How to Choose an LED Screen or Digital Signage Supplier

Most people comparing suppliers for a screen are not really comparing screens. The panels come from a handful of manufacturers and the differences between them matter far less than the sales pitch suggests. What you are actually choosing is who installs it, who wires it, and who answers the phone in two years when it will not come on.

Here is what we would ask, in the order we would ask it. It is written to be useful whether or not you end up calling us.

1. Who holds the electrical and data licences?

A screen on a wall is an electrical job with a picture on the front. Somebody has to run the power, pull the data, engineer the mount and make it safe. Ask straight out: do you do that yourselves, or subcontract it?

Neither answer is wrong. But if it is subcontracted, you are the one coordinating three trades, and on handover day you are the one standing between people pointing at each other. Ask who carries the licence, whose insurance covers the install, and who you ring when it fails.

2. Who comes back?

The install is a week. The next ten years are service. Ask whether the technicians who commission your system are the ones who return to it, or whether it goes into a general support queue.

Then ask where those technicians actually are. A supplier three states away can absolutely sell you a screen. They cannot be there on Friday afternoon before a grand final.

3. Can your own staff drive it?

This is the question that separates a system people use from a system people work around. Ask to see the control interface – not a brochure, the actual screen your bar staff or your receptionist will touch.

If changing the sport, the layout or the price of a schnitzel needs a laptop, a manual or a phone call to the supplier, it will stop being changed within a month. Ask what happens when the person who was trained leaves.

4. What is actually in the quote?

Screens are easy to compare and everything around them is not, which is why quotes diverge. Read for what is missing:

Steel, engineering drawings and any structural certification
Permits, where the job needs them
Power and data to the screen position, not to the nearest outlet
Mounting, joinery or shrouds so it finishes flush rather than bolted on
Commissioning, content set-up and handover training
What the warranty covers, and who honours it – the supplier or the manufacturer

A cheaper number with three of those missing is not a cheaper job. It is the same job with the difficult parts left for you.

5. Ask about the screen – but not the way the spec sheet wants you to

Pixel pitch, nits and refresh rates are real, and they are almost never what decides whether you are happy. What decides it is size against viewing distance, and brightness against the light in that particular room.

So ask: how far away is the furthest person watching, and how big does the picture need to be for them? Does that wall get afternoon sun? Those two answers determine the product. Anyone who quotes before asking them is quoting a catalogue, not your room.

6. Ask to see the oldest one, not the newest

Every supplier will show you something they finished last month. Ask instead for one they installed five years ago that is still running, and whether you can ring that venue.

That single question tells you more about a supplier than any case study, because it is the only one they cannot stage.

Where we would tell you to call someone else

We install and service across Melbourne and regional Victoria. For large-format LED we supply interstate, but if same-day service matters to you and you are not in Victoria, say so early and we will tell you honestly whether we are the right fit.

If what you want is one television on a bracket, you do not need us and we will say so.

If you are comparing us to somebody else

Ask us the six questions above and ask them the same six. That is a fairer comparison than any page we could write about ourselves.

For the record, our answers are: we hold the electrical and cabling licences in house; the technicians who commission your system are the ones who service it; the control interface is built around how your venue runs and your staff drive it; the quote includes the steel, the power, the data, the commissioning and the handover; we ask about the room before we quote; and yes, you can ring venues we did years ago.

Tell us the room and what has to happen in it. Call 1300 913 281 or email info@covetech.com.au.