We have tried a number of different vendors of electronic variable message centers over the past 20 or so years. I strongly caution any sign company or customer if they're considering a LED-based message center sold by any of the dozens of Asian companies that haven't been around for long.
There's two big factors in buying an electronic message center. 1: the up front cost. 2: the cost and ability to keep it running. Total cost of ownership. A seemingly cheap message center will get very expensive for the customer if it turns out to be an unreliable piece of garbage or, worse, if that upstart company goes out of business and spare parts to keep it serviced vanish. I've seen a number of cheap message centers go permanently dark, turned off for good, from that problem.
From the late 1980s through the 1990s we went with Time-O-Matic exclusively. Lots of "flip" style and 5-watt incandescent lamp time & temperature units and message centers. For reasons I won't get into we stopped selling Time-O-Matic units and tried a couple other product lines.
During most of the 2000's we sold units made by Adaptive Displays. Their prices were competitive and they had a decent dealership program. But their product reliability started trending south and their new Ooh-media software was not user friendly.
We mended fences with Time-O-Matic a few years ago and started selling some of their systems again, but ultimately chose to go with Daktronics. We have been selling Dak units exclusively for the past few years. The Venus software is really good and pretty user friendly. Dak is a big company that's been around for a long time and they're pretty good (but not perfect) at helping us maintain the message centers we sell.
We had some reservations about using Daktronics since the company builds some signs on its own and basically has the ability to cut a local sign company out of a sign project if it wanted to act in an unethical manner. A couple decades ago Dak had a reputation of doing just that (a big reason why we sold Time-O-Matic instead). In recent years Daktronics grew to see the value in business relationships and dealer programs. We can sell a lot more of their product in our home market than they can. They understand this now.
It's also important to choose a message center company that won't sell to just anybody. One of the vendors we stopped using sold product to anyone in our market. A certain competitor was under-cutting us by selling systems at cost with no mark-up. He did this just to get the job up front. Worse, the end result was a decent message center installed into a cheap, garbage quality sign. Ultimately the customer was hosed. In going the cheap route the customer received no training, only a 1 year vendor warranty on the message center and nothing in terms of service. When we sell a LED-based message center we personally train the customers how to use the software, help them with creation of more complex ads (when Photoshop, After Effects, etc. get involved) and we keep the thing running with a longer term warranty from us. But we need to be able to make a profit from selling the thing. If we literally have to give it away at cost, then we end up losing lots of money on the back end from service issues that are going to occur with ALL LED-based message centers.
Making a long point short, when a customer buys an electronic message center he is going into a long term working relationship with you, the sign company. It's not like buying a TV set or DVD player. But the companies selling systems on the cheap will make customers see it that way.
