Fox News, the top-rated cable news channel here in the US, has recently embraced the future through their re-worked News Deck headed by Shepard Smith. The studio re-launch took a month to complete and with it, brought some massive new changes. Literally.

Found throughout the studio are BATS (big area touchscreens), which in reality are 55-inch computers running Windows 8.  It’s so audacious that when Sam shared a picture of it this morning, I seriously thought it was a Photoshop job. But nope, they are real and they are being used by staff to monitor news, Twitter and various feeds for the latest information.

There’s also a 38-foot video wall that surrounds the studio, which isn’t too shabby either, and the whole studio looks like something out of Star Trek.

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Fox News has evidently created some of their own custom apps for Windows 8 to manage those Twitter and incoming News feeds. Too bad we can’t get them leaked as then we can all play news reporter from our homes! No word on what exactly powers the hardware or the display resolution, though some information will probably come forward eventually.

You can see it all in action in the video tour above.

Imagine operating Windows 8 from a 55-inch “tablet” just a few feet from your face? It seems kind of crazy to us, but kudos to Fox News for pushing the boundaries. Incidently, we played with a similar setup back at CES last January: "The world’s most badass Windows 8 computer"

Fox News has always seemed to be a fan of Microsoft as they were one of the first news channels to offer a Windows Phone app, one that has continually been developed through WIndows Phone 8.

Source:  TVNewser; Thanks, Patrick S., for the tip