Digital Billboards: What Do You Think of Them?

[sleepy]

It goes to show you how often I travel downtown here in Los Angeles.
Like a scene straight out of Blade Runner, several major streets like Sunset Blvd. are ablaze with high-intensity LED digital billboards bright enough to be clearly seen in direct sunlight, while changing their message every six to fifteen seconds. These signs display static images, no moving images, out of concern for driving safety. There is currently a city controversy over their unannounced and sudden erections as well as a temporary moratorium currently preventing the inclusion of 800 more digital billboards in our city.
There is also controversy over the matter that the signs are grossly not green, as in global warming. News of the existence of these displays is news to me and I'm still educating myself on the ins and outs.

What do you think about 'em?

http://www.inc.com/magazine/20080301/bright-lights-big-impact.html

http://www.laweekly.com/2008-11-20/news/digital-billboards-become-a-bohemian-blasphemy/

 

[Phoenixx]

Not sure what i think about them, but i know i wouldnt mind having one attached to my living room wall,...

 

[sleepy]

I wouldn't mind one for gaming either except that the pixels are noticeably large and the image is slightly grainy because of it, but that brings up a paradox. The Green movement is protesting the carbon problem brought on by these billboards (which I am not knowledgeable enough about) and yet I'm not sure whether they are even aware of the fact that current LCD HDTVs with LED backlight illumination are the same difference. I'll assume they object to both.

The images are blazingly bright and the colors brilliant instead of conventional old-school television where "red-on gray color" is the rule. With the billboards the colors appear pure, as in red light, blue light, etc.

 

[mrschultz]

There are several along I95 in Philly. Once you've seen them for a while they are just like any other billboard, but kind of cool when they put really current info like radio station ads that say what song is playing right now.

Hadn't thought about the "green" aspect of them. I wonder how much power they use in 24hrs vs a standard billboard with high intensity lights blazing away only at night? Some of the standard boards on that stretch of highway get changed every few weeks, so they save on trash going into the landfills....

Edit: Thinking about it LEDs are several times more efficient than flood lamps, so I would guess in the winter with long nights the LED boards would use less power, probably only a little more in summer.

 

[mrschultz]

I wouldn't mind one for gaming either except that the pixels are noticeably large and the image is slightly grainy because of it

Yea, I read somewhere the pixels on these things are 1 or 2 centimeters in size, never seen one close enough to see the pixels.

 

[sleepy]

I have to admit that I am a sucker for these displays. I am wowed by the Blade Runner effect, but as the article in the link for L.A. Weekly points out, the need to exercise care in placing these displays so that they do not intrude on private residences at night has not been met. I do think I might be annoyed by that.

 

[mrschultz]

I have to admit that I am a sucker for these displays. I am wowed by the Blade Runner effect, but as the article in the link for L.A. Weekly points out, the need to exercise care in placing these displays so that they do not intrude on private residences at night has not been met. I do think I might be annoyed by that.

I guess the ones in LA are brighter than the ones here in Philly, at night they don't seem that much brighter than the standard billboards (some of the standard ones that have a lot of white on them are brighter), maybe they turn down the intensity at night. You would think the people that run the boards would think of that to save on their electric bill, could even turn them down on cloudy days.

I remember the talk on the news around here about them before they went up, mostly it was about driver saftey.

 

[Joe]

ever see to one with a system error message on them or a windows BSOD?

 

[sleepy]

Does it happen with the billboards Joe? Because we have what is called "Transit T.V. in Los Angeles. This is a promotional video gimmick with ads that runs on the L.A. County bus lines. There are two LCD monitors on each standard bus and the video feed is loaded from wi-fi beacons transmitting the video in packets dispersed at spaced intervals along the bus routes. They also carry brief news feeds from the local broadcast stations, but
the system occasionally breaks down and at that point the standard Windows error message with the O.K. button is displayed center screen and sometimes overlaps the otherwise-working video feed. Imaging one of your well-known local newsanchors sitting at the desk with the Windows Error/O.K. button pasted over his face while he reads you the news. Whoops, I just looked them up and they've gone bankrupt.
I guess that's why the screens on last week's bus rides were dark.

http://www.sixteen-nine.net/index.p...t-tv-shuts-down&catid=1:latest-news&Itemid=50

 

[vpin_2000]

I think they're interesting. It kinda reminds me of the Daktronics billboard they have at the assembly hall on Campus.

 

[LaughingOtter]

http://www.liewcf.com/blog/archives/2006/02/the-worlds-largest-windows-error-message/
http://www.pixelbeat.org/ms_mirth/
Ten good billboards and a whole mess of other inconvenient Windoze crashes there...

 

[faralos]

Too many accidents are caused by idiots trying to read these behemoths instead of driving. I used to drive professionally and saw too many jerks trying to see when it would 'change' and ramming the poor person in front of them. You shouldn't be reading ads anyways while driving (nor drinking anything, or texting, or playing with your radio.) but people have and always will ignore safety for convenience. and there is nothing worse than for people like me who have light sensitive eyes and I'm coming around a dark bend at night when my eyes are assaulted by this Klieg light billboard blazing away in the middle of nowhere. So I hate them, they're a nuisance and dangerous too.

 

[mrschultz]

Too many accidents are caused by idiots trying to read these behemoths instead of driving. I used to drive professionally and saw too many jerks trying to see when it would 'change' and ramming the poor person in front of them. You shouldn't be reading ads anyways while driving (nor drinking anything, or texting, or playing with your radio.) but people have and always will ignore safety for convenience. and there is nothing worse than for people like me who have light sensitive eyes and I'm coming around a dark bend at night when my eyes are assaulted by this Klieg light billboard blazing away in the middle of nowhere. So I hate them, they're a nuisance and dangerous too.

What's worse? The police putting up "safety" devices that blind you at night with a flashing white light. There's one of those "your speed is" signs near me that flash the number in red but have a white light also that flashes, not bad in the day but very annoying at night. About a week after they installed it there was a very bad accident at that exact location, but the sign is still there. 25 years of driving that road I've never seen an accident on it before. Same town also has a trailer with a larger version that they put on the side of the road, sometimes the tire is over the white line because they put it where there isn't enough shoulder.

 

[faralos]

i love those 'your speed is' things! I always try to see just how much past the speed limit I can get to as I rip by it! But i'll agree they are quite bright too, also I have a highway near me that is being worked on at night. (great for the commute bad for any night-time driving) they put up 6 of these, I call 'em 'portable suns' multiple sets of floodlights about 4 to a pole and there they are blazing away at 6am right at the start of rush hour! man those blind the hell out of ya' if you just glance at one you are indeed like a deer in headlights

 

[Phoenixx]

Maybe someone should introduce them to light-sensors.

Allegedly these recently invented high-tech devices are capable of regulating the brightness of illumination-media based on the ambient light,...

 

[mrschultz]

i love those 'your speed is' things! I always try to see just how much past the speed limit I can get to as I rip by it! But i'll agree they are quite bright too, also I have a highway near me that is being worked on at night. (great for the commute bad for any night-time driving) they put up 6 of these, I call 'em 'portable suns' multiple sets of floodlights about 4 to a pole and there they are blazing away at 6am right at the start of rush hour! man those blind the hell out of ya' if you just glance at one you are indeed like a deer in headlights

I don't mind the bright numbers, it's this new one that has a white strobe that goes off that's very annoying at night.

Yea, some of those work lights are amazingly bright, started a few years ago. I often get stuck in work zones at night if I'm in NJ late, must be just like working during the day under them, but very hard on the eyes of the drivers stuck crawling along next to them...

Maybe someone should introduce them to light-sensors.

Allegedly these recently invented high-tech devices are capable of regulating the brightness of illumination-media based on the ambient light,...

You would think the billboard owners would push for this, would save them loads of money on their electric bill and increase their profits...

Maybe some already do change, there's one on 95 in Philly near the stadiums that never seems too bright at night, and another near the tolls on the Walt Whitman bridge that can blind you when it has a lot of white on it at night.

 

[faralos]

Yes i think it may be a personal preference option in the programming of it. I've seen dimmer ones near malls and such, or does it just look washed out due to all the ambient light? hmmm... anyone have any hands-on experience with these things?

 

[Phoenixx]

You would think the billboard owners would push for this, would save them loads of money on their electric bill and increase their profits...

Not to mention that running them at full power even in the night it is a huge waste of valuable energy.

In germany there would probably already be a law for this reason alone,...in fact they recently even outlawed the common light bulb because they turn 80% of the energy into useless heat,...

 

[mrschultz]

In germany there would probably already be a law for this reason alone,...in fact they recently even outlawed the common light bulb because they turn 80% of the energy into useless heat,...

The uselessness of heat depends greatly on the temperature outside.

For a while they were talking about banning incandescents in 2011 or 12, but haven't heard much about that in the US for the last few years... I switched all my bulbs over several years ago, lowered my electric bill right away, now that they have lots of even smaller wattage ones it's even better. And now they've got them that can be used in enclosed fixtures and outdoors.

 

[Phoenixx]

I switched all my bulbs over several years ago, lowered my electric bill right away...

So did i, and so did a lot of other people. But did it really lower our electric bills? Well, certainly not for anyone around here since they simply raised the price once they had realized that the present trend towards energy-saving will be their loss. Now im using only neons (kitchen) and 5-7 watts energy-saving bulbs (everywhere else) and im actually paying MORE than i did when i still had 60-100 watts incandescents installed everywhere. And it is getting MORE each year (10-20 bucks on average) so even though i DO save energy wherever i can it has certainly never had any positive effect on my wallet.

On the contrary, in the end all that talk of 'Save Energy - Save Money' was nothing more than a bag of hot air. The only effect it really seems to have is that the poor energy providers can now make the same money with only a fraction of their acquired power-contingents,...

 

[sleepy]

Do the electric companies still have a discount bulk rate for large users, businesses, etc.?
I know they used to.

 

[mrschultz]

So did i, and so did a lot of other people. But did it really lower our electric bills? Well, certainly not for anyone around here since they simply raised the price once they had realized that the present trend towards energy-saving will be their loss.

That's happening here in PA in a year or 2, PECO is already running ads warning people that rates are going to go up when the rate caps end, if they are doing that now I guess we are in for a big hit.

 

[Phoenixx]

They will always find ways to fool the common citizen into doing and/or going along with things which only help the rich to get even richer. Always.

Prime example: Germany and the Euro. Thats what youd call a perfect coup, so in a way you almost have to admire the cunningness with which this scheme was pulled off. The story: In the beginning they told us 'nothing will change, only the numbers'. What they meant by that was that the actual prices will stay the same and that merely the numbers would be reduced to roughly 50% of the values we were used to. So an article that cost say 90 pfennig would now cost 45 cents. In the first year or so this was actually the case; by numbers the prices were effectively cut in half.

But of course it didnt just stay that way. Since everyone knew that everyone is to a certain degree confused by this rather momentous change, (you dont part with a currency as strong and reliable as the DMark without having second thoughts), it didnt take very long for the corporations to realize that there is a psychological factor in play which can be capitalized on just fine. (Which, in retrospect, might have been the plan all along.) After all the adult population had already developed their...how should i put it....'feeling for prices', some of them for over 50 years, so since everything was suddenly only 50% of what the people thought acceptable for a certain item, what they did is gradually raise the prices until they roughly matched the values from the DMark times again. Now an article that cost 90 pfennig in pre-euro times costs roughly 90 cents, which means in the end the numbers changed alright, but not in they way they told us.

The energy story is practically another variant of the same principle. First they tell us to save energy so we would save a lot of money. Once everyone does it the energy providers start compensating their losses by raising the price for power accordingly. Effect: We pay the same or even more money for only a fraction of the power while the provider has enough MegaWatts of their contigent left to make a couple of nice extra pennies...