Digital Signage

Digital Signage Expo: Buzzword Is “Small to Medium Businesses”

Posted on Feb 27, 2009 by Jane Goodwin at 12:05 am

The Digital Signage Expo started yesterday, and according to Digital Signage Today.com, , “Economy makes the big players take the low–cost route.”

The article, edited by Bill Yackey, follows:

LAS VEGAS — The buzzphrase of the first day of Digital Signage Expo seemed to be “small-to-medium businesses,” or customers that have only a small number of screens or deployments. There has always been a segment of the digital signage industry focused on this long-tail market, but the economy has no doubt lead even the big players in the digital signage industry to reconsider their target customers.

That was highly evident when Scala issued a press release this morning, announcing six new initiatives to “lower the barrier to entry to digital signage.” Most notable of the six is a partnership with FASTSIGNS, a traditional signage provider that announced in January that it is offering a packaged digital signage solution using NEC hardware and Scala software. FASTSIGNS CEO Catherine Monson said that in the six weeks since the product announcement, the company has received $2 million in quotes for the system.

Scala’s other initiatives consists of:

• A partnership with Frame Media to launch SignChannel, a new low-cost, self-service, easy to use, entry-level digital signage service based on wireless photo frame technology.

• Scala as a Service, a hosted version of Scala Content Manager that provides an online digital signage network for a monthly fee.

• The “Ultra Low Cost PC” (ULCPC), at approximately half the cost of traditional PCs.

• Support for several all-in-one devices that include a “PC built into the Screen” form factor.

• An initiative to support cost-effective video appliances (aka “MPEG Players”) reducing the total cost of ownership of both the hardware and software per Player.

Although NEC Display Solutions was highlighting its impressive 82-inch LCD and its ultra-thin bezel MultiSync X461UN for video walls, Mike Zmuda, director of business development, made a point to emphasize the release of NEC’s MultiSync 15 Series and the 46-inch LCD4615, designed for entry-level digital signage applications.

“You have to give up the thin bezel for the 15-series, and there is less firmware, but the 15-series easily allows the addition of touch overlays and protective panels at a cheap price,” Zmuda said.

In the sense that time is money, Omnivex’s next release of its Moxie software (due March 1) is engineered to save users time scheduling content using a system similar to iTunes’ Genius, where songs are given attributes and tags and play when those attributes are selected. Here digital signage content is given meta-tags and assigned to play based on the user selecting relevant tags.

Black Box Network Services has had the SMB customer in its mind all along, offering a complete digital signage solution and emphasizing its 24/7 tech support specific to digital signage. Although the company has more than 180,000 SKUs in its catalog, it showed the iCompel, a player designed for small deployments which comes with software already installed in the player. Brian Kutchma, director of marketing, also said that although the software is licensed, customers aren’t charged for future upgrades.

Check back to Digital Signage Today all this week for constant coverage of Digital Signage Expo. For live updates from the show floor, follow us on Twitter.

Datacasting For Digital Signage

Posted on Feb 23, 2009 by Jane Goodwin at 12:05 am

The following article, from Digital Signage Today.com, is by Lyle Bunn, principal and Strategy Architect for BUNN Co.  Bunn is highly regarded as an advisor and educator in North America’s digital signage industry.

Datacasting is emerging as an attractive alternative to DSL, satellite and cellular connectivity for digital signage/DOOH network operators because it combines the cost-effectiveness of multicasting with the addressable media transport associated with DSL/Internet. Datacasting offers the rapid, low-cost deployment that makes cellular attractive, but can provide much higher connectivity capacity and speeds.

One of the major players in this area of the digital signage industry is National Datacast, a commercial, wireless data broadcasting subsidiary of the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS). NDI has acted as a content delivery provider since 1988, but is turning its capabilities in connectivity service and media management to the digital signage and digital out-of-home sectors. National Datacast provides regional or national connectivity through partnerships with PBS member stations and their satellite networks.

While digital signage software from firms such as BroadSign, EnQii, Harris, Scala, STRATACACHE and others can provide flexibility and ease of use in designating display groups and specifying content spots for playout on even individual displays, I believe past connectivity options have not offered a cost-effective combination of network-wide media fueled with fast, player-targeted download.

Today’s connectivity model is a fundamental element of digital signage, in-store TV and DOOH dynamic displays since centrally-controlled networks are “media-fueled” to present information or ads according to pre-defined, often day-parted playlists.

The typical architecture is to forward media spots and a playlist file from a network operations center to media players at display locations, and then to add live inputs from databases or external feeds such as weather, news, sports scores or financial information.

Internet connectivity, such as DSL, and cellular treats each media transfer as a separate connectivity transaction, and as such requires large connection capacities to process network traffic.

Multicasting, the transmission of the same files to multiple locations at the same time, can offer media transfer value, but can add an overhead to media management at each location.

The datacasting model NDI’s datacasting network (short for “data broadcasting”) uses digital file transfer techniques that are similar to delivery of content via other means – that means a digital signage player can readily utilize content files delivered by datacasting. Datacasting applications are numerous and include transfer of video and audio files, corporate digital file transfer, updating of software, gaming and information, training and education, alert notification, safety and security and information services.

Datacasting empowers the capabilities of available software tools and offers operational cost-effectiveness that can allow digital signage/DOOH network operators to expand networks and better apply their day-parting capabilities.

This reliable, national infrastructure of commercial-grade digital connectivity has been used by a long list of clients such as Movie Gallery, Update Logic, TV Guide, Microsoft, Disney, VISA, IBM and others.

The receiving equipment is also very simple in nature. A standard antenna is connected using coaxial cable to a specialized digital television receiver which is then connected by USB to a media server or on some other type of content processing computer/ display. The antenna and receiver typically costs under $200 retail.

Other datacasting service features important to digital signage/DOOH network operators include:

Nationwide coverage that allows network operations in multiple regions to be provided by a single connectivity operator.

Transmission reliability is not affected by user volume, cable breaks or environmental conditions such as rain, snow, smog and dust.

Multicasting allows satellite transmission to deliver value to a large network deployment.

Multiple file formats can be transported, reducing the need for transcoding or file re-formatting, which increases overheads and can degrade playout quality.

Security at the highest level associated with an enterprise application.

The NDI Network Operations Center (NOC) can manage media distribution in any predefined display architecture.

Daily DOOH Announces Top Ten Digital Signage Vendors

Posted on Jan 26, 2009 by Jane Goodwin at 12:05 am

As I mentioned last week in the post about EnQii’s participation in the NRF’s convention and expo, the Daily DOOH has indeed published an article listing their Top Ten Digital Signage Vendors, and the reasoning they used in their choices.

Their Top Ten List is as follows:

=1 Cisco
=1 EnQii
3. Broadsign
4. C-nario
5. YCD
6. ScreenRed
7. Scala
8. Remotemedia
9. TELentice
10.Stratacache

Some of the criteria used in the DOOH’s choices were:

Please read the entire article; it will not only clarify all of these things; it will also give you lists of other digital signage companies that bear watching!

The Daily DOOH’s article can be found right HERE.

Scala Kicks Off the New Year with a New Look

Posted on Jan 6, 2009 by Jane Goodwin at 9:24 am

From PRWeb.com comes a press release about SCALA’s new look, and that new look, looks mighty impressive!

“2009 is shaping up to be a great year for Scala and we’re excited to see our new look, our website, and Release 4 of Scala5 coming together all at once. We’re certainly putting our best foot forward in 2009,” commented Andrea Waldin, Vice President of Marketing.

Exactly what IS digital signage?  Scala tells us that, too: “Simply put, digital signage is a network of customizable displays that you can control electronically using a computer, allowing you to change your content remotely for the most targeted messaging possible.

Digital signage allows you to create and deliver targeted messages that inform, educate and motivate your audiences without your budget taking a painful hit.”

Scala makes software for digital signage, and is one of the very best.  Read Scala’s entire press release right here on PRWeb.