Digital Screens are everywhere, some of them look amazing and make us feel better off, some of them just seem like spam, probably an unintended consequence of not taking the time to make sure that the setup works properly and presents the media beautifully. When implementing a digital sign or network to help visitors or sell product benefits it is very important to use the best technology for the job otherwise viewers can quickly get turned off.
Now I don’t know whether you’re in retail, museums or what. But I’m guessing that you want to put up a display to show your visitors/customers great looking content that will either help them make a decision or put them in the right frame of mind for something else you have planned for them. Maybe you’re trying to educate or inspire them. Whatever it is your approaching people and you want to make sure you have the right impact. I’m going to assume you have some amazing content to show them and possibly you set up buttons to make it interactive (these are different topics which I will cover some other time). The question right now is, ‘Should I display it on a PC monitor, a DVD with a TV screen or use a dedicated media player?’. Good question. Let’s look at your options.
Initially you might think a PC is a good direction to go in, especially as we are all pretty much familiar with them. However, they usually come heavily laden with demanding operating systems, so you are going to have to confront issues such as power consumption and noisy fans whirring away once the hard drive gets too hot. There are two main advantages that PCs have in the digital signage arena
The web – There is no other tool that allows a visitor to access the web directly through the interface.
Complex touch screen interactive user interfaces
The down sides to using PCs are that you may experiences crashes and consequently downtime with individual machines or across the network. They can get noisy when the fans start. This is all the more likely in poorly ventilated installations. Both these cause a negative impact to the viewer. Also, the carbon footprint is higher than the alternative, which will also mean higher operating costs. Pretty much the same goes for using DVD Players. It is also worth mentioning that neither PCs or DVD players are really designed to deliver consistent playback over long periods, or to be left playing constantly, although they can be used this way.
So what about dedicated solid state media players. These are becoming more and more popular and sophisticated offering devices from the humble device for playing back looping media to hi-tech network HD devices that make beautiful content soar with software management tools and services. Companies making dedicated digital media players such as Digital View put a lot of resources into building players that deliver results for every aspect of the project from quality to technical capability. Solid state drives are one of the key features offered in many of these models.
Solid state refers to digital storage or media devices that have no internal moving parts. There are a few reasons why this technology solution is exceptionally suited to serving digital signage:
No moving parts – This means that the device is more robust as there are no delicate parts that can be damaged from say dropping the device on the floor. Plus units generate less heat, so don’t require noisy fans, which of course has the benefit of being silent always.
Low power consumption – Typically less energy is required so power consumption can be reduced in some cases very significantly
Fast Data Retrieval – Access to data is typically instantaneous because there are no moving parts. This means that the speed at which data is read is as fast as the controlling device allows. In dedicated/optimized players this is very fast
Reliable continuous playback – with such robust technology, these drives are ideally suited to continuous long term play back and rarely fail
This brief overview of solid state vs PC and DVD player for digital signage doesn’t cover all the issues, but does highlight some important considerations. I hope this helps you to make a more informed decision when it comes to planning a digital signage strategy that will deliver good results.
A more thorough comparison chart is available at http://ww