Digital Signage 2012 - Show Floor Notes and thoughts

Hi all,

With the close of DSE2012,  My brain fried with soaking up knowledge in Digital Signage, I must say that when transparent displays are a commodity, the advancements in screen glass from Corning, add in 3D stereoscopic glasses free displays and touch interfaces, we are about to enter the future world.

Advertising, and the way we see media will drastically change in the coming few years.  Moreover, the way we interact with machines.  During the keynote Peter Bocko from Corning shared their concept of the future.  This video was originally made to inspire the employees, but they have made it pubic.  Admittedly, some of the ideas shown in this video are ideas that others have made, but may be made possible with their products.  Id like to share as I find it personally inspirational.  

If you are like me, my first thought was "damn, FINGER PRINTS ON EVERYTHING.  I did immediately after go to the Corning booth to ask if they were working on glass that does not pick up finger prints.  This is confirmed (their competitors are also doing the same).

Some other really interesting things that wil change the landscape are that of transparent displays.  I see a virtually limitless application of this.   From ambient applications, education, and of course retail.   But imagine, store fridge doors showing your favorite pop slowly pouring into the glass that you see through and then not...  the ideas here are great.  From store windows, to museum, and school windows that may educate children and augment their reality in the classroom  (this i thought of, but I am sure I am not the first).  Have a look here at transparent display in action.  Sorry folks if you see a split image, this was filmed in 3D.  If you have a 3D screen, then you are lucky  :)


A large deal of the floor was content management companies, display manufacturers, video matrix switching gear, and rather sharp looking touch screen manufacturers.  Large scale format displays and flexible large scale such as Nanolumins.

Among the display manufacturers, LG had some rather great looking displays.  VERY thin.  Some 40" were only about 2cm thick.  Although, very cool, one has to wonder about the MTBF (mean time before failure) on units like this.  Nor could they be displayed in public because I am sure they can be easily broken.

With the displays, were more and more auto stereoscopic displays (3D w/o the need for glasses)  Since I was at InfoComm in 2010, I have to say that the technology has gotten better in that there "sweet spots" are more, and the clarity and resolution is much better.   This class of displays is an area where I have a keen interest in.  Its marketing and educational values are quite apparent to me.

There were also new classes of vending machines.  With LFD (Large Format Displays) that were touch screens rather than clunky buttons complete with (or maybe it was a complete mock up, I did not ask) Google Wallet integration.  Perhaps it was a concept machine.

There were also store shelf display combinations and touch conversion kets a plenty!  Its becoming much easier to buy conversion kits (which are screen frame overlays that report touch to your computer) making it possible to turn any display (and existing ones) into touch.

I really think that in a few years we will see that the way we see marketing will change a great deal.  Its bringing us closer to the mindset of many of the visionaries of this time.  As always, if you have any questions, please just ask!

Cheers!
//Ian\\