When can Streaming be a good idea for Digital Signage?

Jan. 27, 2011 - PRLog -- For Release: Jan 2011
   
When can Streaming be a good idea for
Digital Signage
Jan 2011…. Dr. David Dalzell, Managing Director of ONELAN will be speaking at the DiSCO conference on Monday 31st January prior to ISE 2011 in Amsterdam, addressing the question of when can streaming be a good idea for digital signage.

Traditionally Digital Signage is thought of as a store and forward technology, the advantage of this being that each sign can show something different; with meta data altering what is actually played.  The downside is the cost of a high performance and flexible media player at each display location.

The alternative to this approach is to stream a smaller number of channels of information from a central location via a network to lesser media players (set top boxes).  The advantage of this is that the cost per media player is reduced, but the drawback is that all displays in a given ‘Channel’ must show the same information.

So at one end of the scale there are applications like Digital Out of the Home (DooH) Signage where groups of road-side displays are required to show adverts very specific to the location/demographics of the displays. The display value is typically high so having an expensive Media Player is not a problem.

At the other end of the scale is a Stadium or Race Course scenario where a very limited number of ‘TV Channels’ need to be delivered to a very large number of displays. E.g. Epsom Race Course – 3 Channels to 1000 displays. The media players driving the displays need to be cheap (if not Zero cost since video media players are built into all modern TVs in any case). The obvious solution is to create a stream(s) from a small number of Media Players and deliver via an IP network to ‘dumb’ video-only media players attached (if not integrated into) the displays. This is Streaming Digital  Signage.  As Internet bandwidth becomes more and more affordable, this becomes the favoured approach for more and more applications - even in retail situations where price is the big driver.

Dr David Dalzell will discuss trade offs and put forward various scenarios, explaining technical issues, cost models and how each would be managed.  The fully streamed approach to Digital Signage represents a Disruptive Technology for the industry since most solutions today use the store and forward approach. The industry will have to realign itself to increasing efficiency and affordability.

ONELAN develops network appliances for standalone and end-to-end Digital Signage network solutions. The Net-Top-Box is a mul­timedia, multi-zoned solution capable of Touch Interactivity. With a browser based user inter­face, the system is fully multi-lingual and capable of dis­playing both stored media and live media e.g RSS feeds, webpages and broadcast TV or locally streamed video. Further mem­bers of the product family cater for Enterprise network management and integration with external data sources.

ONELAN’s NTBs are now installed in a wide variety of organisations such as retail, schools, hospitals, and government buildings, as well as some well-known corporates such as Vodafone, Talk Talk and PricewaterhouseCoopers.

ONELAN Ltd is based in Henley-on-Thames, Oxfordshire.
Visit www.onelandigitalsignage.com for further details.

Press Contact details: Marion Bourne
email: marion.bourne@onelan.com,
phone: +44 (0) 1491 411400

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ONELAN has developed leading edge hardware appliances and software
products on a Linux platform to the world of Digital Signage. The players are marketed under the Net-Top-Box product brand.