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Comment by femto113 | Hacker News Reader

Another approach is to look not for things advertised as "monitors" but instead look for "digital signage"[1]. Nowadays most of these contain some networking features but they'll be oriented at local control (i.e. by you via something on your LAN), not some third-party control center accessed via the internet.

Anecdotally this is the approach I took ~20 years ago when buying a (then slightly exotic) plasma flatscreen from Panasonic. It is still working flawlessly today, though I keep hoping it will die so I can guiltlessly replace it with something newer/bigger/higher-resolution.

[1] A random example https://www.usa.philips.com/p-p/86BDL3050Q_00/signage-soluti...

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Digital signage is good but from my understanding (and I could be wrong) probably over-engineered for home usage. They're intended to be powered on 24x7, and last a long time. Probably more resistant to burn-in too. All of which is good, but if your use case isn't so intensive you could get by with something lower-end. (Especially if you want to eventually replace the device and are looking for an excuse ;) )

My direct experience is somewhat out of date, but from an engineering perspective the unit I have is much simpler than any TV, since it lacks a tuner or any fancy video scaling capability, and has no audio capability of any kind (that was a feature to me, since I use an A/V Receiver for sound). I think in general screens meant for signage are probably brighter than most TVs/monitors, but depending on the room that could be a useful feature as well.

The model that I have js definitely over engineered. I have a 2k sign display which uses display port and its 8 years old.

It's It's bit ugly, but as long as you are okay with that.

But does digital signage have good panels like "real" TVs? Eg. the high end oleds with deep blacks and stuff?

It depends. I have an Iiyama 44” and the display, while nominally 4K, is noticeably not as good as a good 32” 4K monitor. It’s not really visible when watching video, but using it as an external display looks horrible close up.

This is one of the ones with an android board in it, and if I did it again, I’d be getting someone sold as a computer monitor.

Of course a 44" panel doesn't look as good as a 32" one, it has lower pixel density. This has nothing to do with it having a bad panel.

The pixel density difference is about 30%. With careful close observation, you can easily see the pixels in each one. The monitor has smooth solid colors. The Iiyama looks more like it's a native 1920px wide with some 'interesting' pixel layouts for more dynamic range. It looks like complete crap with things like window titles, the MacOS blue highlight, and other gradients.

My experience is that not only are the panels generally worse, support for things like color calibration or Dolby Vision is almost impossible to find. Which is understandable because it's not obvious what advantage HDR would bring to digital signage.

While not HDR, I'd think colour calibration would be fairly important for signage.

If your company red is too washed out, or one section of a video-wall menu board is inconsistent brightness, it looks bad on your brand.

This is good advice but if you're looking for something fancy like HDR or DV you will be dissapointed as (in my experience) digital signage displays often lack those features.

I have a big 4k tv that was destined for a sports bar but it was slightly damaged, got it for a great price. Sadly it doesn't have HDR either, but it is an older model. Anyway, its great as in there's no WiFi. There is a network port but there's no streaming apps or anything installed on it. I use it paired with an nvidia shield and a nakamichi soundbar and have been enjoying the experience.

But I digress, look for business displays

Same thing I did 20 years ago. IIRC it was the only way to get a flatscreen at the time. Mine was a NEC. 40" plasma. 1366x768. Not even full HD. I think it would work out to about $7000. It pissed me off that it didn't even come with a wall bracket and I had to shell out another $600 for that. For the price of just my wall bracket you can now buy a pretty nice 65" 4K screen I'm sure.

Challenges are features like HDR and having four HDMI inputs.

Planar makes incredible and also expensive displays for the commercial market. They offer a "luxury living" solution but the smallest is 100".

https://www.planar.com/markets/luxury-living/

Lots of places call these "commercial monitors".

https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/buy/Flat-Panel-Displays/ci/16...

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