If you're starting out with digital signage or running a small business then getting a Smart TV might be your best option. We'll outline a few of the lower budget options for getting up and running with digital signage. Smart TVs come with an inbuilt operating system, which generally works with most digital signage providers. For example if you buy a Smart TV with Amazon Fire TV built in, most digital signage providers supply their app for free on the in built Fire TV store. To put this in comparison, if you bought a regular TV with no inbuilt OS you'd then have to buy and connect a Fire Stick dongle, which is about $60USD for the 4K one (at the time of writing). So buying the Smart TV saves you that added expense and generally makes getting setup that little bit easier and there's one less cord sticking out that needs to be hooked up.
Warning about consumer Smart TVs
When you're running on consumer Smart TVs you probably shouldn't be running your digital signs for more than 8 hours a day. These displays are only built with home viewing in mind. If you need a solution that runs for longer periods of time then you should likely look at commercial displays, they will cost more, but will be built to run for long periods of time and likely will be more energy efficient which will save costs in the long run.
What different operating systems are there for Smart TVs?
There are many types of operating systems, too many to list here, so to keep this article digestible I'm only going to list some of the more popular ones.
Android TV / Google TV
Developed and backed by Google, so you know it's a solid operating system that will receive a lot of support. It comes with the Google Play store for you to find many different apps and likely most digital signage providers will support it . From a digital signage perspective there's no difference between Google TV and Android TV, the former has an arguably improved interface that's helpful for home viewing, so nothing really to do with digital signage, so if it saves money, go with the Android TV option.
Fire OS / Fire TV
Backed by and built by Amazon. Fire TV, built on the Fire OS is a very popular option. It was originally based off of Android. It's another solid choice with a large company backing it, and most digital signage providers will provide apps that are available on the OS.
Roku TV
Primarily used in the United States, Mexico, and the UK, so you might not have heard of it if you're not in one of these countries. Comes from another big company that manufactures digital media players, it's another solid choice but perhaps check your preferred digital signage software supports them as they are not generally a worldwide company.
Tizen
Tizen is a Linux based operating system, generally it has better picture quality and performance than its Android OS counterparts. It's developed and primarily used by Samsung, so if you buy a Samsung TV, it'll come with Tizen. Tizen has less digital signage apps than other more popular options. . Just be careful if you want to run in vertical orientation as it probably won't be supported, check out our review of a Samsung device here for more info.
Other options
With any of these options, if your Smart TV doesn't support your preferred digital signage software choice you can buy a dongle to run any of the above operating systems (with the exception of Tizen).
Hopefully that summarises a few of the consumer Smart TV options available which will help you get up and running with digital signage in a very cost effective way.