Jun 15

Report from New England: A Retail Solution for University Kiosks

By John Curran DOOH Trends, Fanless Computers, Interactive Digital Signage, Kiosk Software, Retail Kiosks Comments Off

John Curran of mCosm

This week we have a guest blogger: John Curran, CEO of mCosm, our affiliate company.

PCs today are commodities with little differences between brands except for logos and prices. When it comes to interactive kiosks, however, product selection is both complicated and critical to project success. For a good example of how to choose the right kiosk, check outside the meeting rooms at a large New England university. (I can’t name it here, but you know the school.)

Unattended kiosks should be sturdy, easy to install, and have consistent BIOS for the life of a project. For this project, a software company supplied the university with an event-management system. This involved installing small custom kiosks to serve as automated “room card” displays outside each of the meeting rooms in a conference area of the university’s student center. Thanks to the EMS, students walking down the hallways could tell at a glance what meetings were in progress.

university conference room digital signage

Micro Industries Touch&Go Pricechecker used as Conference Room Digital Signage

The original kiosks were the only units available with the application programming interface (API) needed to integrate with the EMS. But they also had a drawback—they used 5V DC power and had to be within eight feet of an electrical outlet. The prohibitively high cost of installing additional outlets meant that most of the kiosks were situated beyond eight feet. Not surprisingly, this led to continual hard-drive failures. Worse, performance was very slow and the kiosks were prone to overheating. The kiosk vendor didn’t offer repair services, either.

Looking around for an alternative to these troubled room-card kiosks, the university settled on the Pricechecker unit from Micro Industries. Our retail kiosk might sound like an odd solution for an academic setting, but it worked extremely well. The Pricechecker is a hardened kiosk with a patented passive cooling system to keep it from overheating. Power Over Ethernet Plus means it can be placed as much as 300 feet away from an outlet. The Pricechecker also has consistent BIOS to ensure that the applications won’t be affected when new units are added.

The university developed a simple graphical user interface (GUI) to replace the first application. (It helped that the EMS had a well-documented API.) Today, the university says, its Pricechecker kiosks not only provide rock-solid performance, they’re also less expensive and have larger, brighter displays than the original units.
Clearly, not all kiosks are created equal. A kiosk that combines ruggedness, performance, style and price come only from a company that designs, manufactures and sells it directly to the user—a company like Micro Industries. Give us a call sometime.

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Mar 12

Report from Las Vegas: More of the Same.

By John Curran DOOH Trends, Technology Comments Off

This week we have a guest blogger: John Curran, CEO of mCosm, our affiliate company.

Aside from Intel, there weren’t many new, big-name vendors at the Digital Signage Expo (DSE) in Las Vegas last month. A few vendors had smaller booths this year than last, or had disappeared altogether. LCDs weren’t much different from 2009, and many booths looked like the TV aisle at Best Buy. Most PC-player-based software had identical features and functions, the only difference being the interfaces. And it was difficult to learn much technical detail, because most sales reps delivered canned demos that gave only a 30,000-feet overview.

I imagined some poor attendee (maybe it was you) visiting DSE in hopes of finding the best solution for his or her company’s digital-signage needs. It wasn’t a pretty picture. There were only disconnected elements of solutions, from vendors that all looked the same, their prices included. Hardware options varied widely, including store servers with line extenders and LCD TVs, low-end players, high-end players, PC players with LCD monitors, all-in-one digital systems, video walls, etc. Add mounting and cabling, and the whole hardware side started to resemble a high-school science project.

Software options for digital-signage management were even more confusing. The choice came down to broadcast versus narrowcast, influenced by whether you needed to update information hourly, daily or just a couple of times a month. You also needed to know how the software would integrate with your graphics-production workflow, what file formats and fonts to support, and how much training was required to run the network. Finally, you had to know how a software choice would affect the hardware required for deployment. Whatever the solution, it was expensive to buy and operate.

Even worse was this question: How would you know whether a particular solution would meet your needs over the next four or five years? Only a handful of vendors at DSE probably could be helpful here, especially digital-screen and player vendors affiliated with technology providers. But this involves more of a channel strategy than integrated solutions for a vertical market.

Despite all these issues, digital signage is a growing market, predicted to reach $4.5 billion in 2013. For that to happen, however, users must find the technology easier to evaluate, buy, deploy and operate. This will occur only through market consolidation that provides users with one-stop shopping for digital signage from viable vendors. Maybe we’ll see progress at DSE 2011.

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Mar 03

The Message Was Clear: Grab Their Attention and Keep It

By Michael Curran DOOH Trends, Interactive Digital Signage, Technology Comments Off

Anyone walking around the Intel booth at Digital Signage Expo in Las Vegas last week couldn’t help but notice our new Touch&Go Messenger. After all, an 82-inch LCD is hard to miss, even in Vegas. AVTechnology even named it one of the five highlights of the show.

Retailers looking to grab their consumers’ attention will love the Messenger 82. This all-in-one system features a Samsung full-HD display with an interactive touchscreen, Intel’s i7 processor technology and Microsoft’s Windows Embedded Standard 2011. It’s ideal for either display or kiosk applications in large, open retail spaces. Just imagine using this big, beautiful unit in a mall, airport concourse or department store.

We make the Messenger 82 in America-in Westerville, Ohio, to be precise. It continues what we consider our Touch&Go heritage of stunning picture quality, high performance, and elegant styling. Intel processors deliver breakthrough performance and improved power efficiency. The Messenger 82 also uses Intel® vPro™ technology, which gives you remote management capabilities, reduces down time and lowers your total cost of ownership, the TCO.

The 1080p, ultra-bright LCD has a viewing angle of 176 degrees. (Try getting that with your flat screen at home.) It also has a 160-Gb hard drive and a DVD/CDRW drive. Plus, you can order optional IR multi-touch interactive touch screen, internal stereo speakers or a TV tuner. A protective glass panel makes the LCD practical and easy to clean in the kind of high-traffic spaces typical of retail environments.

The picture quality is outstanding in full HD, thanks to LVDS technology. That’s the low-voltage differential signaling that drives the flat-panel display right from the motherboard. It’s as clear as looking through a window-and significantly better than connecting a regular computer to a standard TV.

The Messenger 82 is retail-ready for interactive consumer kiosks, self-service applications, digital signage, store maps, advertising, messaging, product information, and demonstrations. Simple, elegant mounting options mean you can hang it from a ceiling or a wall.

And Micro Industries doesn’t just offer displays. Our mCosm subsidiary can supply software that lets you create, manage, deploy, and change your own digital media, on the fly, without expensive, third-party intervention. (See #5 of DSE’s 10 top digital signage trends). mCosm solutions couple broadcast television, closed-circuit video, digital signage plus interactivity, all on the same system.

Yes, altogether, we’re pretty proud of what we showed in Las Vegas.

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Feb 25

Answering the Ancient Question: Yes, Bigger Is Better

By Michael Curran DOOH Trends, Interactive Digital Signage, Retail Kiosks, Technology Comments Off

The age-old question about size has real significance in the Digital Signage Market. Historically, if you wanted large digital signage in a retail space, you stacked several smaller displays together. You needed lots of high-performance video cards linked to a powerful computer system that let you color-match all of the displays, and sophisticated software to distribute the image across all of them. Amazingly, some very good vendors can deliver this solution today.

The simpler approach is one large display. Several major manufacturers, such as Sharp and Samsung, offer large LCD panels (65-, 82- and even 108-inch models, measured diagonally) at very attractive prices. The single-display approach has numerous advantages, especially in image quality, computer requirements and power management.
Image quality is critical in a retail environment. For technical reasons, spreading content across multiple screens decreases resolution and makes the image look grainy. Not many retailers can afford to provide clear viewing from 20 to 30 feet away, the normal distance for your eyes to integrate a matrix image. And if one display fails, it’s almost impossible to find a replacement that matches the color and hue of the other displays in the matrix. A single display, however, provides outstanding detail, even if the customer is standing close to the screen.

Power and heat management are also important factors to consider in matrix systems. You need adequate ventilation, since heat rising from the lower displays can affect the service life of the upper displays. This takes up floor space that you no doubt could put to better use. In addition, a matrix of four 42-inch LCDs uses about twice the power of one 82-inch LCD panel, which provides about the same viewing area.
I’ve always believed in keeping things simple when it comes to computer systems. A single large display can be powered with a single motherboard and graphics engine. Content is displayed in native mode, so there’s no need to divide the image and distribute it over multiple displays. One display also reduces the potential for errors at both the hardware and software levels.

So, there’s really no question that bigger is better in retail Digital Signage. But, just to be sure, check out all of your options and determine the best long-term solution for your particular application.

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If you’re attending the Digital Signage Expo (DSE) in Las Vegas this week, please stop by to see us in the Intel Corporation exhibit, booth #1223. We’ll show you our Touch&Go Messenger 82™, an HD LCD display that I’m confident will amaze you. Judge for yourself whether bigger is better.

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