June 2015 | Vision One

June 29, 2015

HTML5 Ushers in Big Advances in Digital Signage Interactivity

The evolution of digital signage followed quite a linear path to where we are today. We first saw static imagery used for basic signage such as restaurant menus – at the time this was quite a breakthrough. It wasn’t long until video content was part of the mix. Explosive growth of video content was driven by affordable management and authoring tools that were increasingly easy to use. The next step in this evolutionary progression – and we’re already heading down this path — is interactivity.

The single-most important tool driving the next wave of interactive digital signage is HTML5, which opens up near-limitless possibilities for customer engagement. It enables a rich viewing experience that builds on the interactivity popularized by today’s smartphones and tablets. HTML5-authored content takes advantage of touch interactivity, including the ability to tap, swipe, pinch and zoom. This is an important breakthrough, as people are now engaging with signage displays in the same way they interact with their own personal devices. This marks a significant point in the evolution of digital signage. People are no longer viewers of digital signage, they’re participants. The ability of the viewer to self-navigate signage content ensures a highly personalized experience, creating a vital touchpoint between proprietor and customer. They’re engaging directly with the content and as a result their comprehension and retention of the signage increases dramatically. This increased brand engagement is music to marketers’ ears because in most cases deeper brand engagement translates to increased sales.

Beyond the touch interaction described above, HTML5 delivers other extremely rich experiences for applications like the “endless aisle” in retail, powerful wayfinder solutions and real-time social media applications. And what’s especially impressive is that we’ve really just begun to see what HTML5 is capable of. The new generation of media players allows for the use of the flexible HTML5 authoring combined with superior media handling. The new media processors allow for smooth video playback, chroma/luma keying (green screen-type media composition) eliminating the typical “browser” experience with HTML5 video playback. But regardless of what the future holds, it’s clear that HTML5 is changing the way proprietors use digital signage to engage their customers.

June 23, 2015

Meeting Room Conflicts – How to Avoid Them?

In many companies meetings are part of the employee’s daily routine, so meeting room conflicts seem pretty much inevitable. If you worked in such a company, you are already familiar with how impactful double bookings are for productive meetings. Is there a much simpler way around this? There sure is – by hooking your meeting rooms up with mini LED displays, you can provide all the information your employees need to know while they’re on the move!

Meeting Room Management Solution

The first thing you will need to improve room facilitation is to install a meeting room management solution. There are unlimited options in the marketspace, but the team at Vision One strongly recommends utilising one of the market leaders: Evoko. This is the best way to ensure optimal customer support and also provides you with access to large quantities of information and data sheets to ensure you get the most out of your system.

Meeting Room Displays

Schedules tend to be confusing, so you definitely want to make things easier for your employees. The best way to do that is to install displays in front of every meeting room in your office building. All you’ll need is a device operating within your existing integrated Microsoft Outlook.

Evoko

The most complete mobile meeting room management system on the market today is Evoko. With their Room Management solution, you will not only receive a complete solution for managing your conference room’s schedule, but also a neat touch-screen device you can use to display information in front of your meeting room.

Conclusion

Although meeting room conflicts cause numerous headaches, they can easily be avoided with the help of meeting room management solutions like Evoko by providing easily accessible information about the schedule.

June 16, 2015

Rise of the Network Video Wall

Video walls are becoming increasingly visible in our world. They make big statements, capture attention and promote brands in a unique fashion. Sales and installations of video walls are experiencing record growth as customers seek a new, high-impact approach to digital signage.

This is driving companies to seek video wall solutions that are more powerful, more flexible and yet, like everyone else in the world, they don’t want to break the bank. Unfortunately, the current video wall market is hampered with costly and complicated solutions that all too often turn out to be limited in functionality. It’s time for new approaches to bring simplicity, flexibility and affordability to the video wall market.

The answer to this problem is leveraging standardized PC hardware instead of specialized AV hardware, and taking advantage of networks to simplify delivery. Deploying video walls using PC and LAN infrastructure means less specialized knowledge is required for setup, while also reducing the hardware and support staff needed to deploy large-scale video walls.

There are three different approaches to using the network to stream content to multiple displays within a video wall. The first way is to deliver the entire image to every display on the video wall and then have each display output only the appropriate cropped portion of the content. For example, with a 25-display video wall, all displays receive the entire image, but the player device located at each display crops and outputs only 1/25 of the total image. This approach works well for 1080p and lower resolution, but is not ideal for 4K and higher content because of its high-data requirements.

The second approach lets users pre-split and separately upload the cropped portions of the video. Player devices on each display talk to each other in order to maintain image synchronization. However, this method makes it time-consuming for customers to create content and upload portions to the video wall. It also eliminates many capabilities such as interactive content or real-time feeds.

The third approach to network video wall deployment involves content that is split, cropped, rotated, scaled at the server location. The server only sends the required section of the image to each display. It also uses network bandwidth much more efficiently, while also creating a high-performance and flexible video wall. This way, content is pre-split in real time and customers don’t have to waste valuable time preparing their video wall content.

More and more people are switching to network video walls, not only for cost-savings, but also for the flexibility benefits. Using the network allows for the PC or server to be placed anywhere in the building. Most other solutions require the server to be located right at the video wall, making it difficult to manage in high-traffic areas or hard-to-reach places.

Small zero-client devices can be placed at each display to connect over the network to significantly reduce downtime and allow the server to be located almost anywhere. Customers can even have displays in high-heat or greasy areas such as quick-service restaurants, without worrying about ruining the server.

Utilizing the network to power digital signage enables anyone to centralize the CPU and GPU processing. Previous approaches with network delivery required video walls to maximize the computing power at each display in order to support content and proper image synchronization. When done correctly, network-delivered video walls are more efficient and require much less hardware when computing power is centralized to one PC or server. The server connects to the client devices at each display, meaning all processing is centralized and easily supports stunning 4K content in a low-cost way.

Connecting video walls over the network provides a great range of capabilities for customers, while still remaining simple to manage and deploy. The amazing visual impact video walls have is undeniable. For those seeking simpler, more cost-effective video walls, the rise of solutions that leverage PCs and utilize the network is a very welcome improvement.

Userful Corp. is an industry provider of centralised, interactive display and virtualised desktop software designed to make it simple and affordable for organisations to implement and centrally manage interactive display infrastructure in the post-PC era.

June 15, 2015

Pizza Hut Turns Boxes Into Movie Projectors

Pizza Hut in Hong Kong has brought movies and pizza together with its new Blockbuster Box Pizza, which can instantly turn into a smartphone-powered LCD projector. Ogilvy Hong Kong spearheaded the creation of the box for Pizza Hut’s new marketing stunt.

The pizza table inside the special Blockbuster boxes features a lens, which can be inserted into the side of the box after the perforated hole is punched out, reported Business Insider.

Once the lens is in place, use a smartphone as the movie source. Place it in the center of the box and the lens will magnify the image from the phone screen and project it onto a wall.

In addition to the LCD projector, the boxes also have a QR code for one of four downloadable movies. The movies’ genres correspond to the box ordered: Slice Night (horror), Anchovy Armageddon (science-fiction), Hot & Ready (romance) and Fully Loaded (action).

June 1, 2015

The Rise of Targeted Content Delivery on Connected Digital Signage Displays

Over the last few months Berg Insight has been looking closely at the market for Digital Signage. This is a category of connected devices that each one of us is in contact with almost daily and includes a broad range of solutions as diverse as traffic signs, menu boards and in-flight entertainment displays. The first connected digital signage solutions were commercially launched almost three decades ago. Since then, digital signage solutions have found their way into nearly every possible vertical market and a wide variety of application areas. The untapped market potential is still vast and growth is showing no signs of slowing down. Berg Insight forecasts that global shipments of display screens for digital signage will grow from 7.3 million units in 2014 at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 18.7 percent to reach 17.2 million units by 2019. The number of digital signage displays in active use will at the same time grow at a CAGR of 20.2 percent during the next five years from 25.4 million units in 2014 to 63.8 million units in 2019.

One of the most exciting new growth opportunities for the digital signage industry during the next decade is targeted delivery of marketing content, i.e. displaying the most relevant marketing messages to the people closest to a specific digital sign. This concept has been discussed in the industry for years. However, targeted content delivery has thus far largely stayed in the experimental phase, in part due to that the targeting mechanisms generally have relied on imprecise technologies such as facial recognition software to estimate variables such as age and gender. Consequently, while retailers and brands have adopted digital signs of all forms and sizes, the marketing messages that are displayed are still today in most cases the same regardless of who is watching.

The opportunity for targeted content delivery on digital signs has evolved substantially in the last couple of years, due to the proliferation of smartphones and the advances that have been made in indoor location sensing solutions. In particular, Bluetooth beacons and NFC make very precise real-time positioning possible and widespread rollout of these technologies at retailers is imminent. Bluetooth beacons are for instance being integrated in lighting fixtures, electronic shelf labels and POS terminals. When the digital signage system is integrated with other IT systems – such as a customer loyalty program or a mobile wallet service – retailers and brands have the opportunity to deliver targeted content based on a broad range of parameters. In other words, the adverts that are displayed on digital signs in consumer electronics stores, supermarkets or department stores can be selected to match the profile of the persons located nearest to a specific screen with unprecedented accuracy. Berg Insight anticipates that this will be one of the key underlying factors that will propel digital signage to become one of the major platforms for digital marketing in the next ten years.

Archive for month: June, 2015