Digital Signage at the Infocomm

Mature digital signage technology is on-display at the Infocomm 2006 show last week in Orlando, Florida. Despite a larger floor space and an increase in number of exhibitors, there seems to be a reduction of overall visitors compared to last year (not officially confirmed).

One area that seems to continue to attract more visitors each year is the Digital Signage Pavilion where a combination of display providers, PC software player and non-PC hardware player box vendors show their latest technology to draw in distributors and value-added resellers.

In terms of technology demonstrated, there is a drop in the number of software vendors at the show. Webpavement and Infocaster who had booths last year were absent from this year’s show.

A new category, media players, is created to encompass companies including AGNPRO, digiSignage, Visual Circuits, Advantech, Sony, and Chyron.

New Technology

Scala introduced the latest InfoChannel 5 product with a new web-based screen provisioning and schedule management functionality. This allows Scala to provide a more comprehensive solution in additional to its legendary content creation tool.

On the non-PC hardware player side, 1080i/720p high-definition decoders are a main theme at the show this year. Many of the players shown are capable of decoding HD content at full-speed while overlaying a layer of arbitrary graphics. On the management software side, most hardware players provide a simple Windows-based client software that controls one player at a time. One exception is digiSignage who demonstrated a web-based management server with quality-of-service guarantee.

In terms of media transportation technology, there were no broadcast TV solutions at the show. All companies we visited used an IP-based technology for delivery of digital signage.

In general, the largest leap in technology this year would have to go to the non-PC hardware players.