I have a brewery that wants to use a couple samsung TVs for their beer menu that changes daily. What is the best solution for this? Also, some times the TVs will be used for TV (ball games and stuff). Does that complicate it any?

The TVs are smart TVs.Any chance there is some sort of built in option?

BrightSign Digital signage players.

They do have models with built in ATSC tuners and HDMI inputs. All solid state.

Sign content can go over or wrap around the TV content.

Content creation is KEY with digital signs.

Reoccurring revenue opportunity. Growing industry.

[Link: brightsign.biz]

PS LG had or has some commercial models with some built in capability...

PS BrightSign players can do portrait or landscape and whacky configurations of video walls if necessary!

Printed menus are almost always done in portrait orientation. If I were doing menu signage, the first thing I'd look for is a TV that can present information that way. Every time I see this, both in a restaurant and at a local distributor, and heck, at the airport, I'm impressed that it's not just a TV. It seems to be a totally different and exotic product simply because it's taller than wide and it adds a bit of cool to the environment.

No, I don't do signage. I'm just saying to think about this before buying anything.

That will look really stupid when they do want to put a ballgame on, now wont it

Actually You probably could have a portrait TV with a 16x9 window somewhere and the sign content sprinkled around it...

I will never touch a brightsign piece of gear ever again. The network portion of their gear is a nightmare. Documentation was missing key information and getting tech support help was a joke.
You need to email them and when they do get back to you they tell you things you already know and already explained, but dont actually address your issue. That email game goes on for as long as you continue without giving up. In my case about a week and a half before someone I know was able to get a phone number from someone higher up that actually helped, slightly.

I will be using Spinnetix, it is pricey- but it is the best. I demoed their software and it is pretty slick. The margins are ok.

Zohan. I know someone there so I never used the email support. They do offer free support via email (admittedly a PITA) and paid phone support. I bought myself a demo to play with way before I had any projects to learn the stuff so I was not "under the gun". I or no one that I know has had networking issues with their stuff. What kind of problems did you have?

Any TV can do it. It's up to the source. The computer you are at right now can almost certainly be configured to output its video that way.

You would think that the documentation is there to actually help you through the process. Hopefully it's improved since my time but I dont know. There were important steps left out so that you could get to a certain point but then no further. The steps left out were about getting the players to work properly. Keep in mind their software is proprietary so it only made sense to the guy that designed it. It was not intuitive so really there was no way to figure it out without the documentation.

Good for you that you got it before hand. I did not, but I also didnt expect it to be missing pertinent info that was needed to actually get the players online.

Once that was done everything has been rock solid with no issues for about a year and 4 months now....

I can hold a grudge, and for a company to waste my time like that was very annoying....
It's also a slap in the phone that even though I purchased the units phone support is $$ ?
I would have even done that but like I said it was near impossible to get someone on the phone and tech support through emails kept referring me back to the same information in the manual that was either wrong or missing.

I just can't do business with that type of nonsense. We integrators always complain about these types of things, the way to force them to get their act together is don't do business with them until they do so.....there's other fish in the sea.

What do we use for signage? Depends on what you and your customer needs.

Look at Supersign from lg, or tightrope, or iadea.

Fred, what do you suggest to display the daily menu on two TV's? It would be nice if it would wrap or overlay on TV content, but isn't mandatory.

BrightSign. Works great with JAP. As other people say, changing the content is key. The LG Super Signz require a USB drive. The BrightSign can be done remotely from a computer. I haven't had a problem with BrightSign, but I was under the impression that the distributor handled the tech support.

Celabs has a good selection for signage, I have used them for quite a few menu boards. They have pretty good margins also. Tech support has been very helpful when I have needed them and the software is pretty nice also. You can create just about any kind of layout you can think of and can be changed or updated remotely from the software or scheduling. I have used some with built in tuners/inputs and the very economical one which I believe is the mp70, all have been pretty painless for me.

Note that the new LG supersign product connects to the network for updating, and does not require a dongle or usb stick to perform this task.

Fins, what I'd suggest is having a conversation about all sorts of things, so that I can specify the correct product for the job.