Those Little Secrets Behind that Large Screen

Digital signage serves to disseminate information and advertisements. In a general way, it could be by LED, LCD, or any form of screen playing videos, images or text.

It is often confused with TV (because it looks a lot like one), with signage (the static signs printed/mounted on a board), and with a lot of things. I am working in this industry so I’d like to share a bit more with you. People often ask me me what’s digital signage and what’s the industry I’m working in — next time I can proudly show them this article!

First, let’s start with what IS and IS NOT the system I’m covering here. Easier that way, right?

I’m talking about the digital signage — on screens — primarily used in transportation systems (for example, to show arrival time), in institutions (to announce news and updates) and in retail (for advertising).

Here are a few example pictures:

I’m NOT talking about signs or those with LED light bulbs, like this:

And I’m not talking about TV either. TV looks a lot more alike digital signage but the technology behind the the two differs a lot.

Although they’re both nice-looking LCD screens playing videos, the first difference is that we only turn TV on for a few hours a day. Even if one is addicted to it, at most it shouldn’t run longer than … I don’t know, 8 hours a day (since we all have to sleep and work and do other stuff, right?).

But digital signage runs for almost 24 /7.

The hardware, consisting of screen and processor, needs to be engineered to a commercial grade that lasts longer and performs better than TV.

The second thing is, we don’t have our control over content played on TV. If we had to advertise in that way, the advertiser would have to broadcast via a channel. Instead, digital signage allows you to be the “program organizer”: you can promote whatever you want on that large screen.

By the way, you could also include TV shows on digital signage by schedule too, but let’s talk about that later.

Frankly speaking, a large screen attached to a a PC could work as digital signage, too, if you wanted it. But we’d have the same issue as with the TV: it couldn’t last long since it’s not designed for 24/7 operation like an industrial digital signage monitor.

Besides an industrial monitor, what else will be required for this system? The ideal device to replace the PC would be a piece of kit called an IPC/media player box with a small form factor to facilitate installation. To run the box, there is a management software. The hardware spec and software functions vary a lot in the market.

If you don’t ask for much from the system — that is, if you don’t need to play heavy content (flash/HTML), and probably just need a video/image playing on screen, an industrial monitor and a USB will work (without extra IPC and management software).

This is because most commercial screens now include an embedded SoC (system on a chip — meaning the whole computer components are integrated on a chip) player and a simple software inside. You could just put your videos /images on a USB stick, plug it into the port, and play the content. Of course, the performance cannot be comparable with the digital signage system with an IPC or media player.

So there we are! Now you know something about the gadget behind those digital signage screens. Hope you enjoy!