TV with built in PC or Internet browser ?

Factual Questions
1

Im looking for a PC or a monitor that can be wall mounted and is basically capable of viewing a webpage.

At work we have built an in house Digital Signage system that displays company news, production flow, live cctv video and flash video. all this information is bundled together in a rather pleasing webpage on our intranet. Now we want it to run on plasma/lcd screens in different locations on our site. Eg reception, board room, sales office, production floor etc.

We dont want to have a terminal for each monitor, and wireless AV senders do not have the range we are looking for. So I’d like a monitor or lcd tv that can browse the web or is networkable and can display a local webpage.

Im sure someone out there will be able to point me in the right direction.

2

My last company did something like this–but they just got big LCD monitors and hooked them up to PCs. I am not seeing from your description why you wouldn’t want to do that. Not sure what you mean by “we don’t want to have a terminal for each monitor.” Do you mean you don’t want to provide a wired connection to each monitor?

3

[QUOTE=CookingWithGas]
My last company did something like this–but they just got big LCD monitors and hooked them up to PCs. I am not seeing from your description why you wouldn’t want to do that.
[/QUOTE]

I agree, it would certainly be the straight forward route. The reason my superiors are not so keen is they can’t imagine how we could hide them and the cabling that goes with them. so rather than stick a PC in a cupboard they’d rather throw more cash at it.

4

Based on my experience, you will need a very large screen.

Years ago we tried AOL-TV. I don’t really know why because had computers in the house, and I couldn’t imagine why one would want to browse the internet through their TV if they already owned a computer that could be used for the purpose.

For me, at least, I found a 31-inch TV was fine for ordinary TV viewing, but when I tried to use AOL-TV sitting the same distance away, it was too difficult to see well. We look at a browser differently from how we watch TV. The browser has much more written content that needs to be read, and we can do that if we are sitting at a computer workstation (or using notebook). But at typical TV watching distance, it didn’t work for me.

5

iMac. They have standard VESA mounts, and can be hung on a wall.

6

[QUOTE=Chew Barker]
I agree, it would certainly be the straight forward route. The reason my superiors are not so keen is they can’t imagine how we could hide them and the cabling that goes with them. so rather than stick a PC in a cupboard they’d rather throw more cash at it.
[/QUOTE]

Wow, we’ll be doing this exact same thing in a couple of weeks here.
Is your company headquartered in Mequon, WI? :smiley:

I’m in charge of the installation when everything gets here but the guy whose making the purchases was wondering the same thing in the OP.

7

Is this 22" HP Touchsmart large enough for what you need. It has an added avanatage of not needing a mouse. I just bought one for home and mounted it on the wall next to seat in the living room. I just drag it over when I need it.

8

Uh… what about a projector screen? Then you can hide the PC in the ceiling, and I imagine it will be much cheaper.

9

[QUOTE=Chew Barker]
Im looking for a PC or a monitor that can be wall mounted and is basically capable of viewing a webpage.

At work we have built an in house Digital Signage system that displays company news, production flow, live cctv video and flash video. all this information is bundled together in a rather pleasing webpage on our intranet. Now we want it to run on plasma/lcd screens in different locations on our site. Eg reception, board room, sales office, production floor etc.

We dont want to have a terminal for each monitor, and wireless AV senders do not have the range we are looking for. So I’d like a monitor or lcd tv that can browse the web or is networkable and can display a local webpage.

Im sure someone out there will be able to point me in the right direction.
[/QUOTE]

What size displays are you requiring? That makes all the difference in the world here.

The concern about hiding cabling to the monitors is a pretty silly one, a monitor is going to have to be plugged into power and a DVI or HDMI cable at the very least and an Ethernet cable if you were to go with a wired Internet solution. So, to be concerned about the cabling to a PC makes little sense, you’ll be hiding cabling no matter what you do, and your choices are liable to be between hiding a HDMI cable that connects to a cable box or other video source or a DVI cable that connects to a PC. It’ll be the same situation regardless.

What type of layout are we talking about here? How many different rooms? How far apart? Different floors? Do you have a pre-existing network cabling in place that you can use or wire alongside? Is is a raised floor so you can easily route new wiring?

If the distances are reasonable (under a 100 meters) you should be able easily wire all the monitors to a single PC located anywhere on site using fiber optic DVI cables and a top of the line KVM or monitor switch.

If you don’t want all the monitors to show the same web content and want them autonomous all you need to do is get additional PCs and you can store them all together in your cold room or anywhere out of sight. The trick is pretty simple, get yourself a shitload of optical DVI cables and wire them alongside the HDMI cable that you will be running to the satellite/cable box anyways.

If wiring is an issue or you need to traverse extreme distances the next best solution is to simply build some ultra small form factor mini PCs from scratch or buy some like these.

10

[QUOTE=Omniscient]
What size displays are you requiring? That makes all the difference in the world here.
[/QUOTE]

From 26" to 42" depending on the location of the screen, ie 26" in staff room, 42" on the production floor.

About 5 screens to begin with, all on one floor, arranged almost linearly on average 25 meteres between one screen to the next. Cat5e cabling is allready in place.

11

If you need them that big, then you might need a display + a Mac Mini, which is small enough to be hidden behind the monitor.

12

If you (your corporation) is more familiar with PC’s instead of Macs you can also purchase slim-line PC’s and it’ll probably be cheaper than a Mac.

13

[QUOTE=Chew Barker]
About 5 screens to begin with, all on one floor, arranged almost linearly on average 25 meteres between one screen to the next. Cat5e cabling is allready in place.
[/QUOTE]

5 screens in 25m segments would be 100 meters from one end to the next, right at the maximum end of the fiber optic DVI range. You could locate your PC at the center of that string to give yourself some cushion on either end but it would make expansion later difficult.

The optimal solution is to just buy a mini-PC that can be easily mounted behind the monitors, especially useful since you have Cat5 cable in place already. You can purchase them for $375 a piece and probably build one even cheaper since you could use the absolute cheapest processor and components needed. They make fanless models that would be completely silent and have extremely low power consumption.