looking at.
George: I understand that you have in-wall and on-wall versions you can do, but the ones that are really cool are where it really looks like a window built into the wall.
Mitch: The OnWall window looks great and hangs on the wall, making for easy installation. The InWall is installed inside the wall, so the installation process is a little more involved, but it looks amazing as it is part of the wall. Going back to the Stanford study, we want the whole experience to feel like you’re looking at, and out of, a window, so having our window recessed adds to the effect. That’s also why we recommend Lutron shades on many of our installations, as it really makes a big difference in giving the customer a realistic experience. One of our dealers in South Carolina has a Panorama in their showroom with Lutron shades, where if you didn’t know better, you’d think you were in a hotel in Venice.
George: Speaking of distribution, tell us a little bit more about your dealer network. I saw that you were well received at CEDIA, so you’re really getting into that channel.
Mitch: Yes, we are developing a great dealer network as we do not offer direct sales. We have some dealers that have LiquidView demo systems as well. We’ve been working with Leon and other partner companies to get recommendations of their top dealers, because we get a lot of inbound sales leads coming from our website. We’ve been very lucky with that. So, when leads come in we vet them to make sure they’re for real, and if we don’t already have a dealer in the area we reach out to our friends to find an integrator who can help us out.
George: I’ve interviewed Noah Kaplan from Leon Speakers before and I know that he’s a real visionary in partnering with folks whose ideas he likes. He doesn’t view anybody as a competitor — he always sees everybody as a potential partner to do new technologies and push the envelope on things. So, I’m sure he’s a very valuable ally to have.
Mitch: Yes, a hundred percent. Noah’s been great from the beginning. Our relationship with Leon is great, and they’ve been very helpful. They were our initial distributor, and in Fall 2023, we decided amicably and together to branch out, since they’re selling speakers and soundbars, and we needed to be more focused on selling windows. They’re still manufacturing the window cases for us, which is great.
George: Is there an audio element to any of this?
Mitch: Yes. We use sound to make it a realistic experience. We have both a stereo and mono sound mix available. We spend months on each view crafting the perfect sound design to enhance the experience – adding different elements to make it feel like you’re really there, and that helps promote the health benefits as well.
George: So, do you use the built-in speakers in the display, or outboard ones?
Mitch: Either one. You can use the built-in speakers on the display, or if you already have speakers wired in the home or office, you can use those to get a more realistic soundfield.
George: I know that some lighting manufacturers and lighting control systems talk about approximating circadian rhythms, but if you’ve got a 24-hour shoot, you can actually recreate the real deal.
Mitch: Yes, exactly. Our patented software allows our windows to match the slight time changes of sunrise and sunset every day just like in real life, which also matches your circadian rhythms. We have a customer in San Diego who put LiquidView in their windowless home gym. And when they get up early and want to work out, they can now see the sunrise in different cities.
Another market we are exploring is the luxury yacht industry. Below decks are staterooms that are pretty much windowless or have a tiny porthole. So that’s a big opportunity to bring the realism of digital windows to that market as well.
George: Before we close up, is there anything else you want to share with us?
Mitch: We’re continuing to develop our content library. We have nine 24-hour views, but we want to get to the point later this year where we are shooting and delivering one new view a month. We feel that it’s very important to bring in light and views to windowless rooms for people because this is transformational. If you have a windowless room and you’re not using it because it’s depressing, because there are now no windows, there’s no light, we now have the ability to change that. And our customers will be getting similar health benefits to actual windows. This has completely changed how people can use these undervalued spaces. So, I think it’s very exciting how we can really change people’s lives with our products.
George McClure is a Senior Editor for Technology Designer Magazine and the Technology Insider Group. Previously, he was the General Manager of Fidelity Communications and most recently a Marketing Manager for Denver-based ListenUp.
