DISPLAY TECHNOLOGY
Signs of Progress A
nyone who’s stepped onto a gaming floor in the last few years has seen how digital screens have become integral to casinos’ core operations, on slots and now increasingly on table games too.
Companies like TCSJohnHuxley and Cammegh, for example, have become noted for their use of screens to help games stand out from the crowd. But alongside that, the casino sector has quietly become a leader in another kind of screen revolution – the use of customer-facing (and, sometimes, employee-facing) displays to market, to inform, even to entertain. Indeed, two casinos – Parx in Philadelphia and Aria in Las Vegas – were among the winners of Digital Signage Expo’s Apex awards this spring, a programme that honours the best installations of screens in public places. This revolution began around the turn of the century, and in little more than a decade screens have moved from being novelties to being commonplace fixtures in leisure businesses like
WHEN BIG IS BEAUTIFUL The Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian
Community’s Talking Stick Resort has installed an arena-sized scoreboard using 16 55-inch screens in its Poker room. Hung from the ceiling above the tables, it also features a sports ticker and can show Poker games live. Said Kent Odekirk, Director of Poker: “The sheer size of board effectively showcases the vast size of our room. Guests probably won’t truly appreciate the magnitude of our arena until they see the scoreboard. After all, they typically see panels that size in sports arenas.”
casinos, in retail outlets, in airports and railway stations and hotels and malls and hospitals, indeed anywhere that the public gathers in significant numbers. Originally known as “digital signage”, underlining
the way that screens can replace conventional static signs with a more powerful, video-capable and instantly-updatable fixture, they’re now increasingly often termed “digital out-of-home media” or “screen media”, reinforcing the growing acceptance of screens as a potential replacement for any non-digital medium that you find outside the home, from the lobby welcome board to the roadside billboard – and, of course, the beloved neon sign. (The potential of digital to give an edge to a venue’s exterior presentation is typified by the terrific installation of Lighthouse Technologies’ LED screens at the Galaxy Macau.)
Sophistication in the technology and its
deployment has developed dramatically over that decade. In the early days, the norm was lonely wall- mounted or ceiling-hung TV-style displays, all too often positioned much too high for comfortable viewing; the burgeoning industry specialising in the design and installation of digital screen media has now learned that lesson, and recognised that positioning for ease of viewing is absolutely critical. Lessons have been learned in the area of screen
content, as well. Gone (mostly) are the over-busy executions that hemmed in long video clips with ads that looked like they might have been designed in a
32 APRIL 2012
Casinos are becoming smarter at their deployment of digital screens for consumer information and marketing, reports our resident digital signage expert Barnaby Page
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