Does Your Church Have TVs Or Projectors in Your Sanctuary?

New tv for Maranatha is cost money have tv in foyer 

This is a practical question. 

We just installed an LED wall for less than your quoted price. It replaced an old projector in a church building that has lots of natural light. 

It works really well and the image is very bright, sharp, and HD. It has a good warranty. In general, this LED wall should be working for the next 10 years without any problems, we were told. For us, the LED wall is a bit bigger than the former screen. 

Jon, 

Yes, the LED wall is made up of smaller LED panels. You see a full screen, the panels are there just to make it cheaper and easier to fix. 

Is is too bright? Not really. You may choose to adjust the luminosity, I think, but I'm not an expert. The company we worked with made sure we have what we want or need from the LED wall. 

In our case, we have so much natural light that we need a bright screen. Our older projector was unable to create a good contrast, so this LED wall makes a huge difference. We went with LED wall that offers HD vs. a 4K; and one reason was lower price for HD. 

Why not TVs? We looked at that option but there is no way to eliminate the edges between the TVs. They would be visible no matter what. Another issue we looked at was the software that will split the image among the TVs. It's not that easy to make things look perfect, but the LED wall seemed to solve those problem easier, and eliminates the glare issue. 

Friends, I passed the post link to our volunteer AV technician, and he responded with the following.  I won't pretend that I have any strong opinions or technical expertise in this area, so if you'd like to follow up directly with him, contact me via email (I'm in the Yearbook) and I will seek to make that connection.

He says...

This is a super subjective topic and it has many, many variables in which an answer can be derived.  First of all you need to be honestly self aware of what your primary goal is (cost/cheapest, functionality, serviceability, and/or working with current infrastructure) With electronics today, serviceability is a large factor as reliability is not what it used to be and many different manufacturers don't play as well together as you might think they should.  I would start with the fact that whoever your sales person is, they should be willing to present at least three different options backed by at least 10 different reasons for presenting you with those 3 different solutions.  Each auditorium has its own very unique needs depending on its instructional needs. What are you trying to display? moving or inanimate. Is it a static display for artistic purposes or is it primarily a teaching tool in which details and clarity is highly important. What are the ambient light or fluctuation of ambient light conditions during the time of use or what is the proposed display's ability to provide a flexible image under changing circumstances.  Distance from the video display location to viewers seating is also a large factor when deciding on how dense the quality of definition or clarity needs to be and what do you want it to look like when it is off or not in use.  These are some of the preliminary considerations you will need to route through which will then send you down a more specific path of which technology you will end up using.  Once you have found a direction to head towards, there are many, many more factors that will have an effect on your final decision, primarily positioning and ease of serviceability, don't think about what is going to save you the most money right now... that decision may leave you with enormous service bills in the future.

Based on 10 hours of use per week (which is typically way more than average church auditorium usage) over the course of 10 years that is only 5200 hours... If your installer is willing to suggest that your interior video wall will only last 5200 hours before replacement, he's not offering a quality product and from that I would derive that the image degradation will be quite significant through that 10 year period as well.  I would also bank on multiple panel replacements which inturn will either take the whole panel down (Blank) or leave you with a 10x10 (or whatever the size of the individual panels are) hole somewhere in your screen.  After all of this, then there is the possibility of weeks waiting on replacement parts and a nice service bill at the end of it all.  (this statement is more opinion based through experience, and is typically subjective to cheaper video walls)  These systems are also typically high consumption of electricity compared to alternative mediums of video display, again this depends on a few different factors but in most circumstances a high value of energy is used.   A video wall using 2 or more video screens along with a video matrix can be a cost effective solution (again depending on the quality you want to achieve) but is also highly subjective to many different levels of vulnerability.  First off, a high quality matrix, one that I would consider reliable, is very expensive and even then not without its own vulnerabilities.  Second, the calibration of the individual video panels is critical so that the image spread over multiple individual panels looks consistent in its color representation... This, however, does nothing for the lines that will always be there in between the screens, granted if you're 75 feet or more away from the screens this won't be a factor as the images will easily blend together at that distance.  Now with this said, what do you do when one panel loses its ability to process color accurately or has a power consumption issue bringing down the quality of the image on one panel? Now you face replacing that panel and once you've done that you now are fighting with one new, vibrant panel and 3 or more panels which are degraded due to age. The only way to ensure accuracy is to then be replacing all four or more panels... Aside from all of this, a video panel typically will have a reflective screen and with most auditorium settings there is lots of overhead lighting and therefore lots of glare (depending on the mounting height/viewers angle). This all assumes that the installer did a great job of lining everything up tight and square... As you may tell, I'm not a big fan of this solution in an average auditorium teaching environment where a screen size of 150-250 inches would be employed.

Projection has its own challenges! You need a projector that will have the brightness to overcome the ambient light and distance from the video display is a big factor, this alone can carry huge costs. What you're reflecting your image off of is also just as, if not more important than the projector itself and these can also come with some big dollar commitment.  All this said, in my opinion, for a teaching tool in an auditorium setting, my bias is towards the projector and screen.  When done properly the image is bright and vibrant, not highly affected by ambient or changing lighting conditions, does not have seams throughout, is a very comfortable image to view as its naturally reflected light.  The image is not being blasted at you with eye fatiguing harsh LED lighting and the screen can be rolled away if that feature has been incorporated in the design.  BTW, motorized screen options are highly reliable today!!

To touch on something said earlier, your final image quality will ultimately depend on your weakest component, if your wiring is too old or can't carry the appropriate signals, your money spent is a waste. Power conditioning is also a large factor in clarity of video display and is not often talked about.  Due to the society we are living in and its constant bobbardmanet of advertisements flashing in our faces everywhere we look, from our phones and tablets to television and video graphic roadside signage.  We have become conditioned as a society and have been turned into a very visual consumer of information, information by the second and a non-existent attention span. I believe to teach effectively in and to this culture, a high quality video display is critically important and therefore the appropriate quality should be strongly considered and pursued.