Understanding Digital Display Technology

Digital displays are panel screens that present a variety of multimedia formats to an audience. The advantages of digital displays are its ability to show a wide range of these multimedia formats, like images and video, which catapult it to become a superior mode of communication.
Over the years, technological advancements have caused digital displays to grow in output quality and reduce in price – a key factor for the growth in their adoption.

Intelisa’s digital signage technology is not the display itself, but the technology that drives these displays. Hence, we have always pursued to be display agnostic or universally compatible to any digital display.

Even though Intelisa’s technology currently focusses around connected displays, it is important to give an overview on display technology trends, which is a closely related subject.

Simple television screens are a low-cost method to adopt digital displays

The large screens at Times Square, New York are a great example of customized outdoor LED screens

Television screens too can be designed and fabricated creatively to enhance the impact of the communication

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Types of Display Technology

The key types of display technology can be summarized as follows:

01

Liquid Crystal Displays (LCD’s): These make up the vast majority of HDTVs, desktop and laptop monitors, as well as tablets and cellular phones. The basic technology was around for a long time and has greatly improved over the years. Given their quality of display, small size and cost, they have been most widely adopted versus other displays. Please note that term LED TV’s are actually ‘LED-backlit LCD monitors’

02

Light Emitting Diodes (LED’s): These use a panel of LED’s as the light source. Their brightness is substantially more than other display technologies, which enable them to be used outdoors where they are visible even with daylight.

03

Plasma Displays: the plasma technology used to be seen typically on very large HDTV’s since LCD’s were costly for the sizes. However, today, the price gap has disappeared and hence the technology is replacing plasma even for larger sizes. Plasma displays have a great sharp colour accuracy and good viewing angles. They are, however, thick, heavy and power-hungry.

04

E-Ink: A relatively new technology, which is most famously known from the Kindle devices, is a display technology which uses ink to display images. Recently, the technology has also introduced colour as a part of its output. The advantages of this technology include the low power used (only to refresh images), and the ability to view an output without an eye strain. Its disadvantages are size and colour constraints and the fact that showing videos is not possible.

Static Versus Digital Displays

When we think of digital displays, we consider the television as a mode of everyday entertainment. However, an equal number of televisions and display devices have also been adopted by various businesses across sectors to efficiently communicate with customers, employees and various stakeholders

However, majority of the businesses still use static communication. Whether be it the communication of ‘New Arrivals’ in a retail store or ‘Targets versus Actuals’ in a manufacturing facility, or the expert panel of doctors in a hospital – most of these are yet done through static posters or notice boards.

There are several disadvantage to static communication, illustrated as following:

  • A single offering show for a long time

  • Requires manual effort and costs

  • Return on investment is a blind spot

  • Communication is not real-time or dynamic

  • Communication is not personalized

Take a moment to look at your own business, and reflect on the following questions:

What are the key points of information I would like to convey to my customers or employees?

You may want to showcase latest offerings to customers, share best practices and engagement with employees, and so on.

Is the current form of communication I employ effective to percolate this communication?

Communication that is digital is generally sent through emails or through social media, which may not be read by the audience.

Can digital displays at the point of purchase, or at the shop floor, help drive efficiency for my communication?

Reflect on whether the current static communication in your business is causing a hindrance to effective engagement.

We have seen that across sectors, digital signage technology helps build an efficient communication mechanism.
With their reduced costs and advanced technology, the digital signage technology helps drive real-time, personalized and lightning-fast communication.

In the next section, we will explain what constitutes a digital signage technology solution from both a technical and business standpoint.

Introduction to Digital Signage Technology