Is Powerpoint right for us (N/A)

Topic

New Reply

I’m new here so 1st I would like to say hello to all!
Never used Powerpoint before and need to know if you think it’s the right application for our needs. Here’s what we would like to do.
We have an inside store within a large complex. We would like to mount a monitor or TV on the store wall and play through a never ending slide show of our items offered (pictures & descriptions). Kinda like our web pages at http://www.pineridge7.com. Is this best accomplished with a stand-alone computer running Powerpoint and displaying on the wall mounted monitor or can the Powerpoint presentation be saved to a DVD or CD, played on a DVD player and displayed on a TV? We are at a point where all suggestions are welcome.

Reply | Quote

Replies

Do you prefer DVD? One way to author a DVD is to record a “movie” of your computer playing a presentation and then convert that to DVD-video format. I’ve never done this, but there are tools available to do it.

PowerPoint is a great mix-and-match container. From text, to Excel charts, to pictures, to animated clip art, the more varied your media, the better a case can be made for using PowerPoint. On the other hand, if you are looking to play a bunch of web pages and don’t need the extra features of PowerPoint, then you might skip the extra complexity of figuring out how to do PPT animations and timings and the headaches of getting all the images positioned just so at the right sizes.

There are a number of online tools for making slide shows in a web browser. Flickr and other photo sites do it. However, you might not want to upload all your images there. Others can be downloaded.

Finally, if you don’t own a copy of PowerPoint, we should mention a free competitor, the presentations component of OpenOffice.org.

Reply | Quote

I guess what we’re seeking here is good advice and the easiest way to make a nice looking presentation. Some have told me that displaying content (pictures & text) via a DVD player to a TV leaves a lot to be desired. Others have said that running a program on a computer and projecting it to a large monitor is unnecessary and expensive. Since I don’t have the software, computer, or DVD at this point I want to do the research before spending the bucks.

Reply | Quote

> Since I don’t have the software, computer, or DVD at this point I want to do the research before spending the bucks.

Do you have the TV? If so, what kind? What resolution (e.g., LCD TV with XGA 1024×768 resolution; Plasma or rear projection with EDTV 852×480 resolution; some type of HDTV; or old fashioned tube TV)?

Some LCD projectors accept memory cards, such as SD (SecureDigital) cards, and can “autoplay” a “slide show” of JPG-format images directly from that card. Perhaps there is a TV that does that, in which case you won’t need any computer or DVD player on the premises at all.

Reply | Quote

PineRidge,

To go down the TV/DVD route is generally cheaper with equipment costs. The quality is … well TV quality!
To the PC/laptop / monitors route is probably more expensive (particularly if you intend to end up with more than 1 screen). The quality is better.

Their are little black boxes out their that will convert a PC/Laptop monitor signal to a TV signal. This has the advantages of
– everything is ‘live’ from a PC (so changes can be made quickly)
– TVs and cabling are generally cheaper then PC Monitors/cabling

Some PC/laptops even have a ‘tv-out’ option built in already. So all you would need is cabling.

PowerPoint can handle your sort of project.

Cheers

Reply | Quote