Hi all, I know this thread is very niche but you never know on this forum. I looking to add five DMB's to my parents Fish and Chip shop and I am weighing up all the options to run them. Having a simple video player attached to each screen is too basic and limiting and computers that are designed for DMB's are ridiculously expensive for what they are. I am looking at a PC option to run the DMB's as the PC can be used for other tasks also but in terms of Graphics cards all that I can find is this http://www.scan.co.uk/products/2gb-amd-firepro-w600-pcie-30-(x16)-128-bit-gddr5-memory-6x-mini-displayport-full-height-half-length It's almost £400 which is a little pricey, do I have any other options?
thought about setting a Pi up to run the boards? you could just use a laptop then to connect to it remotely via a network
It's too basic, I need it to be one image across 5 displays, ideally with bezel compensation and also timed images so the menu will automatically change at certain times of the day.
I would have thought any basic PC with a GPU and a few USB display adaptors would be fine. Outputting basic 2D images to 5 monitors is the only hardware problem, and that should be fairly easy. I run 4 off my Core M tablet. Once you have achieved that bezel compensation, timed images and such is a software/formatting problem.
For one 5 screen image you need eyefinity. Or maybe a matrox doohickey. Some of the older club 3d radeon cards had 6 display outputs but I haven't seen any in the latest generation. I doubt any of them would be cheaper than what you have found. You could also do multiple cards.
I seem to remember when eyefinity came out AMD cards had loads of connections but like you said they seemed to have ditched that. I've found what I presume is an old nVida Quadro card that's £85 but it only has 4 connections on it, I'm not sure if you can use a display port spliter on one of the ports to accommodate the 5th display
Is having a single image across all five really what you need? When I looked up digital menu boards, virtually all of them had separate images on each screen with different menu items in each one. Some of them had the business logo stretched across all five, but doing something like that would hardly be useful to someone trying to decide what they want. I would also be somewhat wary of using an older card that can't be easily replaced. If the card ever fails, I would think that you would need something the could be replaced quickly. Just a quick note that having multiple connections on a card doesn't guarantee they can all be used at once.
No, it was more to manage it as one 9600 X 1080 image but you're right I guess I could just run it as five screens from two pretty average graphics cards
If you go with two cards you could go crossfire and eyefinity and get one large image for relatively cheap. http://www.scan.co.uk/products/2gb-...x16)-6000mhz-gddr5-1050mhz-gpu-768-streams-dp Two of these might be able to 5 screen eyefinity. It may be possible to go with one card along with on board and get five individual monitors. But do your own research to confirm before purchasing anything.
I'll start a new thread for some help on that because I'm team green and I'm not up on AMD's range. Spending hundreds on graphics cards to find they don't do what I want will be heart breaking.
Please don't spend hundreds on a graphics card to run a slideshow of 2D images/videos on 5 displays 14 hours a day. It would be a tragic life for said card I still think basically any cheap system with 5 video outputs of any description (or daisy chained/hubbed displayport) would be fine. As mentioned above, DMB tend to use 5 separate images. Running a single image spanned over the 5 displays using eyefinity seems like expensive overkill to me... That is unless you fancy doing a bit of gaming on the DMB after closing
Personally, I'd buy six Orange Pi PCs (Raspberry Pi-alikes, only sub-£10 a throw) for £60 and have one per screen plus a central controlling one. The ones connected to the screens pull their image from the central one, which can control what image each screen-connected device is displaying. Alternatively, buy five and control them from an existing laptop or desktop on the network. Low power, low cost, and if one goes down the other four will work independently. (Even if the controlling one goes down: have the slave systems copy their images from the master, so if the master is offline they'll just continue to show their local copies until it comes back up.) What's not to like?
All you need is a simple pc and a video splitter to replicate as many displays as you need. Dual display GPU and one of these http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/4-Way-SVG...794150?hash=item43ca986666:g:wZ4AAOxyMZVTjvFv Done.
Thanks for the advice guys, I'll look into the low powered stuff like the Pi's. My preference is a Windows PC to run them because it's easier to manage remotely and the PC can be used for other tasks too.
that screenly software does look pretty good, now i need a reason to have displays scattered around the house lol
