Digital signage for church entrance

[Pete McCrea]

Couple of points in favour of buying panels designed for digital signage - brightness and warranty.

 

Digital signage panels can be bought in higher brightness levels for better visibility in day light conditions. Depending on location this might be useful.

 

In terms of warranty: my wife worked in the Tv and audio department of For the John Lewis Partnership a few years ago. A dead tv was returned under warranty for repair. They manufacturer wouldn’t honour the repair - the log files showed it was powered on and off consistently at the same time every day. Their argument was it was being used in a business. Transpired the credit card used to pay was from an estate agents.... Digital signage displays are designed, and warrantied for more rigourous use (24/7, 16/7), and will be repaired or swapped if they fail. A home TV might not. We have advised clients to be atleast aware of this, as it might be an issue.

[ImagineerTom]

In a world when a 4ft hd brand name screen can be bought for £350 is warranty a major concern? Unles a pro display screen has a 3+ year warranty its the more expensive option surely?

[kalmatthew]

HDMI protocol has coding for turning screens on or off and forcing screens to switch to displaying the particular input the command is coming from so even quite a cheep flatscreen TV should be capable of doing what you want to do provided you've got a controller/replay box that is spitting out proper HDMI

 

I lived in the far East for a few years and noticeably my TV and those of my colleagues and frinds didn't support this. They were newer than models that in UK would have done, so if your looking at lower cost no name units it's worth double checking this feature is there before purchase.

[revbobuk]

Couple of points in favour of buying panels designed for digital signage - brightness and warranty.

 

Digital signage panels can be bought in higher brightness levels for better visibility in day light conditions. Depending on location this might be useful.

 

In terms of warranty: my wife worked in the Tv and audio department of For the John Lewis Partnership a few years ago. A dead tv was returned under warranty for repair. They manufacturer wouldn’t honour the repair - the log files showed it was powered on and off consistently at the same time every day. Their argument was it was being used in a business. Transpired the credit card used to pay was from an estate agents.... Digital signage displays are designed, and warrantied for more rigourous use (24/7, 16/7), and will be repaired or swapped if they fail. A home TV might not. We have advised clients to be atleast aware of this, as it might be an issue.

 

Pete - what would you consider to be good in terms of brightness level? In (say) a well-lit entrance area with windows but no direct sunlight falling on the screen? I notice that a fairly moderately priced LG digital signage display (£640 for 49" diagonal) is rated at 350 CD/m2 - how would that compare with domestic devices?

[Joe Fernand]

Digital Signage content management - look at Screenly OS running on a couple of Raspberry Pi, very low cost and simple to use system; I have a bunch of them running at my local Community Centre. There is also a paid version of Screenly with additional functionality.

 

Displays - where possible I would go with a Pro Display with in built timer and or the ability to control remotely, look around there are thousands being replaced every day from corporate installs, I have yet to purchase one for any of the Community projects I work on.

 

HDMI Distribution - HD or UHD over LAN would be my preference it is more robust than long HDMI cables, esp. if 'others' get near the kit!

 

Joe