Displays
Indoor Digital Displays in Pittsburgh
The screen is the easy part. What decides whether an indoor display looks professional or improvised is where it sits, how bright it needs to be, and how the cable gets from the screen to the power.
Either way, the consultation is what turns a range into a number. If you want to see what these displays carry day to day, the ideas page has a week of it.
Commercial display or television
They look the same on a spec sheet and behave nothing alike after a year. A consumer television is built for a few hours of evening viewing in a dim room. A commercial display is built to run 16 hours a day, seven days a week, with a warranty that assumes it will.
We install commercial panels rated for 16 hours a day, seven days a week, with a three-year warranty. If you already have commercial displays mounted and want to use them, we will look at what you have and tell you whether they will hold up — sometimes the answer is yes.
Where the screen goes decides everything else
Wall mount
The default. Needs a stud, blocking, or the right anchor for the wall type — brick, plaster and drywall-over-steel all take different hardware.
Ceiling hang
Used where wall space is taken or the viewing area is open. Needs a drop that does not put the screen in a traffic path.
Freestanding or counter
Where you cannot drill, or where the screen should move. Common in leased space and at events.
Behind a counter
Height and angle set for someone standing at a register, not for someone sitting at a desk.
The things that make an install look cheap
- A power cable running down the wall in a raceway that does not match
- A screen mounted too high, so everyone looks up at it
- Glare from a window making half the screen unreadable at midday
- Brightness at full for a dim room, lighting up the whole space
- A player sitting on a shelf with visible cables
- Content stretched to the wrong aspect ratio
None of these are hardware problems, and all of them are the difference between a display that looks installed and one that looks temporary. They are also the reason a consultation happens before a quote.
What a consultation covers
Viewing distance
How far away people stand decides the screen size and the type size. Both are measured, not guessed.
Light
Windows, overhead fixtures and floor reflections. This decides brightness and mounting angle.
Power and data
What is already in the wall. If power needs to be added, you hear about it before the install day, not during it.
The wall itself
Studs, brick, plaster, steel. Determines the mount and whether blocking is needed.
Indoor display questions
How big a screen do I need?
A workable starting point is screen height of roughly one-sixth the farthest viewing distance — a board read from ten feet wants at least about forty inches diagonal, and more once the text gets detailed. We measure at the consultation rather than guess from a photo.
Can you use a screen we already own?
Often. Send a photo of the back panel and any labels, and we will tell you whether it is commercial grade and worth mounting.
Do you do outdoor displays?
Indoor is our focus. Outdoor adds weatherproofing, permits and very different brightness requirements, and we would rather point you to someone who does it properly than improvise.
What if the wall cannot take a mount?
There is almost always an option — blocking, a ceiling drop, or a freestanding stand. We work it out before quoting.
What it actually costs to run
One thing worth knowing before the call: every screen runs on a signage platform subscription, billed monthly per screen. It is quoted with the install and it applies whether or not you ever ask us to change anything — that is simply what running a screen costs. If you want us handling content updates as well, that is a separate monthly arrangement.
The displays are commercial 4K UHD panels — 3840×2160 — rated for 16 hours a day, seven days a week with a three-year warranty. Content is designed at 1080p and scales cleanly onto the 4K panel, which is what keeps type readable from across a room.
Send a photo of the wall
That is usually enough for us to tell you what the install involves.