by John Wills | Jul 13, 2016 | Pro Displays, Uncategorized
I’ve noticed over the last year the increasing use of outdoor displays in commercial applications. Once regulated to residential porches and light commercial use (such as a sports bar’s outdoor covered patio), manufacturers are now producing displays that eliminate the need for environmental enclosures and kiosks.
Today, properly specified displays provide many benefits compared to the traditional panel within an enclosure or kiosk. Some of those benefits include but are not limited to:
- Weatherproof operation at a considerable lower cost without expensive environmental enclosures & kiosks
- Better picture due to no gap between the screen and an outer enclosure glass that may hinder picture quality
- Overall reduction in physical size and weight for the application
- Simpler mounting and installation
- Ease of on-going maintenance
But how does a design engineer specify the right outdoor panel for a particular environmental application? It’s relatively simple – match the properly-rated display to the outdoor demands of the application. First, assess the application environmental demands:
- Environmental temperature extremes.
- Dust & water extremes (both type of dust and at what angles they can attack a panel).
- Under cover or in direct sunlight.
- Maintenance access (e.g., mounted high, extremely restricted location, etc.).
- Exposure to glass-breaking projectiles like rocks and such.
Now, match the display to the environmental demands of the application.
- Temperature Extremes: Coldest and warmest extremes a display can safely operate.
- Dust and Moisture: Determine a display’s rating using either a NEMA Enclosure Rating (relative dust & particle resistance measurement) or the more popular “IP’ Rating (Ingress Protection as defined by DIN EN 60529). An IP rating indicates the external conditions enclosures can withstand. It describes a display’s scope of protection during use when exposed to temperatures, fuel and oil and their fumes, chemical clouds, acid based moisture and dust entering the display. For example, the “I” in IP has a scale of 1 to 6 that defines the protection against contact and ingress of dust. The “P” has a scale of 0 to 9k that defines ingress of moisture from water droplets to high pressure steam cleaning.
- Indirect or Direct Sunlight: If direct sunlight is a factor, consider a panel with UV optical bonding that can eliminate reflection & refraction glare so it can be easily seen in direct sunlight. Note that simply being a high brightness panel (1500+ nits) doesn’t necessarily translate to good picture in direct sunlight. It’s hard to out bright the sun!
- Impact Resistant: Determine if the display needs to be protected from impacts. And should the screen be broken, make sure it is shatter proof to protect nearby viewers and property.
- Maintenance: Some displays will be mounted high or in difficult to reach places. The less maintenance of filters and the ability to be hosed-off or pressure washed can be key.
Almo ProAV partners with Peerless-AV to offer a family of outdoor displays starting with the IP55-rated UltraView Series up to the IP68-rated Xtreme series. We can match the right display for the environmental demands of temperatures, dust & moisture, direct sunlight, impact resistance, and ease of maintenance. Also, we will assist in pairing the proper outdoor, wind-rated mount. Feel free to contact me or your Almo ProAV Account Rep. We’ll be happy to assist you in specifying the right display for your outdoor application.
by Todd Heberlein | Jun 3, 2016 | Digital Signage, DVLED, News, Uncategorized
There are many factors that go into choosing the correct LED sign, but a few important attributes are commonly ignored. Below are three commonly overlooked factors that should be considered when deciding on a sign manufacturer.
1) Operating Cost
Capital expenditure, or initial investment cost, is typically the first and the most influential factor that most decision makers consider. What many overlook or only give a passing consideration is the ongoing expense of the sign. The larger the sign, the more important this factor becomes over the life of the sign. Knowing that you’re installing an energy efficient sign can save you tens of thousands in operating expenses down the road.
2) Ease of Use / Management
Signs that require proprietary software, or require the purchase of third-party software can add frustration for the end user, a large learning curve, as well as push up the total cost of the project. ADTI offers the flexibility of using their included content management system, SkyShow, or any signage solution that can utilize their standard HDMI input on the SkyPanel system.
3) Ease of Installation
This is a factor that is commonly skipped over, and almost never is considered by the end user. Since it ultimately affects the bottom line, as well as the timeline of the project, I think it’s an attribute that deserves consideration. If the installation requires special structural changes because of the weight, fabrication to enclose the sign for weatherproofing, or modification to allow for extra depth, the money you saved on the lower cost hardware shrinks considerably, or is completely wiped out.
ADTI
The difficulty of measuring the increase in quality in comparison to the increase in cost, can cause endless hours of agonizing research, and can freeze the final decision. Many are drawn in by the low cost LED panels they’ve seen coming out of China, and end user’s tend to lean towards the frugal choice for the initial capital expenditure and ignore the ongoing operating expense of running an LED sign; which can be an expensive mistake. With ADTI, you don’t have to make that compromise. The combination of affordable initial cost, American made quality, IP67 weatherproofing, and incredibly low power consumption, makes for a visually stunning, “no compromise” solution.
by Apryl Lamberti | May 23, 2016 | Digital Signage, Education, Events, Uncategorized
Since moving to Pensacola in 2014 after living in major markets like New York and Atlanta for so many years, flying out of a smaller airport isn’t so bad—with no security lines I can breeze into the airport, grab my regular parking spot right near the elevator in the garage right across from the terminal… and “Who’s bedda than me?” as they say in New York.
Visiting Vegas this time for the NAB Show, (National Association of Broadcasters), it’s the perfect event to showcase Samsung’s new broadcast video wall display solution, the UD55E-S. Looking forward to hearing feedback from dozens of major TV networks and their engineering teams over the next two days, as I deplane I’m immediately greeted by a number of Samsung displays 
before we even leave the gate area and I’m vividly reminded how rich this destination is for digital signage as it pounces on visitors at every turn. Countless displays clamor for your attention- larger than life images and dazzling graphics promoting the latest acts and long-standing shows on the strip not to mention tantalizing jackpot tickers and even slot machines right in the terminal. Checking into my hotel, Samsung video wall displays (UD Series) serve as a sleek, gorgeous digital canvas behind the minimalist and modern check-in desk to create the chic, hipster experience at SLS Las Vegas. Samsung displays, tablets and other technology are hard at work supporting the property’s mission for world class hospitality. From the lobby and restaurants, concierge lounge right down to Smart TVs in every guest room, (we’ll save that for another blog).
Samsung’s UD55E-S displays are calibrated specifically for use by broadcast studios. Factory-calibrated to a low 2,800˚-6,500˚ K color temperature, UD55E-S monitors are in sync with nearly all broadcast cameras and lighting, giving you the confidence of knowing the image on your studio’s videowall is precisely what your audience at home will see. UD55E-S displays also maintain a sharp image and accurate color when viewed off-axis, and the ultra-narrow bezel-to-bezel width of just 3.5mm (about 1/8″) delivers a near-seamless videowall, with maximum impact, clarity and accuracy. In the below images taken at ISE by our VP Marketing, Melody Craigmyle in March, you can see the difference in the images through the eyes of a viewer at home watching a broadcast with a traditional video wall display (right) and UD55E-S broadcast video wall display (left). Notice how crisp and vivid the content appears on the broadcast videowall unit compared to what the majority of studios are using today.
For a limited time, we are offering special pricing on IN-STOCK UD55E-S broadcast videowall units, while supplies last. We can help you save money on the product AND reduce installation labor by more than half of typical requirements for traditional videowall panels with Samsung’s extensive factory color calibration and advanced color expert software (included free) and with every UD55E-S. Give me a call or email me today with details about your ON-CAMERA videowall application or studio set client who is ready for an upgrade and I’ll help you confirm if this solution is right for your specific project.
So whether you call it “Sin City” or “The Entertainment Capital of the World,” Vegas is totally a Samsung town!
Here’s a picture of Almo’s Business Development Manager, Apryl Lamberti and Nancy Onffroy, Samsung’s Channel Manager at NAB on the show floor.
by Rob Ziv | May 18, 2016 | Uncategorized
Why would anyone take a perfectly good desktop stand for a computer and throw it away? After all, the stand was included with the computer monitor and replacing it with another option will cause additional expense.
It may seem like a small thing. But for me it meant more space and greater productivity. I use a treadmill desk with a decent size work area – but no matter how I positioned my monitors, using the space was cramped.
Before:
I decided to try the Chief K1D220B dual monitor arms clamped to my desk. My thought was this would free up the space otherwise consumed by the stock monitor stand. It worked better than expected. Not only have I gained desk space, but now with the tips of my fingers, I can position my monitors at the exact height, distance, and angle that works in any given moment. I am less fatigued at the end of the day from poor monitor placement and I no longer struggle to get everything positioned on my desk. As an added bonus, I can keep my blinds open longer throughout the day as the sun no longer washes out my monitors.
It may seem like a small thing, but after using these fully adjustable mounts, I don’t want to go back to old way. The next step is to put these on my traditional desk at work and home. After experiencing the difference of using adjustable monitor arms, I can’t foresee ever using conventional desktop stands again.
After:
by Melody Craigmyle | Jan 26, 2016 | Digital Signage, Education, News, Uncategorized
First, if you haven’t heard of the term “techorating”, it’s not something I made up. I thought I had but after I asked my dear friends Alan and Jonathan Brawn to write a course for our E4 AV Tour on this trend I was calling techorating, they discovered it was not an original. Techorating was a catchy term coined back in 2008 by interior designer, Doug Wilson from the TLC TV show Trading Spaces, as a concept for the emergence of integrating home technology and home decor in balance with one another. Since the Brawn’s taught this course for us a few years ago, the term caught on it the AV industry and has been written about in nearly every major AV publication, including a recent article in Digital Signage Today.com. I’ve seen a lot of great examples of techorating, especially in Las Vegas where designers and architects continue to push the limits to wow audiences, attract visitors and keep us coming back for more shows, casinos, long cab lines and the ever-present linger of 2nd hand smoke. Which is why my visit to Comcast last week was filled with techorating awesomeness! It was an experience like no other, elegantly done with a playful yet bold approach – and 100% smoke free. 
You enter the lobby on JFK Boulevard in downtown Philadelphia, which is the tallest building in the city, and at first it looks like any other normal lobby: 
Nice ashy oak walls, silver accents, very clean and polished look. But wait, something starts to happen and… 
It’s not just a wall! It’s an intergalactic force to be reckoned with. No wait, it’s a water wall! 
Cool stuff, right? It’s the attention to detail as well that struck me. Much of the content intertwines with the wall architecture, creating virtual joints in the places where the LED panels “join” – you can see from this shot that part of the image is a real joint and the other is silver colored pixels. 
You may be wondering what I was doing lingering in the Comcast lobby. I was there on official business but I can tell you that this is one of the most visited tourist destinations in Philadelphia, so it’s not uncommon to see all sorts of people in their lobby. We launched our new Almo Connect service for our resellers to offer bandwidth, cable TV and voice services to their customers and Comcast is one of our partners (along with many other top cable providers). Why would our partners offer bandwidth services? Think about if you’re doing a digital signage deployment and you plan on refreshing high resolution content on a daily or weekly basis. You need LOTS of bandwidth! And for future proofing, think about 4K – now you’re talking BIG data coming across a network. And of course the IT people are like, “no way, not on my network!” And you’re like, “no big deal, we offer high speed internet and we can take care of everything.” Voila – the reseller makes monthly reoccurring revenue on that sale – that’s right – every single month. But back to the techorating – here’s a very cool video so you can see how they use different parts of the wall for entertainment, like this “cubical” video:
Kudos to the designers and especially to the content creators. The convergence of architecture, decorating, digital display, graphic arts done spectacularly well and I didn’t even have to walk through a casino to see it.
by Melody Craigmyle | Jan 12, 2016 | Events, News, Uncategorized
I’ve been waiting patiently since October to write about one of the most interesting experiences I’ve had in a long time – our visit to Bose Corporate Headquarters in Boston. For those of you who have been in the Pro AV industry a long time, you hear the words “factory tour” and you have flash backs of walking miles in hot warehouses, speeches about operational excellence and those signs that read “No Accidents in 213 days!”. This was not the case at Bose, which started at the uber impressive Wall of Patents (which was actually not a wall but a long corridor because there are SO many of them) . I asked our tour guide where he had been before Bose, thinking he would name another audio company and he said, “Finishing my Ph.D at Harvard”. Suffice it to say there are A LOT of REALLY brilliant people at Bose engineering A LOT of brilliant technology.
I had no idea there was an actual Dr. Bose before my trip. He was a professor at MIT and fostered a culture of research, excellence and courage to try new things. You immediately get this strong sense of culture when talking to anyone working there, which thanks to Dr. Bose, remains a privately held company that is dedicated to R&D. We saw it in action in, of all places, the shuttle bus! Look, it’s the Almo event at Bose!
And then, there is a specially designed seat on the shuttle with Bose seat suspension technology, the smoothest ride on the road. Here’s our Director of Business Development, Brian Rhatigan experiencing the ride:
This was the tip of the iceberg. The day was filled with all sorts of amazing experiences.
Ever imagine being in an underground bunker with a couple of hundred speakers going at full blast just to see at what point they fail? Been there, done that.
Ever imagine seeing speakers baked, sea salted, cooled, dropped, kicked, stretched and stressed to the absolute limit? Been there, done that too. You can’t believe the trials and tribulation they put their products through! All to make sure they are providing you with the highest quality products, even in the most outrageous of conditions.
Here we are at the end of the tour in a room that blocks all sorts of signals for specialized testing. Don’t ask me to explain it because after all, I’m in marketing. That’s why we have our audio BDM extraordinare, Rob Ziv.
Almo ProAV team at Bose Headquarters (from left): Brian Rhatigan, Melody Craigmyle & Sam Taylor
I can’t tell you how excited we are to partner with Bose. And I think our dealers are going to be very impressed with the level of excellence, innovation and support from the folks at Bose plus our team of highly trained account managers. Take a look at Bose’s microsite for learn more.
