How to Impress your Customers with Real-Time News on your Split-Flap TV

Before the age of mechanics and digital technology, businesses typically displayed large chunks of text on wooden boards, cloth, and paper. This wasn’t exactly ideal as it meant constantly changing the entire sign whenever new info came in. It was wasteful and expensive. Until the Split-Flap board came along with its useful rotating flaps, and beautiful clacking sound.

Split-Flaps lasted a long time, but like any old tech, it was difficult to maintain and was soon replaced with better alternatives.

Nowadays, LED and LCD displays are all the rage. They’re cheap, easy to install, and require low maintenance. But all this comes at a price — aesthetics. There’s a monotony that comes with the proliferation of digital screens. With LED boards, your customers are continually surrounded by harsh blue light and have to squint to read the text on the screens.

However, it doesn’t have to be this way.

Fortunately, we’ve found a way to integrate the old Split-Flap display board with the newer advancements of the 21st century. We created the Split-Flap TV to change the way information is displayed, and to bring back the nostalgia of the past. Using digital screens and software that mimics the Split-Flap (clacking sound and all), we’re revolutionizing information dissemination in not just the transport industry, but in hospitality as well.

Yes, hotels and bars can use Split-Flap TVs too.

Uses of Split-Flap TV include:

● Roster display
● Reception
● Way-finding
● Marketing, and
● Real-time news display, and so much more

In this article, we will focus on how to use your custom Split-Flap TV to display real-time news from your favorite news source in your hotel, bar, restaurant, or even house.

What is a Split-Flap Board Anyway?

The Split-Flap board or Solari board was created by the Solari di Udine company in 1725, a small family-run firm in northern Italy that manufactured clocks for towers. They worked with a designer, Gino Valle, to develop a sign with flaps that could tell the time. The flaps had numbers painted on, and would flip over to display the time.

This invention won the coveted Compasso d’Oro award in 1956, but the Solari family didn’t stop there. They collaborated with John Meyer, a Belgian inventor, to create a 40-flapped board that could display letters and numbers. This made the Split-Flap even more popular than before! Soon railway stations, bus stations and airports had Split-Flap boards announcing departures and arrivals with an unobtrusive clacking sound.

Split-flap displays function by printing letters or numbers on a succession of flaps that are connected to a spindle with a stepper motor. Each turn of the motor moves the display by one character. They can be noisy and require a lot of upkeep when compared to modern displays, but they are terrific tourist attractions and fun to listen to.

There are few functioning Split-Flap boards in the world, and some are in museums. However, they aren’t extinct, rather Split-Flap boards have developed to the cheaper and easier to maintain Split-Flap TVs.

How to use Split-Flap TV to Display Real-time News

Split-Flap tech has been used in airports and stations to display train times and flight information, and in hotels to announce specials and planned events. But there’s an otherwise untapped use for Split-Flap TVs — to display real-time news from anywhere in the world.

Imagine not only showing simple time and weather but also local and international news from any news source of your choice, on a display board that’s sure to stir up nostalgia. If that isn’t an edge over your competitors, then we don’t know what else is?

Here are a few reasons you need a Split-Flap Tv for your news display:

  • Makes a good first impression
  • Communicates important information to your guests
  • It is unique and eye-catching
  • Easier to read
  • Guests receive the most important news
  • It’s not distracting
  • There’s no constant chatter from a digital TV
  • It’s Instagram and TikTok worthy

And it’s not just hotels and hospitality centers who can leverage this wonderful opportunity; offices and shops can use Split-Flap TV to keep their customers engaged with news on an unconventional medium.

Since news changes quickly, it’s unwise to install retro Split-Flap models that are prone to mechanical faults. But, you also need to break the monotony of digital screens. Split-Flap TVs help in this regard by letting you show RSS and ATOM information from any website on a TV screen adapted to look like a Split-Flap board.

You can also enrich your content with updates and company news from your company website, or any other website that you would like to follow.

RSS is a format in which news is communicated uniformly. The URL of a RSS feed shows news articles in a structured way, without images, without navigation, and without advertising. Most news websites have this for their latest news articles. Other regular websites also have a RSS feed to publish their blog articles and their company news.

People normally read this sort of news via RSS news readers on their PCs or RSS applications on their phones, but you may display RSS feeds directly on your Split-Flap TV boards.

Here’s a simple way to integrate RSS news feeds to your Split-Flap Tv:

  1. Find out the URL of the RSS feed like this one for the BBC: http://feeds.bbci.co.uk/news/rss.xml
  2. Validate your URL. When you are not sure if your URL is a valid RSS (or ATOM) feed, you can always check it at this server: https://validator.w3.org/feed/
  3. Add live news feeds to their Split-Flap TV boards using the short codes here.
  4. And you’re done!

Solve Your News Display Problems With Split-Flap TV

The Split-Flap TV software provides businesses with total control over how their display appears and contains customizable features like :

  • Variable rows and columns
  • Multiple pages
  • Flexible duration
  • Multiple colors
  • Easy scheduling
  • Clicking sounds
  • Clock and date
  • News and weather
  • And much more

Low maintenance. Great ROI. And outstanding nostalgia value. What else are you waiting for?

Contact us today to find out how you can get your very own Slip-Flap TV!