Consumer TV or commercial display: which screen to buy for a venue

For one indoor screen that's on during opening hours, a decent consumer TV with a player plugged into it is usually fine, and it's the cheaper way in. A commercial display is worth the extra when the screen runs long hours every day, hangs in portrait, faces a bright window, or when you want the player built in so there's no box to hide. You can mix the two in one venue and run them all from the same Casty account.

What makes a display commercial

Commercial displays (you'll also see them sold as professional or signage displays) look a lot like TVs. They're built for a different working life, though.

The big difference is hours. A home TV is designed around an evening's viewing, while a menu board might be on from seven in the morning until eleven at night, every day of the year. Commercial displays are made to run like that.

They usually support portrait mounting, too. Many consumer TVs aren't designed to hang on their side and the manufacturer may not support it, which rules them out for a tall menu board or a narrow wall.

For windows there are high-brightness models. A screen facing the street through glass is up against daylight, and an ordinary TV looks dim and washed out there on a sunny afternoon.

A lot of commercial displays run the player themselves. Samsung's smart signage displays (Tizen, SSSP 6 or later), LG's webOS signage displays (webOS 3.2 or later), and Sony Bravia, Philips and Hisense professional displays can all run Casty with no stick or box. That gives you one power lead and nothing behind the screen to get knocked loose.

You get more control from the CMS as well. On displays that support it, Casty can reboot the screen, switch it on and off and set operating hours so it goes dark when you close, and displays with a serial port can take RS232 commands. We set those commands up with you.

The warranty is written for business use. Consumer TV warranties don't always cover a set running in a bar or a shop, so read the small print before you put a home TV up at work.

Many commercial displays can also lock out their buttons and remote control, so a customer (or a curious member of staff) can't switch the input over halfway through Saturday lunch.

When a consumer TV does the job

A home TV is fine for plenty of venue screens. A TV over the bar that shows the specials between matches, or a menu screen in a cafe that opens eight till four, doesn't need commercial kit. Pair it with an Amazon Signage Stick or an Android media player and you've got a working signage screen.

If you go that way, sort out a few settings when you set it up:

• Turn off any eco or auto power-off setting. Many TVs drop into standby after a few hours with nobody touching the remote, and nobody touches the remote on a signage screen.
• Test what happens after a power cut by switching off at the wall. Some TVs come back on by themselves, some stay in standby and some return on the wrong input.
• If the TV lets you choose which input it starts on, pick the HDMI port the player's plugged into, so it doesn't open its own home screen.
• Keep it the normal way up unless the manual says portrait is fine.

Questions to ask before you buy

How many hours a day will it be on? For a normal working day a consumer TV copes. If it's on from breakfast to closing seven days a week, lean towards commercial.

Which way up will it hang? Portrait points you towards a commercial display.

Where does the light come from? A screen opposite a big window, or facing out through one, needs extra brightness and probably a matte finish.

How far away are people when they read it? That decides the size. A menu board read from the queue needs to be big enough that the prices are legible from the back of it. There's more on this in where to put screens in a venue.

Is there room behind it for a player? If the screen sits flush to a wall or in a tight recess, a built-in player saves a lot of fiddling.

Do you want to switch it off or reboot it from the CMS? That needs a display that supports those commands.

Are you buying several? Standardising on one model makes spares, brackets and layouts simpler.

Size and resolution

A 1080p screen is 1920 by 1080 pixels and a 4K screen is 3840 by 2160. Casty layouts can be built at either size, wide or portrait. For menus and posters read from a couple of metres away, 1080p is plenty. 4K helps on big screens that people stand close to, and with detailed photography, but 4K video files are much bigger, so they take longer to upload and longer for each screen to download.

For most venues, size matters more than resolution. If people can't read the prices from where they queue, extra pixels won't help them. Go up a size before you go up a resolution.

Mixing both kinds

You don't have to choose one kind for the whole venue. A pub might keep a consumer TV with a stick over the bar, where it's on for the evening and shows the football too, and put a commercial display on the menu board that runs from breakfast. A shop might use a home TV by the till and a high-brightness commercial screen in the window. Every player appears in the same Displays list and takes the same layouts and schedules.

When a consumer TV reaches the end of its life, that's a good moment to replace it with a commercial display that has the player built in.

Before you order a commercial display

Commercial displays have their own requirements, such as minimum firmware versions, and these vary by model. Tell us the make and model before you buy and we'll check it with you. The devices page lists every supported platform, and choosing a media player explains how built-in players compare with sticks and boxes. If you're working out the full cost of a setup, budgeting for digital signage has the list.