Information display screen system help?

A community sports centre I'm involved with currently has TV screens dotted around the place showing tv channels. They want to convert 3 or 4 of these to show information slides instead, so information on classes, staff on duty, adverts for upcoming events etc.

Can anyone recommend a good system to do this? There is wifi and ideally they'd want the content controlled from a single pc. They had a quote from an IT company but that involved changing the screens to specialised models and was expensive, they want to use the existing screens.

Comments

  • AndyPix
    AndyPix Posts: 4,847 Forumite
    Name Dropper First Anniversary First Post Photogenic
    We use thumb PC's like this one ..


    https://www.ebuyer.com/729658-intel-compute-stick-boxstk1aw32sc?mkwid=s_dc&pcrid=51482417219&pkw=&pmt=&gclid=EAIaIQobChMIkanY_tnq1gIVEZkbCh3yjQ5WEAQYAiABEgKexPD_BwE


    That go straignt into the HDMI port of your TV.


    Then you want the free opensource signage software called XIBO to control the content on them all from one PC of your choice.


    Hope that helps
    Andy
  • System
    System Posts: 178,093 Community Admin
    Photogenic Name Dropper First Post
    edited 12 October 2017 at 11:46AM
    Ah, my field....

    All you need is a PC with a HDMI output, a HDMI splitter and cabling to each screen - be aware the maximum cable run between the computer and the HDMI splitter can only be 20 metres and between the HDMI splitter and the screens or secondary splitters can only be 30 metres. Cabling will work out around £50 a cable for decent 20m ones. The other alternative as AndyPix says is to use the Intel Compute Sticks. You can then stick the images you want to display in a folder and use a slideshow or similar program to display them.

    Which ever option you choose what you would do is the following (assuming the program can be set to automatically play a list when you start it)

    1) In the user account that would be running click on Start then Run and in the box type shell:startup
    2) Copy the shortcut for the program to the startup folder that has just opened in File Explorer when you did the above.
    3) As administrator again click on start then run and type in netplwiz
    4) In the window that opens select the user account that would be running, untick the check box next to their name. You will be then presented with a dialogue to enter their password.

    What will then happen is when the PC starts it would automatically log onto that user account and automatically start the slideshow application.

    Cost wise assuming four screens and using your existing PC and excluding the cost of the application I would expect quotes of around £400-£600 depending on how far you wanted them to go with routing the cabling such as sending it through ducting or sticking it all in trunking. Using Intel Compute Sticks the cost works out around the same, you just save the hassle of cabling but it does make updating what is displayed a lot harder without using a wireless network and having a shared network folder on a PC which stores the images and is accessible by the Compute Sticks
  • S0litaire
    S0litaire Posts: 3,535 Forumite
    First Post Combo Breaker First Anniversary
    *obligatory Raspberry Pi suggestion* ;)

    you can pick up a few Raspberry pi's and use PiSignage

    https://pisignage.com/homepage/features.html

    https://pisignage.com/homepage/pricing.html
    Costs $25 one time fee per player licence.
    The media server is free for up to 3 screens (then it's an additional $20 per year per additional player.)

    Paid version is a cloud/web based management system
    But you can get a Free "stand alone" server version (player licences still required) but takes a bit of tecky skills to install and setup.
    Laters

    Sol

    "Have you found the secrets of the universe? Asked Zebade "I'm sure I left them here somewhere"
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