Commercial Digital Displays

As a digital signage solution provider, MEP Digital Systems consultants get asked this question constantly, by all our potential clients and will go through some of the most compelling reasons to use commercial screens or Large Format Displays (LFD) versus residential screens for in store digital signage. When you look at residential screens or screens sold at local electronics retailer, all of them have been designed to work in homes and are not designed to be installed in a QSR – Quick Service Restaurant, where there is excess heat and oil in the air or at a airport where they have to run for 24 hours a day. All LFD’s are designed with enclosures that are built to handle the stresses of the environments we build them into, with additional cooling vents, toughened front panels and covers that can handle corrosion and dust. Additionally the long lasting displays are designed with thinner bezels to maximise the viewing area, which is key to digital signage.

Large Format Displays do not only have the basic input ports which are found on normal residential screens, which is used to connect your Blu-Ray, DSTV and Surround Sound System at home, but have Serial ports to monitor the LFD so that we can centrally detect if the display is on or off, manage the LFD’s temperature, etc. Additional ports such as Ethernet, RS232 and additional USB ports, further enhance the capability to network and communicate with the display. Electrical power unit’s onboard commercial displays are also more industrial to manage the variation in electricity feed to the display. In retail environments for instance, there are many more electrical requirements than in a residential environment, this will lead to power outages. A residential screen will not automatically switch on after an outage, as a commercial screen will and is also able to automatically switch on and off based on a schedule.

The individual components of LFD’s are all designed and built from heavy-duty parts, which ensures that commercial screens are up to the task of working constantly for 12 – 24 Hrs per day in harsh environments. This is in contrast to the family room or lounge where residential screens work for up to 8 hrs a day. LFD’s are also built to work perfectly on both landscape and portrait mode, which will normally cause ghosting of an image on a residential screen if positioned in portrait mode. Over the years most reputable residential screen suppliers have been offering a basic warranty, but with Samsung our LFD supplier, you get a three year warranty that provides you the client with peace of mind over the period. Large Format Displays have always been perceived to be more expensive but they are designed for digital signage and are robust enough to deliver on your 24/7/365 day business requirement.