Electronic poster display machine

[Frank Cox]

I'm not sure if it's just the times that we're living in or if it's going to be an ongoing issue, but lately it seems like I'm not getting a poster for about one-third of the movies that I play. I just write the title of the movie on the back of an old one that's not printed on both sides and put that in the window, but that's not exactly a pretty solution.

So it might be time to start considering some kind of an electronic display machine to put in my window instead.

The front windows on my theatre are each about 46x30; they are made to fit movie posters.

I could probably rig something up by getting a television of the appropriate size and mounting that sideways in the window, then driving a slide show with a computer, but I wonder if I would be re-inventing the wheel.

Do you folks know of a self-contained, movie-poster-sized advertising display doodad that runs off of something like a flash drive or a network connection that would allow me to display a slideshow of movie posters?

[Carsten Kurz]

Most of todays flatscreen TVs (at least ALL of the size you mention) offer that functionality. Plug-in a USB-Stick, play slide show. Most of the more recent ones will also do that wirelessly if you operate a local WiFi. They have all sorts of apps to show images and videos. Of course there are professional signage displays and software for this, but, currently, nothing can beat the price of a mass produced plain-vanilla flat screen tv.

[Chris Daigle]

I tried putting a flat screen TV in a window to do exactly what you're thinking, but in the afternoons here the window was getting direct sun. The unfortunate result was that the glare from the sunlight hitting the window prevented anyone from seeing the TV image and additionally the heat from being in direct sunlight started creating black spots in the TV causing some permanent damage. We took the TV out after a couple weeks as it just wasn't working during the part of the day when we really wanted it on! A TV would be a good and cheap solution if your windows were shaded all day long. The commercial units that have fans and are built for use outdoors would probably work but they're significantly more expensive.

[Randy Stankey]

They make these little micro computers with a CPU, a SSD and all the standard inputs and outputs in a package that's about the size of a pack of cigarettes. It's got a full-blown version of Windows or whichever alternate OS you want. From the user's perspective, it's almost indistinguishable from a traditional computer. They use them at the place where I work for terminals where people can log into the jobs they are working on. They also put them in the lobby and break room to display messages for employees.

Everything is all networked and they are controlled from the front office, somewhere.

You could probably get one of those computers for a few hundred bucks.

With a computer like that, you could display your posters, play trailers and post PSA's and other information for your customers.

With a little work, it can be set up so that you can control the whole thing, even multiple displays, from your office, upstairs.

[Scott John]

following... we also want to add a couple of digital poster displays at the front windows. We are right on our downtown main street and need to have better visibility for marketing.

Just starting the research on options and seeing if there is something ready out of the box with a stand that is easier than trying to DIY a TV or monitor.

[Mike Blakesley]

Undoubtedly there will be somebody in the advertising world that will offer a package deal with a TV and a tablet containing a program to cause it to display posters. But I'll bet such a thing would cost about 3x the money of figuring out your own setup. You could easily create a slide show and download your own posters from any number of places, and as for the screen all you need is a TV on its side. Even the low priced ones give a good picture. The main thing is durability, especially if it will be exposed to the sun and/or temperature extremes for hours every day.

[Scott Norwood]

You want "digital signage" products. As noted above, regular home TV sets aren't bright enough for this and also tend to not be designed or warranteed to operate properly in a vertical orientation.

There are monitors that are designed to operate vertically and be bright enough for outdoor use, but they aren't cheap. You would also need the "digital signage" playback device. You don't really want to use a computer for this, since failures would result in embarrassing "computer" error messages on the monitor.

Unfortunately, I don't have any specific recommendations, but I've seen this done "wrong" often enough to know what to avoid.

My personal opinion on this is that regular posters generally look better, especially in older-style cinemas, but I can see why electronic "posters" would make sense if you have trouble getting real ones.

Edit: this is the sort of thing that you want (I have no experience with them...this is just what Google found):
https://www.sunbritetv.com/commercia...al-orientation

[Marcel Birgelen]

To be honest, some of the newer consumer TVs with Dolby Vision / HDR support work fine, even in challenging daylight situations. Most of them won't really mind the vertical orientation either, although it's often a bit of a pain to get your software into that configuration.

The biggest advantage of professional screens is that they come with an RS232 interface and the possibility to block remote inputs, so nobody is going to mess around with your screens using IR commands and you can configure your screen settings remotely via Serial.

Most of the Samsung professional digital screens I've been using over the years didn't come with any particular stellar warranty either. Unless you're going to build a videowall, I see less cases for overpriced professional displays compared to normal consumer ones by the day.

One important note though: Keep away from OLED screens. While they may be bright and shiny, they'll suffer from irreparable image retention. While almost all LCD screens suffer from some form of image retention, even the professional ones, this can usually be fixed by flashing some colorful images on them now and then for a minute or so. We've been using https://www.themoviedb.org/ for a while now to automatically fetch posters for most movies we're screening.