KyleT

Flat panel screens with animated menu at a restaurant??

I know this is kind of an oddball question, but I have been in a couple of newer non table-service food establishments where when you walk up to the ordering area (the cashier that takes your order), instead of looking up and seeing a boring looking backlit plastic static menu or chalkboard with handwriting on it or whatever, they actually use flat panel TVs (LCDs or Plasmas or whatever). This allows them to not only make a super-attractive very bright and vibrant full-color menu of food items, BUT the menu's background and even the occasional product picture is animated... so instead of just a boring picture, you see a 'movie' of the object. Nothing too elaborate, but it brings it to life better than just a backlit picture on a board or whatnot.
Furthermore, if the establishment has certain products that change in selection every day (soup of the day, fish of the day, or whatever), it is easily updated to reflect the current product selection and pricing without having a major in graphics design and/or video editing. Maybe even to the point that if something went out of stock you could reflect that on the menu so that people wouldn't be surprised when they go to order and are told they need to find something else to order.

Sorry if this is confusing or too off topic but I've really searched everywhere. Even the couple of places I've seen with a setup like this I have not been able to track down the techs who set it up, and was not able to see how it was all setup behind the scenes.

I imagine just about any ol' decent sized/clarity flat panel with VGA or DVI input will work fine. But the software setup is what I'm wondering about.

I'm sure I could more or less use three video cards and extended desktop to spread a pretty animated image across three screens with a little creative effort... but $7/hr employees are not going to know how to, nor have the time to go back and edit the source file to reflect the soup of the day and then reload it.

So I'm hoping there's some sort of software package that is designed to do this or at least could be easily made to do what I need it to do. Otherwise I'd have to get some custom scripting written up and that wouldn't be much fun.

gabeG

Kyle, I am the managing partner reponsible for system design for an A/V company in Canada. This is the type of system we call a media distribution system.

There are a number of ways of dooing this but they all require some kind of media distribution server with a panel or panels which can be configured in a manner appropriate to the client's needs. Generally these are equipped with proprietary software solutions.

Sony makes a unit called the NSP1000 at $1995 USD which works really well for small applications. Do a search on digital signage and you should find all sorts of answers.

Cheers, Gabe

Mark gas

There is no need to use three video cards you can do it with just one triple head video card. I have done a three wide setup before and it looks killer when done right. The Sony piece seems nice but is pretty expensive and you would need three to do it three wide and you would have sync issues with the video, a computer system could be set up for under $1000. Also for a three wide system you would need someone with digital media experience and it would be pretty hart for a employee to change it. If you need any help E-mail me @ Just157@gmail.com

Link to the Sony player: http://pro.sony.com.hk/productfinder...4&action=model