Outdoor Digital Signage System – Choosing a Location

Outdoor digital signage is a fast paced industry. More and more installs in more and more locations are springing up all the time, so staying competitive is important if you want to get your message across.

Outdoor digital signage is dynamic and engaging

Outdoor digital signage, whilst becoming ever more popular is still trailing behind indoor installs, so there is more scope to get ahead of the game with an outdoor system.

Outdoor locations are fraught with pitfalls, however, so ensuring you are aware of the challenges is vital before you embark on the outdoor digital signage route.

As with an indoor system, there are four components that make up an outdoor digital signage campaign:

• Screen
• Protective LCD Enclosure
• Media Player
• Content

Screen

Any commercial grade LCD screen can be used for an outdoor sign but outdoor locations, and in particular the sun, can affect the brightness of an outdoor display so choosing a screen with the highest brightness level, usually measure in nits (1000 nits is recommended for outdoor locations) may help with readability.

Protective LCD Enclosure

Crucial for an outdoor location, the enclosure provides the entire protection of the LCD TV. LCD enclosures should encompass waterproofing, temperature control (both for hot and cold temperatures) as well as protecting the screen from damage (such as integrating a shatterproof screen over the original) and providing all round rugged protection that will also prevent tampering, theft and vandalism

Media Player

As media players or thin client PCs are often housed inside the LCD enclosure, there is little need to think of separate protection, however, accessibility is an issue and for campaigns with multiple screens, a networked solution, whilst more complicated would be more practical for uploading content.

Content

Outdoor content does differ to indoor content as certain colours and style of imagery do not work as well in outdoor location as they do inside.