LED Panels vs Outdoor TV

[McCaylen Croninger]

I've saved some money from a few races this year and I want to make the jump to having live results for races.  I've seen setups with LED panels and some even using Direct Sunlight Outdoor TVs.  

I'm the type of timer who values simplicity and ease of setup/tear down over everything.  With LED panels, does it require a separate software to use with ART? Or can use simply plug into your laptop and click show public display?

Curious to hear anyone's perspective based on what they've used.  I'd also be curious on any recommendations for both LED panels and Outdoor TVs.

Thanks in advance. 

[SportMadeSimple]

LED panels are not as simple for setup as TVs, but the visibility is superior.  The basic difference is that you're going to have a much smaller screen size to work with on the LED panel. You can fit the Agee display onto a 1m x .5m panel but I have mostly used Athletic Live SB to control mine.

[Brandon Daniels]

Long story short, a TV is much more simple to setup/tear down.

I use LED panels at some races because I've already invested in them for track and field timing because they're very trendy for track and field timing.  But in my experience I wouldn't opt for them exclusively for road race type events unless it was being done on a larger scale to make the investment worth while.  Occasionally, some of the individual LED lights go out so you'll need to replace it with a spare panel. One of my afternoon projects is going to be replace an internal power supply that needs be replaced.  So you can expect to do regular maintenance on them and keep spare parts on hand.  That hasn't been very fun due to the ongoing US vs China trade war.

After absorbing all of those sticking points, if you do find that they still might be for you... just know that you'll connect your computer to a video processor or sending box (e.g., LVP 300) and then the video processor connects to the LED panels via ethernet.  At that point, the LED panels just mirror your computer screen like a TV or computer monitor would.  So you can use which ever software you want to display the results.  ART works fine with my panels. Though I only show 3 lines of results + the running clock.  But I'm sure you can check out other software as well.