How to build a multi-screen digital signage display

Over the past year we’ve seen more and more of our independent schools choose to adopt a multi-screen wall display into their digital signage strategy. We’ve also been lucky enough to have visited a few schools that have these fantastic set-ups, working as an effective way to allure and captivate an audience. One great example of this was Channing School for Girls in Highgate, North London. Upon arrival we were immediately greeted by a MASSIVE multi-screen display in the reception area. It was fantastic to see the impact that a large format screen can have. When thinking about good first impressions, this is definitely the way to go!

Another great example is Brentwood School in Essex. It was pretty easy to see first hand the impact that digital signage was having. In the centre of their nicely designed ambient, modern reception was a HUGE multi-screen video wall! For visitors, parents and prospective parents, this is the perfect way to make a bold statement. Brentwood showcased the best of their school with a vision video and social media feed showing exactly what goes on at Brentwood, providing a strong communication of their brand identity.

IT Manager, Sarb Singh told us,

“TrilbyTV has allowed us to easily showcase the excellent work of our whole school community on various screens around the school. It was important for us to showcase this to both prospective and current parents and staff. We decided on a multi-screen display in our new reception to provide maximum impact and also to showcase the excellence of our community. The simplicity of the video wall paired with TrilbyTV made for an easy to use and high impact solution.”

There’s no doubt about the excitement that a bigger video wall can bring to your school and it is completely doable. But there are a few key factors that you need to take into consideration first.

The practicalities of making it work

Connecting to multiple screens can be an issue, and a simple solution to match TrilbyTV comes in the form of the G4K Pro video wall controller from Seada. The G4K Pro is a standalone box with one HDMI input and 4 outputs so you can connect 4 screens. The clever software and hardware built into the box does all the work of scaling up the single input to fill all four of the screens. If you choose to, you can be creative with the screen layout and the built-in web interface allows you to set the position, rotation and other variables like bezel size.

Once set up the G4K Pro provides a zero management solution, all you have to do is think about your content. For more than 4 screens you can daisy chain the G4K Pro box to another and keep doing this to provide the required number of outputs.

In the Seada offices, we set up a Venz v10 Android based 4k player and instantly had full screen and scaled playback on four Samsung Full HD displays. The image is crisp and bright and there was no lag between content appearing on each of the screens, they all worked in perfect sync.

Your multi-screen digital signage display is only as good as the quality of the content

You can have the biggest, HD screen on your wall but without good quality content it won’t make any impact.

A big screen is no doubt one way to attract attention. Creating a wall of moving images will draw viewers in more than a static display wall and being digital means it can be updated constantly and directly from the classroom or marketing department.

A multi-display solution can work with the same content as a single display, but as it is bigger and typically in a showcase area for a school the content needs to be considered to ensure it always looks really good.

With TrilbyTV supporting 4k video resolution, the quality of content is no longer an issue. With many mobile phones equipped with quality cameras and able to capture in 4k, combined with popular editing tools like iMovie supporting this size, there is no reason why you can’t introduce a bigger video wall in your school and have great looking video content.

Content already added to TrilbyTV including social media feeds, slideshows and web content all work just like on a single screen, we do all the smart work for you in terms of scaling up to 4k resolutions. So go ahead and add web content like on the small screen only now, it’s just bigger!

Adding 4k video to TrilbyTV is the same as adding a normal video clip, just click the Add button, choose video and upload. You will need to turn on the 4k video option in the System Dashboard and also set the Player to show 4k.

To find out more about how your school can install a multi-screen wall display using technology like the Seada G4K Pro, contact your IT reseller or you can get in touch with the TrilbyTV team.

If you’d like to learn a little bit more about TrilbyTV and how it can help you build whole school communication, book a free demo session today.