Matt,
I'm enjoying reading the RealDropzone thread on dropzone.com where you and Mark Rejhon are discussing a number of interesting ideas about the display of load information.
You and Mark are cracking me up with the resolutions you are talking about. Now try to remember us old guys that need reading glasses but don't wear them around the DZ except when filling out logbooks.
My company makes simple industrial electronic devices, and in the process of researching large LED displays, I have become knowledgeable of a number of commercially available electronic signs, for example, like the BetaBrite. www.betabrite.com The BetaBrite Prism can be purchased at Sams Club for $200.
The serial port versions of these displays can be used with our simple products, although we do not sell the displays themselves. I have figured out the protocol for some of these displays, and even written a free program for each of them, (including the USB interface Prism) that can be called from another user's program with some command line arguments to display a message without needing to program the protocol into their software.
Here is a direct link to what we have done: http://www.industrologic.com/products.htm#largeled
It is another thing you might offer with RealDropzone, and the large display can be seen a _long_ way off.
I made a "load timer" from a BetaBrite, one of our simple programmable microcontroller based boards, a few pushbutton switches, and a tone generator. Manifest sets the time, and it beeps at you and displays when the load goes. I made it years ago for a local drop zone.
One of the DZO's wrote their manifest/accounting system, and I have been trying to get them to integrate a BetaBrite into it.
Instead of that irritating tone, her software (or RealDropzone) could play .WAV files over the PA system. Like "Load one, 15 minute call".