By Jonny McKee - VP Product & Customer Support, Amino Communications ‍

Walk into enough pubs, bars and casual dining venues and you’ll see the familiar legacy footprint: flat screens installed to show live sport, often added piecemeal over time, with little integration and limited control. Staff might be able to change a channel, but in all but the largest most advanced venues, no estate-wide logic, scheduling, or commercial coordination exists.

For years, that was good enough. The screens served their basic purpose: show the match.

But the game has changed. Hospitality no longer competes on sport alone. Operators are designing spaces that pivot fluidly between moods and audience; lunchtime ambience, after-work quizzes, family dining, live music and Saturday-night sport. In that environment, AV systems need to be more than passive endpoints. They need to support dynamic, managed transitions that are tightly connected to the venue’s operations and goals.

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Why the AV Infrastructure is Under Pressure

Another driver behind the shift is content rights and delivery models. Many existing AV systems were built on a satellite-era assumption: a dedicated screen for a dedicated source. This siloed approach made sense when options were limited, but it also restricted flexibility, delayed updates and made content harder to manage.

Now however, the industry is moving into a hybrid era. Commercial-grade sports and entertainment are increasingly delivered over IP. Solutions like DIRECTV for BUSINESS signal this shift, offering streaming delivery for bars and restaurants as a complement or alternative to satellite. Even when satellite remains, operators are asking: how do we future proof this?

The safest answer isn't picking one source over another. It’s specifying AV systems that can support legacy sources, modern apps and emerging formats, without fragmenting user experience or requiring rip-and-replace upgrades.

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Managed AV: From Fragmented Screens to Frictionless Experiences

The goal isn’t “more screens.” It’s a managed experience layer, one that adapts content based on time of day, audience, event, or zone. And it must do this reliably, at scale and without making life harder for front-line staff. That means:

• Central control with local input: HQ sets branding, templates and rules while local teams retain safe flexibility for community events, promotions, or specific crowd needs.

• Scheduled switching and simple overrides: Systems move seamlessly between lunch, quiz, match and evening mode, while staff have intuitive, role-based access leaving no room for error or guesswork.

• Integration with everything else: From menus and promotions to social feeds and local event listings, the screens need to work as part of the venue’s full operational stack, not in isolation.

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Rethinking the Installer’s Role in the Hospitality Value Chain

For all this to work, integrators play a more strategic role than ever before. They’re not just deploying hardware, they’re enabling hospitality brands to offer a consistent, curated and compliant experience across an estate.

This shift brings opportunity. Installers can help standardise AV capability across mixed estates without replacing every screen. External media players - deployed alongside or instead of built-in System-on-Chip (SoC) - can unify the platform, extend lifecycle and simplify updates. Media-player-led architectures allow for zero-touch provisioning, remote OS updates and content configuration, turning bespoke installs into scalable, service-ready systems.

More importantly, AV integrators are now positioned to deliver ongoing value. With the right tools, they can offer managed services, remote monitoring, support and even content operations, redefining what “AV support” looks like in hospitality.

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A Platform for Immersive, Responsive, Revenue-Ready Experiences

This shift also unlocks creative potential. With centralised content control, screens evolve from static endpoints into immersive and responsive storytelling tools. Think live event feeds, branded quiz nights, dynamic promotions and thematic takeovers - delivered with control, consistency and agility.

These capabilities are foundational for interactive, immersive AV design - exactly the kind of experience that younger audiences now expect from their favourite hangouts. They also pave the way for Digital Out-of-Home (DOOH) media. Once operational basics - like proof-of-play, fill rates and API-based ad triggers - are in place, screens can become part of a monetizable media network, not just a venue cost.

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Final Word: Design for Flexibility, Not Format

For clubs, bars and restaurants, the AV question is no longer “on which screen to deploy which service”, it’s: can our platform be dynamic and evolve?

By designing for flexibility, governance and ongoing service, operators and their integrators can move beyond the old “TV on the wall” mindset. Instead, they create a screen estate that is responsive, immersive and commercially valuable. A system that enhances guest experience hour by hour, while supporting the long-term vision of the business.