Monthly checks: five minutes, anyone can do them
No tools, no opening cabinets. Assign these to whoever already walks the venue:
- Walk the screen at normal viewing distance: look for dead tiles, colour patches or a section sitting dimmer than the rest.
- Watch a full-bright white test image if your player supports it: flicker or shimmer shows up against white.
- Listen for fans whining or ticking, and check that ventilation openings are not blocked by dust, posters or nesting insects.
- Check that cabinet doors and cable entries are closed and sealed after any recent work on or behind the screen.
Log what you see, even when it is nothing. A pattern in the log is how recurring faults get traced to a real cause.
Quarterly checks: a closer look
Once a quarter, go a level deeper. Some of these need the screen isolated and a bit of confidence:
- Compare brightness and colour across the face of the screen after dark: drifting sections point to ageing power supplies or batch mismatch.
- Spot-check power supplies and hub cards for heat and loose terminations if you are comfortable doing so with the screen isolated.
- Clear drainage holes and inspect gaskets and seals on outdoor installations, especially before the rainy season.
- Power up your spare modules and spares stock: a spare that has died on the shelf is not a spare.
Annual service: the full check
Once a year, a permanent installation should get a systematic professional pass over the eight areas that decide its lifespan: module condition, brightness and colour uniformity, power supplies and earthing, thermal performance, control system and firmware, structure and sealing, spares and obsolescence risk, and repair history patterns. That is exactly what our screen health audit delivers, with a written condition report, a prioritised fault list and a costed quote for anything worth doing now.
Rental fleet extras
Rental stock lives a harder life than any fixed screen: truck rides, fast connectors, weather it never chose. On top of the checks above:
- Triage the fleet between events, not during them: every panel powered and run, not just the ones reported faulty.
- Check the wear items after every major event: latches, data connectors, power cables and looms.
- Keep spares counted against fleet size, not against what the shelf looks like.
Our rental fleet triage service does the full pass and hands your crew a labelled report of exactly what is show ready.
When to call a technician instead
Some symptoms mean stop and phone, do not investigate:
- The screen or any section smells hot, or a cabinet is visibly scorched or discoloured.
- The DB board trips or earth leakage fires when the screen powers up.
- Any sign of water entry: staining, drips, corrosion around seams, or faults that started with the first rain.
- Flickering that spreads or worsens week by week, which usually points to a failing power path.
If any of those sound familiar, send photos on WhatsApp and we will advise the safe next step before anyone opens a cabinet.