Sunshine and the Outdoor Screen

With spring finally here the hot weather brings more opportunities for outdoor advertising. Summertime not only sees more people outside, more of the time, but also people linger longer in outdoor locations, are in less of a hurry, which increases dwell time on an outdoor screen and makes outdoor advertising even more beneficial.

Screen Glare Caused by High Sun Levels

It’s not all good news for outdoor advertisers, though. With the warmer weather comes higher levels of sunshine, and the sun can pose a challenge to outdoor screens.

It is fairly common for people to experience the problems of the sun on a TV screen when watching the television at home. On a sunny day the sun can often cause glare as it reflects off the screen forcing you to partly close the curtains; however, outside when the sun is bright there are of course, no curtains that you can draw.

Secondly, outside on very bright days the sun can have another effect on a modern screen. Most modern TV screens, whether commercial or consumer have a brightness level measured at around 500 nits. Unfortunately, this is often not high enough to cope with the brightness levels of the sun.

On a very bright day the sun can be stronger than the TVs back-light leaving the screen washed out and almost invisible. Direct sunlight can also lead to other problems too, especially if the sun’s rays are continually beaming onto the screen. Permanent scorching on the screen can occur as hot-spots develop while the TV itself can overheat.

To take advantage of outdoor digital signage some consideration needs, therefore, to be given to protecting the screen from the intensity of the sun. Often this can be a simple case of selecting the location and position carefully. In other locations where there is no alternative but to place the screen along the path of the sun, anti-glare layers can be placed over the screen but to cope with the sun’s brightness a high brightness TV is by far the best solution.

High brightness screens usually have an output up to three times higher than conventional commercial grade screens, often displaying images as high 1500 nits. This is enough to ensure the sun doesn’t wash-out the screen image and ensure the outdoor digital signage screen is readable regardless of how bright the sun is.