Video Wall Mounting – RPT Motion Inc. Digital Sign Mounts

Tale of Two Screens

Monitor based video walls and Direct View LED Video walls both have their places but do not yet directly compete with each other. It’s important to understand some of the key differences between these two display approaches.

NEC Display Systems, one of the few manufacturers that offer deep choices for both technologies, had impressive examples of both types of video walls on display at their recent NEC NYC 2018 Showcase.

RPT’s DigitalSignMount.com business specializes in challenging and non-conventional mounting of video walls, modular and portable in most cases and often without a wall to mount on. We try to follow trends that might affect our growth and to become aware of new business sectors we can provide modular video wall mounts for and for those changes that might obsolete or require new thinking in our expertise.

Except for some trade show modular displays of Direct View LED systems for importers and resellers, our video wall mounts are usually for simple and artistic arrays of narrow bezel video wall monitors from 22”- 65”, but we are expanding into creative modular mounting systems for Direct View LED.

RPT 98″ Pop Up Portable Video Wall with 2 x 2 Array of 49″ Monitors with 1.8mm bezels:

Two Hypothetical Walls:

For this discussion we’ll build two hypothetical top quality 110” Video Walls for discussion. We’ll ignore video wall controllers and mounts for this discussion; those choices should be part of the planning only after you’ve chosen the appropriate display technology for your application needs and budget.

Direct View LED:

This discussion is based primarily on indoor video walls, so for Direct View LED wall we will choose the NEC F Series in the finest available pitch (1.26mm). Conveniently the F Series are a 16:9 aspect ratio and when arrayed matches well in size to NEC 55” Monitors. The 1.26mm pitch is the finest in the NEC Direct View LED line, and in the standard 608mm x 342mm module there are 480 pixels wide x 270 pixels high.

Sixteen panels of NEC LED-F012i, in a landscape array 4 modules wide x 4 modules high, assemble into a nominal 110” diagonal Video Wall with resolution of 1920 x 1080 ( Full HD). In Oct 2018 we searched online for best pricing and the best price we found was $ 6,829.99 per panel, for a cost of $ 109,279.84 for 16 panels only.

Monitor Based Video Wall

For equal size comparison we have chosen the NEC UN551VS Ultra Narrow Bezel (0.9mm) 1080P Video wall monitor. Four of these monitors form a 110” diagonal Video wall with pixel pitch of 0.63mm and total resolution of 3840 x 2160 (Full 4k). Typical pricing at this writing is <$4,500 per monitor, total approximately $18,000.00 for monitors only.

Cost per resolution comparison

On an equal surface area, panels only basis, the Monitor based video wall is 1/6^th the cost for 4x the displayable resolution. Stated in another way a single pixel of Direct view is about 24 times more expensive than a single pixel on a 55” monitor. These costs will move closer with time, but are unlikely to become anywhere near equal in the near future.

Viewing distance differences

The use case where most people currently find Direct View LED video walls is large physical format walls where the viewing distance is long so that pixel pitch can be larger without affecting the visual image. In these applications the significantly higher pixel density of Monitors adds no improvement in visual quality because the human eye can’t resolve the extra resolution and all that extra resolution is essentially wasted. One significant benefit of the NEC F series Direct view video walls is the ability to choose from a variety of pixel spacing on the same mechanical framework.

There are many viewing distance calculators available online, for this discussion we have used one from Starico. They calculate a factor called Visual Acuity Distance which they define as:

“The Ideal Viewing Distance based on Visual Acuity: This distance is calculated based on the reference resolving power of the eyes. The human eye with 20/20 vision can detect or resolve details as small as 1/60th of a degree of arc. This distance represents the point beyond which some details in the picture are no longer able to be resolved, so pixels begin to blend together. Closer to the screen than this may result in the need for higher resolution display.”

The calculated Visual acuity distances for our hypothetical video walls:

110” 1920 x 1080 (1080p) resolution Direct View LED Video Wall calculates at 14.3 feet.
110” 3840 x 2160 (4K) resolution Monitor Based Video Wall calculates at 7.2 feet

Depending on use, video walls are often quite close to the customer, and at those distances the Monitor based video wall enables a much cleaner visual without visible (to viewer) pixels at closer viewing distances. Even a 110” video wall at the rear of a storefront window display is generally too close for good visual image quality even using the finest resolution Direct View LED Video Wall modules, but if the budget permits, a high mounted storefront video wall designed to be viewed from further way inside a retail mall benefits from the lack of bezel gaps, higher brightness and better reliability that Direct View LED offers.

Other differences and considerations:

Direct View LED can have very high refresh rates, much higher number of displayable colors and higher contrast ratios and often higher maximum brightness.

Direct View LED panels have longer life and when well installed less maintenance will be required over the lifetime of a video wall. Failed modules can be replaced in small sections while Monitor based video walls will require replacing an entire monitor.

Monitor based video wall monitors with ultra thin bezels are fragile units that must be carefully handled and mounted to avoid inter screen contact and especially edge and corner impacts which will destroy the screen. In portable or rental applications, we recommend 3.5 mm A-A monitors for reliability at the expense of larger bezel intrusion into the image.

Summary:

Direct View LED Video Walls will grow in the number of applications and installations as pixel pitches get finer and costs drop more significantly. To properly justify the higher cost of Direct View LED will require a complete understanding of the applications they are being proposed into and the benefits that derive from Direct View LED. In a small but growing subset of video walls, Direct View LEDs make perfect technical sense. Monitor based video walls won’t compete where they can’t meet technical advantages of Direct View LED.

Monitor based Video Walls will continue to dominate the Video Wall market. The significantly higher resolution and lower cost per pixel or area of screen, plus the ability to view high quality visuals (albeit with small bezel gaps) from closer distances will continue to make monitors the best choice in most retail and commercial installations. In this hypothetical example, you could potentially deploy six monitor based 110” video walls for the display cost of a single 110” Direct View LED wall.

Often Direct View LED are chosen for portability reasons. The simplicity, accuracy and rigidity of the modules and connection systems are an excellent advantage for large portable video walls that need to be hung or ground stacked. RPT Motion has great reliable systems for portable arrays of Monitor based video walls perfect for events and trade shows at significantly lower capital cost. Please contact us for more information:

RPT Ultimate Desktop Array Mount

This is a preliminary post, the first public showing of RPT’s Ultimate Desktop Array Mounting System will be at the NEC New York Showcase October 24, 2018.

RPT wanted ultimate monitors for the Ultimate Desktop Array, so we partnered with NEC who have an expanding range of superb desktop monitors from 22″-27″ that have ultra thin bezels and the convenience of real digital signage features that are perfect for small arrays like Control Link.

NEC builds superb monitors of all sizes. Great monitors deserve perfect alignment, especially desktops where the user will spend many hours per day up close and personal with large amounts of data or images on multiple displays.

The perfect mount provides full six axis (X, Y, Z, Tilt, Pan, Roll) adjustment for each monitor allowing the monitor to accurately float in 3D space a few thousandths of an inch from each adjacent monitor. Angled desktop arrays bring geometric challenges that make perfect alignment an incredible challenge, a test that most mounts fail.

This sneak peek unpolished hand held cell-phone picture is from our prototype assembly shop demo area with six NEC EA271F-BK 27″ Monitors display controlled by Userful’s Software Video Wall Controller. The total resolution of this array is 5760 x 2160.

At the NEC New York Showcase this same layout was on display with six of the higher native resolution NEC EA271Q-BK Monitors for a stunning desktop array resolution of 7680 x 2880.

Here’s a link to a Rave Publications video clip from the NEC NYC Showcase about the EA271Q in this array.

Small Monitor Artistic Video Walls

NEC Booth at InfoComm2018 Las Vegas

Artistic video wall of 13 small monitors using some superb NEC Desktop Monitors.

Mounted on RPT MotionInc. DigitalSignMount.com QVWM-UA6 6 Axis VESA 100 Mounts.

Arrays of large monitors get unimaginably huge quickly. Video walls don’t have to be huge monitors. Artistic arrays of small monitors can fill even a large wall quickly and with good content will make a significant visual impact. Perfect for corporate reception areas, retail stores, clubs, restaurants.

NEC wanted to showcase these possibilities for their smaller monitors at InfoComm2018 and came to us for the best mounting solution on the market.

In just 2.6″ of thickness, using CNC machined billet aluminum and creative precision design we pack:

Drop on monitor interface (VESA 75, 100,150,200 options) with locking full 360 degree roll adjustment
2.0 “(+/- 1.0”) Horizontal Micro adjustment
2.0 “(+/- 1.0”) Vertical Micro adjustment
3 Point planar micro adjustments for tilt, pan and depth to allow perfect array plane without stressing the monitor frame

Our DigitalSignMount.com business is based on our 37+ years of high precision Industrial automation equipment, so it’s natural that our mount looks completely different than any other mount. We built a set of specifications and did a clean sheet design without looking at how “they” were doing it. In reality, “they” aren’t doing what we’re doing for small monitors.

Installers of small monitor video walls, rectangular array or artistic face a lot of challenges and time trying to align monitors. Most give up or run out of washers and shims long before getting close to perfection.

Because our mounts are an engineered and precisely manufactured product we have a unique method of precision engineered installation support for artistic video walls.

We’ll take your sketches, pictures and choice of monitors and build a 3D model for approval and render it against a wall of the design size. Here’s a 15 monitor example using wonderful NEC EX241BN Ultra thin bezel monitors. The blue frame is a 16:9 aspect ratio which gives an idea of how much of a typical 4K content will display on the monitors. This is the time for adjustments in layout, angles, design, etc.

Once the array design is finalized, RPT generates a CAD model of the drilling pattern to place the mounts on the wall. We add any known important dimensions, like wall width, center lines of the array, monitor outlines, etc. We plot that on a large format printer, 100% full sized. The precision mounting template is taped to the mounting wall and carefully leveled at the desired height and placed horizontally as desired. Drill four pilot holes on the marks for each QVWM-UA6 mount and you’re ready to attach the mounts. The monitor outlines also let you decide where to drill pass-thru holes for cables and if bezels are unequal which side the fat bezel is on. Mount the mounts with 4 screws each and you’re ready to drop on monitors one after the other and align the array perfectly at the design rotation.

For more on the QVWM-UA6 Mount see: http://digitalsignmount.com/2017/09/26/qvwm-ua6-mount-ultra-aligned-arrays/

If you’re interested in an Artistic video wall from small monitors, get us involved early and let us help you take your design from concept to perfectly presented reality.

Portable Video Wall Mount Options

Portable Video Walls aren’t well understood. Frankly, people don’t usually move video walls from place to place because they’re expensive complex systems and the available mounting systems aren’t reliable or simple to move. That’s a shame, we have RPT Modular Video Wall customers who deploy large video walls 40+ times in a few months each year at self-managed trade shows and product launches in smaller cities. Our new RPT PopUp System makes it even easier.

Before you consider the RPT PopUp Portable Video Wall System, you should first look at how you will use your portable video wall. The following questions will help you define your needs and narrow down your selection of portable mounting systems.

Basic questions you need to answer:

Have you ever rented a video wall? A 3×3 video wall will typically cost roughly $10K for a three day event, where they are available. Many smaller cities won’t have easy access to rental video walls, and the costs will multiply if transport and set-up costs are added.

How many monitors will your video wall have? What size monitors?

How many times per year will you move your video wall to maximize its impact and ROI?

Will your video wall stay in one room for its lifetime?

Do you need to move your video wall to different rooms or deploy it on different floors of one facility through standard office doors or on passenger elevators?

Is the primary use for your video wall to take to trade shows? If so are these events at large convention centers or self hosted events at hotels in smaller cities or various customer facilities?

Will your video wall be part of a rental program?

Will your video wall always be deployed in one layout (example fixed as 2 Wide x 2 High Landscape Array) or do you want flexibility and future expandability (example the nine monitors in a 3×3 array could be deployed as two 2×2 video walls)?

What type of content will you display on your video wall, what resolution is that content produced in, and what type of video wall controller will you select to place your content on your video wall?

Who will be responsible for the basic integration of the Portable Video Wall mounting, monitors, player, power distribution, cabling and any other required hardware? Where will all that hardware be mounted?

Once you understand the purpose of owning a portable video wall, you can start looking at ways to mount it and more importantly move it.

Option to explore:

The first thing we will do is send you to another top-notch supplier, so that you can educate yourself to some options. At first glance, RPT PopUp Video Walls will seem to be significantly more expensive than this option, so if this works for you you might be able to save money. Often we find potential customers have budgeted for this type of mounting without fully understanding the limitations. Or worse, they own these mounts and moving the video wall is inconvenient so it never moves place to place.

The lowest cost and simplest portable video wall mounting system is a single cart type of mount for a fixed number of monitors. If this type of mount works for you, please understand the limitations and then choose a quality cart of suitable capacity.

Here’s a link to typical fine example of a quality cart type of single layout mount from Milestone (formerly Chief):

See: http://www.chiefmfg.com/Products/LVM2X2U

It handles up to 50” monitors and provides micro adjustments mounts for the monitors. It is assembled on site from a kit of parts (Assembly manual link: http://downloads.chiefmfg.com/MANUALS-I/LVMSeries-I.pdf) and the completed assembly measures 80.5” high x 72.5” wide x 40” deep without monitors.

This type of simple single layout cart is a good choice for a simple low cost self-integrated video wall that won’t ever be moved room to room or facility to facility. Even without monitors these carts won’t fit through standard office doors or onto passenger elevators unless you take the cart apart to move it. There are wiring passages in the frame, but you will need to integrate and enclose your power distribution and any network or video wall controller hardware you require to move with the video wall.

All of these integration issues multiply if you’re deploying larger arrays (example 3×3) and each layout of array requires a specific model of cart, there is no clean upgrade path to larger arrays or deploying a large array as two smaller ones.

If a simple cart type of mount works for you, it may at first glance seem to be lower cost than the RPT PopUp System, but the time, integration quality and total cost may vary widely.

Monitors are the most fragile part, and the most expensive:

We’ve seen a lot of poorly mounted simplistic modular portable video walls at trade shows and other events from smaller manufacturers. These can take a long time to properly align into an attractive and professional looking array, an exercise that repeats every time you move your video wall.

You really need to be 100% confident in the rigidity and accuracy of the mounting system when using Ultra Thin bezel monitors (3.5mm Bezel-Bezel like the 49″ Philips BDL-4988XC is the smallest bezel we recommend for portable video walls).

Ultra thin bezels make for easily broken monitor glass with any impact especially to corners. Quality monitors are the biggest cost in a video wall and are the most likely components to be broken when moving a poorly mounted in a portable video wall.

RPT highly recommends properly designed road cases for the monitors of a portable video wall to protect the monitors during a move. RPT partners with Calzone Cases for dual monitor road cases predesigned for maximum protection of the 49” and 55” monitors we recommend. These cases allow one person to safely move two monitors at a time.

Why RPT PopUp Portable Video Walls?

RPT provides a rugged precision portable video wall mounting system designed for modern Ultra Thin Bezel monitors.

Our RPT PopUp Video Wall deploys quickly, typically a 2 x 2 wall will be content ready in under 30 minutes, often 15 minutes.

Our Monitor stacks include standard front panels and rear cable bins to catch excess cables, this allows simple integration. As well, we build on t-slotted aluminum and that offers an unlimited number of places to secure cables and other hardware.

For more on integrating RPT PopUp Stacks see: http://digitalsignmount.com/2018/02/06/rpt-popup-video-wall-integration/

RPT offers options like rear doors to make your PopUp Video wall look finished from behind if needed:

If you’re using an HDMI over Ethernet Video Wall Controller like Userful or MonitorsAnywhere, RPT offers mounted ThinGlobal MiniPoint DS Power Over Ethernet Zero Clients at each monitor location.

We will integrate our RPT PopUp System to any desired level, from naked non-folding mounts for you to integrate all the way to fully folding and wired plug and play. Because of that experience, we’ve already answered most of the hard integration questions and can quickly deliver what you need: A reliable and safe portable video wall, or components to help you do the integration yourself.

We offer an optional RPT Modular 4U rack mounted to the back of one or more monitor stacks to carry your network, power distribution, Uninterruptible Power Supply and Video Wall Player or Controller hardware securely and neatly.

We always offer expansion and variety of deployment configurations as a retrofit at any time from a basic 2×2 array through 4 high x as many wide as you want, all without losing your initial investment. This can allow multiple smaller video walls or one large one from your pool of monitors. A common example would be one 3×3 trade show Video Wall deployed as two branch office 2 x 2 RPT PopUp Video Walls when not at trade shows.

Or a collection of several branch office RPT PopUp Video Walls merged into a 17 monitor back wall of a 20 foot trade show booth:

Simply put: RPT PopUp Portable Video Walls are a premium option that will make your Portable Video Wall easier to integrate, more flexible, more reliable and easier to deploy more often in more places.

Tell us what you need to do, you’ve answered the questions above, we have the solution.

RPT PopUp Video Wall Introduction

This will begin a series of posts leading to the launch of RPT Motion’s Portable PopUp Video Wall.

PopUp Kiosks, PopUp Boutiques and PopUp Stores are modern buzzwords and marketing tools. We’re also seeing growth in small private single supplier trade shows, training events and seasonal product launches. Usually self-managed, these events are popping up in more locations, at smaller venues, even local hotels.

Portable PopUp Video Walls would be a great marketing tool, but quality video wall arrays are difficult to PopUp. As a result, rental video walls are usually not available in smaller markets or hotels where lower potential volumes make local supply either inaccessible or very expensive. Even in larger markets Rental Video Walls are usually expensive to deliver, set-up and configure. With high set-up costs, smaller or shorter events just can’t afford a video wall. As a result, conventional Video Walls are expensive to rent and unavailable in many smaller markets.

Portable Video Walls are difficult to deploy multiple times quickly and usually difficult to reconfigure to different array sizes and inputs. This is largely because there has been no available fully integrated Portable Video Wall deployment solution that is flexible, cost effective and convenient. As well, the deployed quality and ease of content presentation varies widely from horrible to acceptable.

RPT Motion Inc. has been in the industrial automation business for 37+ years and has built custom modular portable video wall mounting systems for close to a decade. These have generally been custom built for customer trade shows and corporate road shows. Some of these systems have been deployed hundreds of times since new and are still in use. When we’ve attended trade shows with our custom modular video walls, we consistently have the fastest installed and best aligned wall in the show. But our first generation modular video walls were aimed at single layouts, rectangular or artistic and were excellent free-standing mounting systems without full integration.

Integrating a complete plug and play, high quality portable video wall system is a complex multi-disciplinary task that takes time, money, knowledge and risk beyond what most Video Wall end users are willing to invest and usually beyond their level of technical competence. Often the solution chosen is expensive and more often it’s a tinkerer’s nightmare to set-up and configure late into the night before the show.

What if you could walk in and confidently PopUp an aligned and configured video wall and display content in under an hour? Then anytime you needed to move that wall, even through people sized doorways, down hallways, into passenger elevators and again have content up in an hour or less at the next location? What if, using the same hardware you could configure a 2 x 2 wall today, a 3 x 3 wall tomorrow and even a 3 x 30 wall or any other combination of walls if you had enough monitors, space and content?

An example of RPT PopUp flexibility adding value would be a small Video Wall rental operation owning 18 monitors, usually deployed as two 3 x 3 arrays. Each 3 x 3 array could also be deployed as two 2 x 2 arrays, so you could service one large (3 x 3) and two small (2 x 2) rentals from the same pool of monitors, or deploy a single super wide array of 3 high x 6 wide at the CEO’s mansion for a March Madness Bash or Superbowl Party displaying multiple feeds from 4K and 1080P sources? With our top level PopMax series, you could deploy a 4 x 4 Array of 55″ monitors and output full resolution 8K content on a 220″ diagonal screen

In 2018 these scenarios are not just possible, it’s all easy and quick with RPT PopUp Video Walls.

RPT PopUp Video Wall: What’s Changed?

There needed to be a better way.

It’s the start of 2018 and we’re in the right place at the right time. Over the past few years a lot has changed in the technology of video walls to help enable RPT’s PopUp Video Wall Systems. The two major industry changes are Monitors and Controllers. One makes a video wall less expensive and one makes a video wall less expensive and easier to configure and implement.

Monitors: Video walls need a bunch of big monitors. You don’t need 4K monitors in Video walls because you don’t have content or display ability to benefit from all that increased resolution in an array. High quality 49” and 55” ultra-thin bezel 1080P video wall monitors, the sweet spot for RPT PopUp Video Wall Arrays, are now dropping significantly in price.

Controllers: The evolution of modern and flexible software video wall controllers with HDMI over Ethernet Zero Clients, such as Userful’s Software Video Wall Controller is advancing rapidly. The configuration of video walls and connections of content and inputs to video walls is now easier and more flexible than ever. In the simplest deployment a mid-range Userful Server can be configured as a simple appliance directing a single user output (4K or 1080P) to one or more video walls networked with Gigabit Ethernet. Extended to maximum, a high end Userful server can configure one huge or multiple smaller video walls, can use 4K and multiple 1080P inputs, Ethernet cameras, web and locally stored content all configured, scaled, scheduled and looped as needed.

A high end Userful Software Video Wall Server can handle one hundred monitors. If you needed a 2 high x 50 wide, 3 high x 33 wide, 4 high x 25 wide or multiple arrays of some random mix of heights and widths, Userful can deliver content to it. The RPT PopUp Video Wall System is 100% ready to deploy in that or any other configuration. A more likely real world example is that a 20 wide foot trade show booth rear wall can be completely filled with a 2 or 3 high x 5 wide array of 55” monitors.

Ask us for more information on RPT PopUp Portable Video Walls

Fields of View

The digital signage industry is significantly about delivering dynamic content on monitors to generate customer engagement. Too often we fail to consider how we might better locate and focus displays to increase the chances of those displays being visible enough to quickly catch the eye of that customer we want to engage.

Placement and aiming of monitors in retail or other public spaces is a complex subject that could fuel neurological behavioral doctoral dissertations, but a basic understanding of a few parameters might significantly improve your monitor’s chances of being seen well enough to grab the viewer’s attention.

A walking pedestrian is actually a very poor target for digital signage, because we’re programmed with a self protecting nature that focuses while walking on identifying potential obstacles in a narrow forward band from O degrees( level) to approximately 10 degrees downward. As a result, unless we start embedding monitors in floors, it’s most likely that your monitor will first be seen in the peripheral vision of the target audience.

When an object enters the peripheral vision of a walking person we don’t actually think about it, rather it is quickly processed in our subconscious process and evaluated as to importance before we might turn our conscious focus towards it. First priority is danger then interest. It seems entirely logical that a monitor better aimed at the target will probably stand a much higher chance of interrupting the walk, while a monitor aimed poorly will generally just be ignored.

The better the aiming of the monitor at the eyes of the viewer, the more likely the message will be processed as relevant enough to grab the conscious attention of the viewer, ideally even stopping their walk and lifting their eyes.

The harsh reality of most public environments is that monitors must often be mounted in less than perfect locations, above the heads of walkers, or on the sides of typical walking patterns or attached to walls facing on perpendicular or parallel planes to your potential customer’s Field of View.

Stacked monitors starting near floor level and if possible aimed outward from the wall and towards the target are possibly better at getting attention than a single horizontal row of monitors at eye level or above heads.

Many have come to understand that Artistic or Mosaic arrays will also grab more attention. Perhaps some of the subtle magic of an artistic or mosaic array is that their irregular shape can’t simply be processed to be subconsciously ignored as just another rectangular screen.

Here’s a great example video worth watching from Userful of an Artistic Video Wall that’s really impossible to ignore.

Walking towards this complexly creative video wall from either direction will engage a downward looking view because the stacks of monitors rises from close to the floor, plus the 3 high portrait stacks are angled towards the viewer rather than being flat on the wall. The back sides of each zig-zag stack forms a second video wall that engages the reverse traffic with different content. This video wall is a real stop and stare opportunity that grabs attention.

A flexible mounting system is important, but most commercial monitor mounts have evolved slowly from the early era of mounting single monitors flat on a wall. Mounts that can quickly and rigidly mount digital signage monitors at different precisely designed angles aimed at a target are not common. If enough monitors are being mounted, sometimes a custom engineered and fabricated mount is a good option, but that’s likely expensive and long delivery.

Mounting monitors using precision modular assemblies is one of RPT Motion’s specialties. We have extended our proven modular Quick VESA industrial monitor mounting system to include modules that allow freely adjustable or fixed by design options for combinations of pan, tilt and roll angles for an installation may require something different for best visibility. RPT can now offer these options in quickly custom engineered mounts with precise angles that allow much better optimization of where your monitor is aimed.

RPT’s Quick VESA Targeted Focus or QVTF range of products is modular, allowing RPT to quickly propose, quote, build and deliver from one to thousands of ready to install mounts precision built to the best angles for your installation. The QVTF range is especially capable when working with small to medium (24-42”) monitors with VESA 100×100 thru VESA 200×200 mounting patterns. We also have excellent options for larger monitors, so we can offer you angled and multi-sided solutions targeted at all monitor sizes and layouts.

Here’s a standard very simple straight RPT Double sided wall mount which puts the aim of the monitor parallel to the walls and walking path. The “arm” can extend the monitors as far as you wish away from the wall, but they still don’t really ever face most viewers walking towards them.

In the same setting here’s another type of double sided RPT Wall Mount with the monitors angled. The angled monitor faces more easily engage directly with more eyes. These monitors protrude less from the wall, but are more visible.

Our point today is that to maximize your investment you should go beyond generic catalog mounting and properly explore the best options for mounting and aiming your monitors. RPT Motion’s DigitalSignMount.com group has a comprehensive range of monitor mounting engineered modules and 25+ years of quickly building precision modular assemblies with t-slotted extrusions. We combine those assets into custom built for your application monitor mounting systems for just one or thousands of monitors. Mount it properly and it will generate better interest and better returns.

Send us a note about how you want to mount your monitors. We’ll quickly offer you reliable, proven options that are quickly and cost effectively custom tailored to your monitors and location.

QVWM-UA6 Mount Ultra Aligned Arrays

Update: InfoComm18 June 2018 Las Vegas:

NEC Display Solutions will have a thirteen monitor Artistic smaller monitor video with four E221N (22″), four E241N (24″), four E271N (27″) plus one EX241UN (24″) monitors all mounted in three sub-groups on RPT QVWM-UA6 mounts and powered powered by Userful’s Software video wall controller. Small monitors maybe, but even arrays of small monitors get big quickly, this wall is twelve feet wide.

NEC Display Solutions builds the best possible quality product, they will have nothing less than the best possible RPT mounting system to present their superb monitors.

What do badly aligned arrays say about your brand’s attention to detail and quality?

The DigitalSignMount.com group at RPT are a highly critical bunch when it comes to Digital Monitor mounting. We have spent 36+ years designing, machining and assembling precision assemblies accurate to tiny tolerances for all types of ultra precision industries.

We bristle and cringe when we see misaligned expensive arrays in high end locations, and frankly we see very few that we give the thumbs up to. Don’t just blame the installers, especially on arrays of smaller monitors, there have been no outstanding mounting systems for those arrays, so they take time, patience, a stack of washers and rarely end up perfectly aligned, even after many hours of tinkering and tweaking.

Most of our own RPT Motion precision mounts are three axes of adjustment, but we have the extra benefit of having our own exceptionally accurate frames to build on with those mounts when they are freestanding or overlays.

Our experience is that a quality monitor out of the box is truly a high precision part, but that inherent flatness and accuracy degrades a bit every time you handle or mount the monitor. Small corrections and twisting alignment tweaks carefully applied by brave and skilled installers generate good but rarely perfect results by re-bending the frame of the monitor slightly.

Until today, there were simply no solid, accurate and fully adjustable (Six Axes) mounts for arrays of 24-39″ monitors.

Today RPT changed that as we proudly released our QVWM -UA6 from development to production.

A few words on RPT nomenclature,

QV is for Quick VESA which is a series of engineered modules serving VESA 75 x 75 thru VESA 200 x 200.

WM is for Wall Mount (many of our mounts are free-standing structures without a wall)

UA6 is for Ultimate Alignment 6 Axes

For the adjustability it offers, the thickness from Wall Surface to VESA Mounting Surface is a very slim 2-5/8″ at the mid range of the planar adjustments. Plus it’s small enough to hide behind a typical 24″ monitor rolled to any artistic angle.

The six axes the QVWM-UA6 mount can adjust are:

X or Horizontal Axis MicroAdjustment
Y or Vertical Axis MicroAdjustment
Roll Axis with full 360 degree monitor rotation with lock and drop-on monitor system
Z Axis front to back MicroAdjustment
Tilt (Top to Bottom) MicroAdjustment
Pan (Side to Side) MicroAdjustment

Here’s an image of an intentional misalignment on one of our testing rigs to demonstrate the range of the tilt adjustment using 24″ NEC EX-241UN Ultra Thin Bezel Monitors:

Here’s the aligned flat and level result a minute later:

RPT has pioneered the use of a 360 degree roll axis with rotation lock for mounting both Artistic arrays and rectangular arrays. We find it a faster and more effective way to get perfect final adjustments than the more common roll adjust by differential heights on each side. Plus, because our roll axis provides 360 degrees of rotation the exact same mount works for artistic, rectangular, and mixed portrait-landscape arrays. We’ve built our roll axis and rotation lock right onto the drop on monitor adapter.

Here’s the wall mount portion of the final prototype version in RPT’s testing area showing the other five axes of adjustment:

The X and Y axes are precision machined aluminum screw driven micro-adjustable linear slides. The central hex head drive is the Y Axis adjuster, the black hand knob on the right adjusts the X axis position.

The X-Y slide system is mounted on RPT’s three point planar adjustment system. In this case, the pan is adjusted pointing quite far left of center. The three point wall mounting with hex head plane micro adjusters allows pan, tilt and Z axis micro-adjustments while making it impossible to stress or twist the monitor frame.

If you’re installing arrays of smaller monitors, either rectangular or Artistic/Mosaic please contact us to discuss how we can make that installation fully adjustable the final results can be as perfectly aligned as your brand.

If you’ve got a monitor model and layout sketch (even Pencil sketch), when you purchase RPT QVWM-UA6 mounts RPT will generate a CAD drawing showing the mount centers dimensions so your installer can quickly mark the monitor centers on your wall and use our mounting template to locate and drill the mounting holes.

In-Line Array Ideas

We’re tossing some array ideas out to get you thinking outside of a rectangular box.

Sometimes video walls are simpler, single dimensional in-line arrays.

Here’s a nine monitor alternating landscape portrait array.

Here’s the same nine monitors slanted 20 degrees which adds interest:

RPT manufactures a line of modules that form ultra simple precision mounting for in-line smaller monitor arrays like this.

We use an industry standard precision t-slotted aluminum extrusion as a horizontal bar of any desired length up to 20 feet in a single bar.

Then we add one RPT drop-on receiver, and one RPT 360 Degree Rotating Drop On VESA 100 x 100 Adapter per monitor. If no monitor rotation is required we can use the even simpler RPT FM VESA mounts which we developed for Industrial Shop Floor Monitors. The receiver positions adjust as required along the length of the extrusion and simple angle brackets slide along the slots to bolt into supports as required.

Linear arrays don’t always need a wall, they might be bar mounted across reasonable distance open spaces or hung on a post off a wall and those arrays can be double sided. Here’s a view down the middle of a wall mounted sign post showing the simplicity of our RPT FM-VESA Mounts. Each monitor adapter connects to the extruded bar with a single bolt and alignment precision is machined into the parts.

A wall mounted signpost structure that can be expanded with more monitors.

Ends of aisle, or along walls:

Because our mounting systems are modular, RPT Motion Inc. can quickly design and deliver a single monitor or array of monitors mounting system configured to your needs.

Tell us what you need, we’ll get back to you quickly with a custom proposal delivered quickly with standard RPT Modules.

Mounts for Mosaic Video Wall of Smaller Monitors

Example 9 Monitor Mosaic Video Wall layout

Eye grabbing Artistic or Mosaic Video walls are often built with smaller 24-32″ monitors. Smaller monitors are especially interesting where wall space is limited, the viewer will be relatively close to the video wall, or perhaps higher overall resolutions are desired. Common examples would be a wall behind a reception desk in a corporate entry, or a shallow retail storefront window.

The pixel density per square inch is higher with an array of small monitors than with larger monitors. The nine monitor layout above, designed with NEC’s exceptional EX241-UN 24″ Ultra Thin Bezel 1080P Monitor is 58.5″ High and 83.5″ wide at the points and has 18.6 Million individually displayable pixels. For reference it takes up the wall space of an approximately 102″ diagonal single monitor, which if 4K resolution would display only 8.3 million pixels.

Displaying high resolution content on multiple displays is no longer a challenging software or hardware problem. Video Wall Controllers, like Userful’s Software Video Wall Controller, simplify the display and content management of a wide variety of high resolution source content output to multi-monitor arrays of rectangular, or rotated and randomly placed monitors. Userful can output full resolution 8K video which has over 33 million displayable pixels and even higher resolutions for static images like fashion photos.

Typically 24″ ultra thin bezel monitors like the NEC EX241-UN or the the Viewsonic VP2468 will have a VESA 100mm x 100mm mount. Smaller VESA wall mounts were designed for mounting single monitors at the lowest possible cost, they have minimal or no adjust-ability and are therefore very poor choices for mounting arrays, especially artistic or mosaic arrays where rotation is required. If you don’t have the required adjust-ability in the mounting your array will rely on a lot of installer skill and a lot of time to properly align, if it’s even possible to get a good alignment.

With the introduction of RPT Motions’ QVWM-DM3 wall mount, mounting and aligning complex arrays of small monitors is no longer an obstacle.

RPT Motion Inc. identifies the key adjust-ability requirements for mounting rectangular or artistic arrays as:

X axis (horizontal) Micro Adjustable
Y Axis (vertical) Micro Adustable
Rotation Axis adjustable through 360 degrees and lockable
Drop on- Lift off monitor interface
As thin as possible to minimize projection from wall

With a mount that allows these adjustments, you can simply locate the design center of your monitors on the wall, secure the mounts to the the wall within about half an inch of the design locations, drop the monitors on in sequence, “float and rotate” the monitors into perfect alignment finishing with a small even gap between bezels in a minute or less. Once aligned, the monitors lift off and replace with precision.

Adjustments to monitor plane (Tilt, Pan and Z axis) are less critical for small 24″ monitors than giant 60″ monitors. A precision built mount on a flat wall can usually provide very good to excellent array flatness without the complexity and physical size of those adjustments.

When mounting small monitors in arrays, what we at RPT Motion call the wall-print or the face view X-Y size of the mount is critical as it must be small enough to hide behind a small monitor rotated to any angle the array designers decide upon.

RPT has released their QVWM-DM3 Mount that’s perfect for arrays, simple or complex, rectangular or artistic of small monitors.

Here’s that same layout of NEC EX241-UN 24″ monitors as above, with the central monitor hidden so you can see the small wall-print of the ultra compact RPT QVWM-DM3 mount:

For 36+ years, RPT Motion has built high precision industrial automation components and systems for manufacturing and aerospace industries. We hold CNC machined tolerances of < 0.001″ every day, and we design tightly integrated mechanisms using state of the art CAD/CAM.

The basis of the RPT QVWM-DM3 is a precision CNC machined aluminum ultra compact micro-adjustable X-Y translator that provides an easy to mount stable wall plate with 2.00″ (+/- 1.0″) of X via hand knob and 2.00″ (+/- 1.0″) of Y via 7/16″ hex micro-adjustment and an integrated receiver slide for the drop on system.

The QVWM-DM3 monitor interface provides an integrated handle for easy lift off, full 360 degree rotation with locking, and can be delivered with 75 x 75 or 100 x 100 VESA Mounting patterns. Other sizes (100 x 200, 150 x 150, etc.) are possible, and an upcoming big brother will handle VESA 200 x 200. The precision drop on slide engages easily and repeats location very precisely.

Here’s how the drop-on works:

The QVWM-DM3 is very thin for a mount with these features and this much adjust-ability, just 2.5″ from wall surface to VESA mount surface:

And here’s a rear view of that 9 monitor array using QVWM-DM3 mounts.

The capabilities, rigidity, adjust-ability and precision of the RPT QVWM-DM3 mount are unique in our industry and finally make quick accurate mounting of complex arrays of small monitors simple.

Please contact us for more information:

Mount Basics

How much adjustment is enough?

We at RPT just can’t walk past a video wall without looking at and most likely critiquing the installation and alignment. Most video walls are not well aligned and we wonder why. Recently, at InfoComm 2017, the AV industry showcase convention, I walked the floor and estimate that fully 75% of the video walls could have been improved significantly with proper alignment and 25% of them were just plain awful. Our own industry should be showing perfectly aligned video walls, if not something is wrong with either the mounts or the installers.

Let’s face it; mounts are usually the final afterthought in any video wall project, the last thing to worry about and buy before slapping those expensive monitors onto the wall. Mounts are simple, aren’t they?

If mounts are so simple, then why are there so many badly aligned video walls? Perhaps installers aren’t as skilled as they should be? The wall was more crooked than we expected? We ran out of time, money or both?

A poorly aligned, badly installed video wall is a poor reflection on your brand and your attention to detail, so you should understand how to avoid installation problems. It begins with understanding what a mount needs to do and buying a mount that can be adjusted in your application.

RPT has researched monitor mounting and developed our own mounts where we couldn’t find acceptable alternatives in the industry. We’ve proven, in our testing, that quality Monitors are very accurate and a rigid precision assembled structure can deliver acceptable alignment without any adjustments. In the real world, walls aren’t precision structures, and installers don’t have the tools to measure and mount to less than a hundredth of an inch. SO adjustment will always be required.

There are six axes of possible monitor adjustment:

Lateral (X axis)
Height (Y Axis)
Tilt (Top to bottom relative to wall)
Pan (Side to side relative to wall)
Roll (Rotation about center of Face, clockwise or counterclockwise)
Depth (Z Axis)

Mounts you choose may offer all of these axes of adjustment, or only a few. Some axes may be achieved by combination, example Roll is most commonly adjusted by differential adjustable heights left and right and that works well. Buy onyly what you need, but choose too little adjustability and even the best installer won’t be able to deliver a perfectly aligned video wall.

The Minimum number of adjustable axes to easily achieve good alignment really depends on the flatness of your mounting surface, the skill of your installer and the time allowed to align the array.

Three axis Mounting

A well built flat wall can align an array with three axes: X, Y and Roll only. The bezel to bezel spaces can be near perfect but the planar alignment may not be 100% perfect if the array face is viewed from the side at a steep angle.

RPT’s MVW-GHB L3 Modular Portable video walls are precision assemblies. We build them with RPT GHB 3 axis precision machined mounts of our own design with excellent results. Our customers move these video walls many times per year, and set-up and alignment must be fast and accurate each time. One big advantage is that we don’t need or use a wall; we mount onto a precision modular free-standing structure that assembles flatter than most walls,

Six Axis Mounting

A badly out of true wall will generally need all six axes of adjustment and if the mount chosen has the range of adjustments, and the installer is well equipped, skilled and allowed enough time, the array can be adjusted absolutely flat and perfectly aligned. A badly aligned array with excellent mounts is the installer’s fault.

RPT’s MVW ConnexSys L6+ single or double sided freestanding video wall structures are a great six axis example. We integrate them with the Chief ConnexSys mount that provides wide range full six axis stress free adjustment system with a pull-out for installation and service.

Pull out or drop on?

Monitors should be easily loaded onto the mount. Small monitors drop on easily to some mounts. Large arrays of large monitors should have a pull-out feature to allow center monitors to be removed and replaced without removing a bunch of other monitors. Pull outs also allow easier connections after that heavy monitor is supported. There’s more engineering with pull-outs. You must confirm that the mounting wall’s structure can safely accommodate the overhung loads of your monitor’s weight pulled out to the maximum the mount allows, and one shouldn’t presume that only one monitor at a time will be pulled out at a time. You’ll need to manage a strategy for releasing the monitors or ensuring that they can’t be released by just anyone.

Stress-Free

Hard for me to believe and I won’t name names, but some big name six axis pull-out mounts for large monitors can be adjusted in combinations that twist and stress the frame of that expensive thin bezel monitor. Thin bezel monitors are expensive, and fragile. At RPT we insist that mounts never impart extra stress to the monitor no matter how they are adjusted.

Arrays of small monitors

Small monitors (VESA 100×100 and 200×200) present special challenges because there are few fully adjustable options for those smaller monitors. As a result, RPT has developed the RPT Wall Mount 3 Axis Artistic Drop on that handles rectangular and artistic layouts of small and medium monitors. We will soon release a full six axis version of the same mount, making perfect alignment of small monitor arrays easy.

Goals

Arrays of monitors should have tiny spaces between bezels. Commonly described as the thickness of a business card, approximately 0.025 Inches or 0.6mm is perfect. Not all monitor bezels are perfectly straight, so we set the design gap at 0.040 or 1 mm and ensure that there is a small gap everywhere along each edge. Gaps are essential to ensure that the weight whole stack of monitors isn’t pushing down on the top edge of the bottom monitor. A business car should slide down the gap without binding. Easy to adjust mounts make that perfect gap easy to set while harder to adjust mounts get the “good enough” in frustration and the result rarely is good enough.

Arrays should present as flat a face as possible. If the array is set back some distance and only viewed from relatively narrow front angles, this is far less important than other adjustments. If a person can walk past parallel to the face of the array, planar misalignment becomes much more obvious and just looks sloppy.

Summary

The cost differential between great mounts with enough adjustment and terrible mounts that can’t be aligned is a tiny fraction of what your video wall will cost. Don’t blame your installer if you choose the wrong mounts and they can’t install a perfect video wall, usually for cost reasons, and the results are less than optimal. On the other hand some installers don’t have the skills or attention to detail even with the best available mounts.

If you want more information on RPT Video Wall Mounting Systems or wish to discuss challenging video wall installations please contact us.

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