OK, so I took your points in hand and went about playing around for a couple of hours.

Firstly, I modified the flatpanel model, replacing the base with a NURBS hemispehere that I scaled ... nice and easy.

Second, I scrubbed my pillars in favor of a more organic plinth. Again, the base is a NURBS hemispehere. The arms are polygon cylinders where the face has been extruded along a curve.

The number of lights has been ramped up from 3 to 8 and the intensities and colors have been toyed around with.

Finally, textures... this terrifies me. I created a velvety type shader for the backdrop curtain. I downloaded the Denfo shader for the stone. I'm in the process of pulling the Denfo shader apart to understand fully how it works.

I do have a question:

How do I produce a nice LCD panel glow on the images in the panels? I have currently applied a very low glow but it really lacks the "blueishness" that I'd like.

Any other crits, ideas etc. would be really welcome.