BrightSign Partners With Chinese Display Giant TCL On New Variant Of Smart Commercial Displays

June 7, 2023 by Dave Haynes

Integrators and solutions providers who use a lot of BrightSign boxes to drive displays will soon have an option for a series of “smart” displays that have built-in BrightSign media player boards – a move that in theory makes these embedded displays an alternative to the smart displays made by numerous commercial screen manufacturers.

The Silicon Valley company has entered into a partnership with MOKA Technology, a subsidiary of Chinese display manufacturing giant TCL.

The flagship of this new commercial display product line – the MOKA BS60 – will be shown next week at InfoComm 2023 in Orlando, at BrightSign’s always busy booth.

BrightSign has already had embedded options with Bluefin, which markets retail-focused merchandising displays. It also has hardware partnerships with Mimo Monitors and short list of specialty manufacturers. But the biggest Bluefin unit, for example, is 43-inches. The MOKA BS60 line with BrightSign Built-In will consist of 32, 43, 50, 55 and 65-inch models.

BrightSign was also supplying a board that could snap into the back of specific NEC displays, but I don’t get the sense that is still a thing.

“BrightSign is the ideal partner to bring digital signage capabilities to our growing portfolio of commercial displays,” says Laurence Liang, GM of MOKA Technology and VP of TCL Technology Group. “BrightSign has a strong reputation of performance that is unrivaled in today’s market, with a track record of reliability that ensures our customers will enjoy years of trouble-free use from our new BrightSign-enabled commercial displays.”

The MOKA displays support 4K, are hardened for commercial use and have a skinny bezel and profile.

“Demand for our BrightSign Built-In platform is strong, but until now our market penetration has been limited to smaller screens used in applications that lack ample room to mount external players,” says Jeff Hastings, CEO of BrightSign. “We believe there is an underserved need for larger screens with integrated digital signage capabilities, and we are pleased to collaborate with MOKA to bring to market a strong product offering to meet this growing demand.”

These units would compete with the SoC smart displays marketed by major players like LG, Samsung and PPDS (Philips). A lot of the pro AV community loves BrightSign players, so the enthusiasm should certainly be there. But MOKA is a seriously unfamiliar brand in North America, so it will take some work to build familiarity and confidence. The company does, however, have its own stand at InfoComm.

Distribution of the 55-inch model in North America will begin in Q4 before expanding the product line, and selling into other key global regions.

This is a very different arrangement than BrightSign has had with the specialty display guys, with TCL being a top three global display manufacturer and MOKA having 8,000 or so employees.

There is already some connective tissue between the companies, as TCL smart TVs can have Roku streaming hardware on them. BrightSign is a spin-out of Roku and Hastings sits on the Roku board.