Permanent LED and LCD video walls designed and installed across San Francisco. Engineered for old buildings in a seismic region, where the structure decides the wall before the budget does.
A lobby video wall in SoMa can look sharp in the morning and faded by lunch, once the sun pours through all that glass. Visitors walk right past it, and that's a common problem with video walls in San Francisco. We plan each display around the light in the room and how far away people will stand. It starts with a talk about what the video wall needs to say and who will keep it updated. Next we choose a size and brightness that fit the space, then mount it so your staff can change content on their own. The design, install and support all come from one crew. We've built video walls this way since 2008.
From Financial District lobbies and SoMa offices to Mission restaurants, Dogpatch conversions, and Mission Bay corporate floors, we design, install, calibrate, and support permanent video walls across the city.
This region carries seismic mounting and bracing requirements, so anything hung overhead gets braced accordingly and we design to them and confirm the path per site.
Persistent marine air keeps outdoor hardware wet for long stretches, so construction gets sealed with real moisture management and gold-plated leads are specified where corrosion resistance matters.
Outdoor mounting gets engineered for the actual exposure and height at that address rather than carrying a generic outdoor rating.
Processors and controllers need a room held at or below 75 degrees, and in older buildings that usually means adding cooling rather than assuming it is there.
How we work
Put the best technology where you are driving the most experience. In this city the next question is what the building and the jurisdiction will allow.
Our first conversation is a consult, not a quote. We ask what the space is, where people actually look, what the wall has to accomplish, and the budget you are working with. From there the room sets the specification, since viewing distance drives pixel pitch more than any other factor. A wall people stand five feet from needs a far tighter pitch than one read from thirty feet, and paying for resolution nobody can perceive is the most common way this budget gets spent badly. We also read the light, since a Financial District lobby behind tall glass behaves nothing like a windowless briefing room. Only then do we put a size, a technology, and a location on paper.
A video wall is heavy, and here that is the constraint that decides everything. Anything hung overhead gets mounted and braced for seismic load, and in older buildings that frequently means steel has to be added by your contractor before the wall can exist. Ceiling-hung displays need a ceiling plate and a structural pole, and an open ceiling needs unistrut and real backing. Access is the other half: tight streets, restricted work windows, building management approval, and freight routes a crated cabinet may not fit through. Protected buildings limit what can be penetrated or made visible, so we confirm the path per site. All of it gets settled before a size is chosen, which is why we look at the structure early.
Where San Francisco walls earn
A wall earns its cost in some rooms and wastes it in others. Here is where we see it work in this city, and where a lighter option does the same job.
Bars and restaurants here are usually small, old, and structurally awkward, and forcing a wall into a room that resists it is how projects go sideways. In many of these spaces a cluster of commercial displays or one large screen driven as four panes gives the same feel for a fraction of the cost, with none of the structural work. A 98-inch panel run as four 49-inch quadrants carries live sport, a menu, and a promo at once. Where a true wall is right, we count the seats that carry the night before sizing it, and sports viewing gets a tighter pitch because fans sit closer than operators assume. A video processor in the control system makes any group of screens behave as one canvas.
Corporate rooms buy a wall for information rather than atmosphere, and this is where most of the real wall work in the city sits. A Financial District or Mission Bay lobby competes with a great deal of daylight through glass, so brightness and placement get solved ahead of resolution and content gets designed to stay readable rather than merely look large. Briefing and boardroom walls get sized off the furthest seat and the platforms in use, and a canvas carrying eight or more inputs at once is a different design problem from a single-source display. Major employers with several floors usually want one room standard repeated, so the same configuration and control behavior get specified everywhere.
Outdoors the answer is always LED, and the local hazard is damp rather than heat. Persistent marine air and fog keep hardware wet for long stretches, so construction gets sealed with real moisture management and connections get protected properly, and gold-plated leads resist corrosion far better than standard solder. Wind off the bay is the second factor, so mounting gets engineered for the actual exposure and height at that address rather than carrying a generic outdoor rating. Every outdoor wall gets an ambient light sensor, which keeps it readable through bright overcast and dimmed at night instead of running flat out. Outdoor work costs more and has a shorter service life than the same wall inside, and we say so up front.
Plain answers
Three terms drive most of the cost on a video wall project. Here is what each one means for your room.
Indoor or outdoor answers most of this, since outdoor is always LED. An LCD wall is a grid of thin-bezel panels with the processing built in: lower cost, high resolution, indoor only, with tiles in 55 and 65 inch sizes, so the wall is the size the tiles make it and it caps out around a ten by ten grid. LED uses cabinets in many sizes driven by an external processor, reads as one screen rather than a set of panels, and is brighter. Direct view means LED at a very fine pitch, roughly 0.7 to 0.9mm, tight enough to stand close to, which is why interior LED walls are essentially direct view. Weight differs too, and in older buildings that difference can decide the technology.
On an LCD wall, calibration is a matching exercise: color, brightness, and contrast matched panel to panel so the seams disappear and the surface reads as one. Done poorly, every panel shows a slightly different white and an expensive wall looks cheap regardless of resolution. Calibration cannot rescue a bad panel, so selection matters more than tuning. LED cabinets arrive pre-calibrated and get tuned on site through the wall's processor, and a panel with damaged pixels goes back under warranty while we install a replacement. Service planning matters more here than in most cities, since a return visit means the same freight route, work window, and building approval as the install. We supply a spare-parts kit from day one and keep revolving inventory.
It usually means the structure gets solved before the screen does. A video wall is heavy, this is a seismic region, and anything hung overhead gets mounted and braced for seismic load. In a building whose framing predates modern construction there is often nothing overhead rated to carry that, so steel has to be added by your contractor before the wall can exist at all. Ceiling-hung displays need a ceiling plate and a structural pole, and an open ceiling needs unistrut and real backing, with ductwork, lighting runs, and sprinkler locations all limiting where a mount can land. Access is the other half of the answer. Tight streets, restricted work windows, building management approval, and freight routes that a crated cabinet may not fit through all shape the schedule, and protected buildings limit what can be penetrated or made visible. We design to the requirements that apply and confirm the approval path for your specific site. In a lot of these rooms the honest recommendation ends up being a cluster instead.
Worth asking first, and in this city it is worth asking twice. A wall earns its cost where the experience is actually being created, and the test is to count the seats that will see it. If the bar seats fourteen and the rest of the room seats a hundred and eighty, an LED wall behind the bar is probably a waste of money. Put the best technology where you are driving the most experience instead. The alternatives get most of the way there for far less. A cluster or a ribbon of commercial displays reads as one feature when it is placed and driven properly. One large display can be driven as four panes, so a 98-inch panel behaves like four 49-inch quadrants. A video processor in the control system turns any group of screens into a single canvas. Here the argument is even stronger, since the structural work needed to hang a true wall in an older building can cost as much as the panels. We will tell you plainly when a wall is right and when it is not.
Indoor or outdoor decides most of it, since outdoor is always LED. Indoors, an LCD wall is a grid of thin-bezel panels with the processing built in: lower cost, high resolution, and tiles in 55 and 65 inch sizes, which means the wall is the size the tiles make it and it caps out around a ten by ten grid. LED uses cabinets in many sizes driven by an external processor, so you get shape freedom and a surface that reads as one screen, and it is brighter. Direct view is LED at a very fine pitch, roughly 0.7 to 0.9mm, tight enough to stand close to, which is why interior LED walls are essentially direct view. Pixel pitch is the distance between pixels in millimeters, with common steps around 0.9, 1.9, 2.9, and 3.9, and wider means less resolution. Viewing distance sets the number, so a wall people sit close to needs a tighter pitch than one read across a lobby, and paying for resolution nobody can perceive is wasted money. Weight matters too, and in an older building it can decide the technology outright.
We do not rent. We design and install permanent video walls only, and the service plan is part of the design rather than something added later. Manufacturers quote diode life in the tens of thousands of hours, and no outdoor wall reaches a lab figure once marine damp is working on it, so we plan for parts instead of hoping. We supply a spare-parts kit from day one and run revolving inventory, which means a failed module gets swapped immediately, the dead one goes back under warranty, and the repaired unit returns to the pool. The wall keeps working rather than sitting with a dark patch while a replacement ships. That planning earns its keep in this city, since every service visit repeats the same freight route, work window, and building approval the install crew needed. Warranty terms scale with the tier of wall you buy and we will be straight about that trade-off. Most support issues resolve remotely, with around 47 percent closing inside an hour and roughly 72 percent within a day.
What We Do Here
Every system is designed, installed, and supported by our own team in San Francisco — never subcontracted.
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The Design Build process was the best thing that could have happened. They showed our ownership three different options on each feature wall — from the bar to the rest of the venue. That’s when it really sold them. They felt involved. They knew what they were putting in, they were making the decisions, and they could see it was going to look right.
Working with Crunchy Tech was a fantastic experience from start to finish. They handled the sale and installation of all our sound and TV equipment at The County Bar in Aviston, IL, and absolutely nailed it. We were on a very tight deadline, and they not only met it—they delivered top-notch quality and service the entire way. Highly professional, responsive, and easy to work with. We couldn't be happier with the results.
Crunchy has done an amazing job on our A/V install. The sound is perfectly balanced throughout our many zones and the entire system is super simple to use.
The Design Build process was the best thing that could have happened. They showed our ownership three different options on each feature wall — from the bar to the rest of the venue. That’s when it really sold them. They felt involved. They knew what they were putting in, they were making the decisions, and they could see it was going to look right.
Working with Crunchy Tech was a fantastic experience from start to finish. They handled the sale and installation of all our sound and TV equipment at The County Bar in Aviston, IL, and absolutely nailed it. We were on a very tight deadline, and they not only met it—they delivered top-notch quality and service the entire way. Highly professional, responsive, and easy to work with. We couldn't be happier with the results.
Crunchy has done an amazing job on our A/V install. The sound is perfectly balanced throughout our many zones and the entire system is super simple to use.
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Read article arrow_forwardTell us about the space: the neighborhood, the age of the building, whether the ceiling is open or finished, how equipment would reach the floor, whether the wall is indoors or out, and how far away people will be sitting. The consult starts with whether a wall is the right answer at all, then we look at the structure and come back with one engineered recommendation instead of a panel count.
