Flat panel as a picture frame

[LucasBuck]

Sorry if this is a stupid question for one reason or another, but I've never owned a flat panel monitor. I'm building a new home with a fairly extensive network running everything (automated). I thought it would be a nice feature if I could put a flat panel monitor into a wall for use as a changing picture frame. All I could find on the net are the smaller ones for tabletops that are stand alone. This would be run off of the computer that runs the house systems. Anyone know if this would work? I wasn't sure if there were any electronics in the base of a flat panel that couldn't be moved so that the screen would fit into a hole in the wall. If anyone would have a guess, or know any resources, I'd really appriciate it. Thanks.

 

[Myrmecophagavir]

Sounds like quite a house... mind it doesn't get a virus and start killing the occupants in a sci-fi stylee

I don't know about embedding into the wall, but many LCDs now have wall mounting options. IIRC the upcoming Hercules ones will have a wall-mounting bracket... perhaps this would do? They also look very stylish themselves, so might well fit in.

 

[exe]

What you want is any LCD's that is VESA compliant. That means it has a 100mm by 100mm mount holes in the back. Then you go to ergotron.com and find yourself a wall mount that is also VESA compliant. Now the only problem I forsee is the length of your cable. For sure you're going to have to run digital cables, but I don't know the lengths you can run them.

If you need to run long runs with digital, look into this product, you can run 300 feet.

http://www.gefen.com/kvm/product.jsp?prod_id=1033

As far as the base of any LCD monitors, no it's just a stand. You can just unscrew it. If it's VESA compliant, you unscrew the 4 screws on the back of the 100x100mm square mount. And to run digital cables, you need to buy an LCD with a digital DVI input and on the computer side, you will need to run Digital DVI out from the video card. Depending on your OS, you can run as many as 12 digital outs from a single computer. Since it's just for displaying photos, you can go for the Matrox G200 quad or dual digital out cards. Get it on ebay, they are cheap ( you also need to purchase the digital cable out from the Matrox cards).