TV's For digital Displays

[Stevenw]

Hey All

The school I work at has managed to get some money to buy some new displays for the dining hall.

Currently we have 1x 32" lcd (cheap make) and 2x 19" lcds (cheap make) these are displaying power points atm but we have a xibo server and clients ready to replace the power points.

We are looking at buying some good quality Tv's we have roughly 2k to spend and im looking at buying 2x 46" LCD's for about £700 each.

Would it be better to go plasma or even LED?
What sort of make or models ? (i have said Samsung, LG or any big name manufactures)

Will be using VGA to connect them up to start with but Looking to move to HDMI later on for the quality and sound.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated

Thanks

Steve

[3s-gtech]

We did just this to supplement our projector. We bought 2 50" LG Plasma TVs (plasma for the contrast ratio in a bright room, and price per inch is very competitive). We paid £600 each. They're stunning, great quality - currently running on 720p as that's the projector's max. Used every day with an HDMI splitter and Humax Foxsat HDR.

[localzuk]

You really want to go for a professional display rather than a TV, as the warranty will likely not cover 'always on' type uses that businesses/schools have.

We bought one of these for our school reception - SAMSUNG INFORMATION SYSTEMS Monitor Lcd 40in Sm-400dx Tft 1366x768 Black LH40BVPLBF/EN

[Stevenw]

Iv decided to go with LCD (get more for the money) Probably Samsung or LG

[localzuk]

Iv decided to go with LCD (get more for the money) Probably Samsung or LG

Have you taken the warranty issue into account?

[jamesfed]

One thing to look at in your investigations is the energy cost of the TV - I know modern TVs are alot better with power than they once are but still if you look how much power you will be chewing through LED/LCD might look alot better than plasma (even if I do like saying plasma more :P).

[Stevenw]

Cant see the warranty being a big issue tbh wont be on 24/7.

As for power we are getting fairly modern LCD's Samsung LE46C530 so should be fine.

[plexer]

The moment you install a consumer TV for a commercial purpose i.e as a digital signage solution I doubt the warranty will cover anything.

Ben

[plexer]

Also consider the fact of the replacement under the warranty if it does go wrong you will likely have to de-install the tv and send it off for repair/replacement are you happy that you will have no display for the time that takes?

Commercial panels are designed to be on for longer and therefore less likely to go wrong than a consumer tv being used constantly.

Ben

[plexer]

Commercial Vs. Consumer-Grade Monitors and TV's | JSCS Digital Signage

Consumer TV's vs Commercial Displays | Digital View Blog

Ben

[K.C.Leblanc]

We have both Plasma and LCD displays attached to our OneLan system.

The LCD is much less prone to burn in then the plasmas.

[maniac]

We've been using samsung LCD TV's for our digital signage, we have 4 x 32" ones around the school, and a 42" one in Science. The oldest is now about 2 1/2 years old and still works good as new. They are so much cheaper than commercial displays and in my opinion it's worth gambling possible warranty issues against the cost saving. (Each 32" screen cost £300 and the 42" one was just over £400.)

They are linked to laptops which are up in the ceiling voids above the screens, and are set to power on automatically on weekdays at 7:00am and power off automatically at 6:00pm although I can change this centrally if necessary. The screens just fall into standby mode when they lose the signal from the laptop. The system uses Xibo to deliver the content and so far I've not had one screen fail, although one of the laptops packed up the other week.

Mike.

[Jamo]

We have both Plasma and LCD displays attached to our OneLan system.

The LCD is much less prone to burn in then the plasmas.

Agreed using plasmas is a terrible idea, for one they are hugely power hungry and also they suffer from EXTREME burn in issues which LCD's do not (anywhere near as much)

We had some Plasmas running a dvd (when I was at PC World) and it went back to the menu then stayed there all day. Needlesss to say the TV pretty much had the spider man logo burnt into the display!!

[DarrenC]

I used to work for Sharp electronics, training sales people on LCD technology. I was in Curry's training their sales team, and was discussing screen burn with them. One of the sales guys told me that recently, a customer had been back to them after buying a plasma TV that had been used as an in store demo model. It had been run for a few days with their logo and slogan on almost permanently. The customer came back to them and his opening line was 'Curry's no worries, well I've got a bloody worry!' the words Curry's no worries were burnt into the top left of the screen, classic!

If you do look at a plasma make sure it has a feature called pixel shift on it which does help reduce screen burn, but I would definitely look at LCD and I would definitely go for a commercial screen if you have the budget.