So you've decided to remodel your old boardroom, or possibly
build a brand new one. Often times in
this day and age the sleek and stylish new boardroom can symbolize the company
atmosphere to visiting business partners.
You start to consider what new technology you want to include, but you
know right away that you want the latest and greatest 80” LED display to hang
on the wall…or do you?
Choosing the right display for your boardroom, be it an LED
television or a motorized screen and LCD projector, is one of the key things
that you want to consider when the project begins. It has become vital to pick the right display
option because you need to make sure that no matter where your audience is
sitting in your newly updated space, if you have chosen a display that’s too
small for the room, the information will not be delivered efficiently and
effectively to those you want to receive it.
While the current trend in the Audio/Visual industry is to
see more large format LED televisions used in meeting spaces, that doesn’t
always make it the best choice for your environment. There are certain advantages to using an LED
display: it can be more cost effective, it can be more energy efficient, and it
is definitely much less labor intensive during the installation phase. However, that doesn’t mean that a television
display is perfect for every situation.
So, how do you determine whether a large format television
or a projector with screen will be best for your environment? Let’s first start with two simple assumptions:
# 1 you are going to want an HD (16:9) format display area, and #2 we are going
to use the screen resolution of 1920 x 1080 which is becoming the standard for
laptops.
With those ideas in place, the first consideration that you want
to make is what kind of content you are going to display. If you are going to be displaying things like
video, film or simple graphics, the need for a larger display isn't as
necessary as it would be if you were viewing things like detailed engineering
drawings or scientific data results. The
more detailed the content you want to share with the viewing audience, the
larger the display should be. Once you
know what the content is going to be, the next thing to think about is where in
the completed room the farthest point that a viewer will be seated? After that, Infocomm International (the
standards organization for the A/V industry) provides a simple formula for
determining the height of the display area that will best suit your room.
For general viewing purposes, take the distance of the
farthest viewer and divide that number by 8.
If you’re going to be sharing a lot of text information that requires
reading, divide the distance by 6. Or,
if you are going to be looking at those detailed drawings, divide the distance
by 4. That number will be the height of
the recommended screen. The last step is
to take the result of your division and multiply it by 1.78 to obtain width of
the screen in an HD format.
While this formula can help you determine the best display
size for your environment there are many other concerns to take into account
when choosing the best display type for your new boardroom. Lighting systems, ambient light, window
location, as well as display location are all important factors as well. Now that you’re armed with this fundamental
information you can communicate with the architect as to the size of display area
you’re going to need to best get your information across, and once an
Audio/Visual integrator joins the project, they can help you fine tune that
choice.
For more information on picking the right equipment for your
new boardroom project, please contact ICS at 408-491-6000 or at www.ics-integration.com
