I was in New York recently, and while I have been there many times in recent years I still like to have a walk through Times Square to see how media companies and retailers are continuing pitched battles to outdo each other with bigger LED board installations.
The new American Eagle store has an absolutely towering 25-storey wall of tight pixel LEDs rising from a corner off the landmark square, and wrapping around it. Other stores and media companies have also spent Lord knows how much making themselves noticed.
It’s all quite amazing, and has very little to do with digital signage as it plays out day to day, Yes, they are signs, and they are digital. But the comparison end pretty much there.
What these big boards tell us, though, is just how important it is to be big with visuals. Most of what’s deployed in the digital signage industry right now is, quite arguably, too small for its surroundings. A screen that eats a wall in someone’s main living area at home looks relatively tiny hanging from a high ceiling in a 100,000 square foot food barn. Unless a screen is down at eye level or nested with product, a big LCD or plasma in many settings struggles to get noticed.
The novelty factor of big flat panel monitors is long gone, so people aren’t looking at them because they are there.
So what do you do? Try other stuff.
In retail, and the other indoor spaces that are the mainstream of what we called digital signage, big LEDs don’t really work. Too costly, too bright, and while the image reproduction on the indoor versions can look pretty good from a distance, up close, the visuals look terrible. The LED bulbs are too far apart. They have a role, but a limited one.
Big projection screens present too many maintenance issues and physical challenges, and the visuals never look great in a bright room. Sunlight and ambient light are the enemies and may always be.
LCD and plasma walls that have screens stitched together look much better, but even the newest ones still have very noticeable seams between the screens, and are a lot of work to keep all looking the same. They have presence, but what gets put up tends to look compromised from the moment these walls turn on.
That’s why I was very intrigued about a new product being rolled out by Christie Digital, a company that has been in the projection business for many decades, but has now developed a product that takes the display business in a new direction.
I did some writing for the company in the lead-up to the launch of MicroTiles, so there is my conflict declared. But that’s where my interests end. I am writing about the technology now, because it deals effectively with the BIG thing.
The tiles have very bright LED light engines inside self-contained units that can stack and join in any number of shapes. So instead of a video wall always being a uniform wall, it can be as jagged as a bar chart tracking the stock market. It can wrap around door frames. It can run up support columns, or look like an LED ribbon board in a sports arena.
The difference is that the clarity and color reproduction are superior to LED and better even than the monster LCD and plasma stuff in rich guys’ home cinemas. The units will last for more than seven years at 24/7 usage. And they service fast and easily from the front, and are self-aware, meaning the Tiles talk to each other and calibrate on the fly. Where regular video walls get patchy from screen to screen, these tiles steadily compare notes and sync up.
And the seams are 1 mm. That’s it. Hairline.
Gorgeous stuff. A little pricey and meant for now for flagship stores and big-ticket venues. But over time, these units could be very commonplace.
The reason: They deal with all the issues and needs of BIG.
That is very good news for all of us. A lot of retailers are not yet doing digital signage because what they have seen in store has large been uninspiring and lacking true impact. Ad sales on many networks struggle because the screens they install doesn’t get the notice numbers they need.
But when display technology can get fitted into these sorts of environments and both dominate and fit the space, that really is BIG.
Dave Haynes is one of the most experienced people in the still-nascent digital signage industry. He has held senior management and business development positions with some of the biggest names in the industry. He’s also well-known and respected as one of the most widely-read industry authorities through his blogs, Sixteen:Nine and Buzz, Not Buzzwords.This is the second time around for Dave as new media pioneer, having been one of the first large daily newspaper editors in North America to put his paper online. Haynes brings a strong technical and operational perspective on the industry, as well as communications skills developed over 20 years working in print journalism. 
Yes it is interesting how much the size of an interior can make a big flat panel display look so small, or as you pointed out, in a residential sized room make it look even larger. It all has to do with proportions. This is where creative designers come in. Don’t just wall mount or pole mount that display, especially in a cavernous space. Play with proportions and design creative surrounds and enclosures for digital signage and help make that flat panel get noticed and “appear” larger. Bringing the viewers eye to a predefined space with a surround or enclosure helps reduce the overall size of an interior. Then within that predefined space you can make messaging, static or electronic, get noticed and appear bigger. In addition, interior and graphic design elements can be incorporated with the surround or enclosure design to enhance the overall interior design and brand identity. I understand the potential of the Christie solution but my concern, granted based on what little I know about them, is whether MicroTiles will be able to compete on price with LCD. Christie offers quality, but expensive niche market solutions. I do not think they are in a good position to compete in a commodity business with billion dollar consumer electronics manufacturers, nor do I think they want to. If they can support and hit manufacturing volumes that help make MicroTiles more affordable that’s great, or perhaps their innovation may be someone else’s inspiration for other more affordably priced solutions even better, but until that happens I think Christie stays a boutique manufacturer and MicroTiles someone limited to hi-end only installs, not a mainstream play.
Great points Bruce, particularly about surrounds and making a display seem bigger. I have seen that done a few time and it not only helps the visual get bigger, but also gets it away from just being a screen hanging on a wall or from the ceiling.
Regarding Christie, they have always played at the high end in the projection space and the same probably applies here. There is very little margin on commercial panels, so there is little glory getting in on that fight. I see these tiles in flagship stores, high-end malls and new airports. Don’t expect them to be a part of the 7-11 network.
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