The Zone

A couple of days ago, a colleague of mine asked about the benefits of using industrial monitors, and since many might not know of their existence, I might as well list down some of the pros and cons of these often-overlooked devices.

Pictured above is a Samsung 42" LCD display with HD capability. Don't be alarmed of the diagonal break in the picture, its a transition frame. More after the jump.

Some benefits of industrial monitors is that more often than not, they have slim bezels, making them easier to stack, and a cluster of these babies are often seen in malls functioning as an ultra-large screen.

An example of these setups is this cube-shaped information board in 1-Utama in PJ. Most of the time, these applications are powered by a single graphics output, and the video signals are split to each individual panel so that text is legible even from a distance.

Note that if these displays were connected to a single computer without a splitter, one would need a graphics card capable of resolutions as high as 5464 x 3072, which means that the whole cluster has 16.5 million pixels! (each Samsung display panel is capable of a 1366 x 768 resolution, unless I'm wrong, and they have full HD 1920 x 1080 capabilities).

Industrial monitors are also used in hotels, hospitals, office blocks, in public or private transportation and also as outdoor advertising screens. The advantages of industrial monitors over your average home monitor include longer lamp life, higher resolutions and space-saving benefits of a slim panel. Of course, bulk purchases are usually accompanied with big discounts, lowering the initial investment even further.

Industrial displays also come in both Plasma and LCD flavours as well, and available sizes are from 6.4" to large-format 64" behemoths. These also come in touchscreen and non-touchscreen flavours. The upcoming Part 2 will reveal how industrial displays might just give you an edge over regular consumer displays, so stay tuned!