Digital Signage Expo 2013

Well folks, better late than never.  This year I have the opportunity once again to attend Digital Signage Expo, or DSE.   This year marked the 10^th Anniversary of the Digital Signage Expo.  I will avoid talking about typical displays.  But rather, I would like to highlight the unique installations and technologies.  LCD displays are  simply displays.  With various sizes and aspects.  There is not much to be said (well with the exception of 4K displays!).  The teaser here is uniquely shaped displays, unique applications/installations, LED assisted bezels, and players sub $100 that are capable of playing HTML5 content. 

Lets start with the show floor and talk about the technologies I have seen. Planar had a rather unique mosaic installation (above).  Using their software to deliver your content.  As digital advertising becomes more of the 'norm' being creative and unique with your displays is going to be more important.  Although this install was not ground breaking, it was a rather nice and unique installation.  Although it may be costly to install, it can deliver a memorable experience.

Touch revolution also had some new products.  This year, they debuted their commercial Android tablets!  Seen here they are rated for 24/7 operation, and run PoE (Power over Ethernet) so no extra cabling is required other than Ethernet and of course they do run wireless.  These are made for fixed installation (shelf side or other applications).  These also come with a software toolkit to lock the devices down at a software level.  Onboard they have an ethernet, MicroSD card slot, usb ports and power port.  I really like these and can see many applications for use in retail.  Unlike using consumer tablets in an commercial application, these are designed for 24/7 operation and are front side, NON-branded.  I cant stress this enough.  Commercial devices should be non branded.  You are using their products to advertise OTHER products.  So why would once pay prime dollars for branded commercial devices.  This was refteshing to see.

Among other innovative products, were e-paper based  wifi enabled shelf price tags from Opticon.  These  were disposable products, however, based on 5 price changes a day, would run for about 5 years.  From various companies were other e-ink/paper based signs which were quite effective for things like room signage.  These are great for B/W NON INTRUSIVE, low energy usage signage.  On initial glance you would not realize they were digital signs.

One product did grab my attention.  As we know, many manufacturers are trying to eliminate the screen bezel all together.  However we know this is not w/o limitations.  Lxi International did come up with a very interesting way to work around it.  Their displays are simply displays WITH a bezel.  However the bezels are strips of LED lights which change colour to match what’s happening on the edges.  Although you can see the edges...   they do look better than black lines in my opinion.  Have a look!

  

Another very interesting product that would be a serious asset to actually gaining quantitative data for installations was a self contained customer profiling box.  We have had technology that would asses a viewers dwell time, approximate age and sex for a while, but they have been very complex installations and required some high end hardware.  Now Aware Live Technologies has come up with an appliance to do just this.  Its a small box with Ethernet, power and an Asus (Kinect like) camera attached.  This can be hidden within an installation to log and graph quantitative data.  

Seen above is a picture of me on its monitoring screen.  It has assigned me a unique visitor number, sex, age and added a count to the amount of people in front of it.  You can aggregate this data as to the direction the person has moved off the screen, and other valuable data for the client.  

Another interesting product was a video delivery device made by Matrox which would scale output to match the screen.  This would be a very useful device when sending video to may different screens.   So long as the aspect is the same resolution, it would not matter as it would scale the content for us.

There were also many other oddly shaped displays such as long aspects and rounded displays. 

Among other things were a plethora of signage players.  Many too complex and useful for very specific installations.  However the last item I would like to profile is Broadsign's $99 android player.  This small device is very light weight, and by small, I mean very small.  Sadly I did not get a picture of the device I was just so excited about this product and got talking to the rep for a while about it and walked away and did not take a snap.  Lets just say it will fit in the palm of your hand.  Also, since the device is Android, Dual Core 1.5Ghz it should be able to deliver signage through our stack.

This years show was much larger than 2012, and full of energy you see at the likes of InfoComm.  If you are into signage or displays of any sort, a visit to DSE will be in order.  Dont forget all, that next years show will be at the Sans Feb 11-13.  Not the LasVegas Convention Centre as it has been in the past.  Mark your calendars now.

//Ian\\