What screen size works on a normal exhibition stand?

For content read from the aisle, roughly 55 inches is the practical minimum and 65 to 75 inches is the workhorse size. Below 50 inches a screen reads as a monitor for the staff rather than a message to visitors. If the aim is to be seen from across the hall, that is a video wall or a rigged panel rather than a bigger television, and the cost step is significant.

Can I play sound on my stand?

Usually yes, at a level that does not carry into neighbouring stands, and the practical limit is set by the event rules rather than by anything general. Directional speakers aimed down into your own floor area are the sensible answer, along with a quick conversation with the exhibitors either side during build-up. Check the rules for your specific fair, as they differ.

Should I hire a media player or use a laptop?

Hire the media player. A dedicated looping player boots on power-up, plays the same file for eight hours a day for a week and does not display a notification in the middle of your showreel. Keep a laptop on the stand as the backup and the presentation machine, but do not make it the thing that has to survive the whole fair.

Is a video wall worth it for a small stand?

Rarely. A video wall needs rigging or a heavy floor frame, a processor, a longer install and more power, and on a stand under about forty square metres nobody stands far enough back to see it as one image. A single large panel with genuinely good content beats nine panels with a stretched logo on them.

AV and screen hire for an exhibition stand

A screen that looks enormous in the office reads as a postcard from four metres away in a hall. What to hire for a Düsseldorf stand, how big it has to be, why the sound question is settled by your neighbours rather than by you, and the spares that stop day two going wrong.

Content that looks generous on a desk monitor turns into a stamp on a hall floor. The distances are wrong: an aisle at the exhibition grounds puts your average viewer three to five metres from the screen, at an angle, with a lit graphic wall behind it and a competitor’s screen in their peripheral vision. Everything about an AV order for a Düsseldorf stand follows from that geometry.

Sizing, honestly

Screen	Reads from	Realistic job on a stand
43–50 in	1–2 m	A touch point or a spec table for one person
55 in	3–4 m	The minimum for anything aimed at the aisle
65–75 in	4–7 m	The standard stand screen, on a floor stand or wall
85–98 in	7–12 m	A statement panel, needs a frame or rigging
LED wall, fine pitch	10 m +	Large stands only, and a different budget entirely

The other half of sizing is the content, and this is where most stands lose. A screen playing a two-minute film with dialogue is asking for two minutes from someone walking past at a steady pace on the third day of a fair. It will not get them. Short loops with big type, no sound dependency and a legible message at every frame do the work.

Send the file to the AV supplier in the native resolution and aspect ratio of the panel you have hired. A sixteen-by-nine film letterboxed inside a portrait screen is the single most common self-inflicted wound on a hall floor, and it is visible from the aisle.

What an AV order actually contains

The display, by size and orientation. Portrait costs the same and is often the better choice on a narrow stand.
The mount. A floor stand, a wall bracket for your builder to fix, or a frame for rigging. Ordered separately, every time.
A media player and a memory card, pre-loaded.
Cabling, in the lengths your stand actually needs, plus one spare.
Audio, if any: a small directional pair rather than a PA.
A touch overlay, if the screen is interactive, which changes the mount and the height.
Install and de-install labour, usually a two-hour minimum.
On-call support for the run of the fair.

Get the labour lines quoted explicitly. A large panel delivered to your stand in a flight case, with nobody booked to lift it onto the bracket, is a problem you solve at eight in the evening with your marketing team.

Aluminium truss sections, folded exhibition counters and stacked carpet tiles in a hall aisle during build-up. — The screen bracket has to be fixed to something. Tell the builder before the wall is closed up, not after.

Power, and the mistake that shows at nine in the morning

Exhibition halls switch the general stand supply off outside opening hours. A screen on that supply is dark until the power comes back, and a media player that has to boot, mount its card and start a loop will not be showing your content at the moment the first visitor arrives.

Two fixes. Order a round-the-clock supply for the AV circuit, or accept a staggered start and have someone on the stand fifteen minutes before opening every morning. The first costs money on the electrical order; the second costs a person each day and fails the morning that person’s tram is delayed.

Sound, which is a neighbour question

The rule in practice is not a number, it is a relationship. Your audio is acceptable at the level where the exhibitor opposite does not have to raise their voice. Fairs here publish their own limits and enforce them through the hall staff, and on a busy day the aisle noise floor is already high enough that adding volume mostly adds fatigue.

Directional speakers pointed down into your own stand, at a level you can talk over, do more than a loud pair pointed at the aisle. If your content genuinely needs sound, hire four sets of headphones and a bench instead.

A white panel van reversed to an exhibition hall roller door, ramp down, empty flight cases beside it on the apron. — Screens travel in cases twice their size. The AV van needs its own dock time, after the build and before the flooring is finished.

The local calendar, again

Düsseldorf’s AV hire stock is deep, because the halls are busy for most of the year, but it is not infinite in the weeks when several halls run at once. Large panels and fine-pitch LED are the first things to go, and during the biggest autumn weeks the kit that remains is being driven in from other cities with a crew who need beds — at exactly the moment apartment rates in this city step up.

The reverse is also true and underused. In August, and in the flat weeks between the winter and spring fairs, AV suppliers here have stock standing still. For an internal conference, a product shoot or a showroom event that has no fixed date, moving it into a quiet week is the cheapest single decision available.

Order the spare media player. It costs very little, it lives in a drawer under the counter all week, and on the one fair in five where the primary unit locks up on the Wednesday morning it is the difference between a working stand and a black rectangle with your logo above it.