Digi-Sign Products Boast HTTP Fetching
The new HTTP-fetching Digi-Sign can grab images right from the Internet, doing away with the need to push content to the display device using a PC or other data storage system, said Paul Scarbo, director of digital signage for Pacific Digital, Irvine, Calif.
"With our system, all you need is an Internet connectioneither wired or wirelessand a power source," Scarbo said.
Digi-Sign is an effective way of presenting slide shows of advertisements and promotional content at POS locations, counters, lobby areas, public spacesanywhere visual information needs to be conveyed.
Digi-Sign can hit and glean images from as many as 80 Web sites. Custom slide shows can be fed to the Digi-Sign system from remote, Internet-based servers, making HTTP-fetching ideal for customers with multiple branch locations that need to receive and display the same slide show simultaneously, Scarbo said.
The Digi-Sign product comes standard with a 10.4-inch active-matrix TFT flat-panel screen. For customers looking for larger display formats, a screenless version of Digi-Sign is available as a content controller that can be connected to large plasma display devices or digital image projectors. The screenless version feeds the slide show out of the VGA port and scales the images to fit whichever display device and screen size is being used, Scarbo said.
Content Creation System (CCS) software is bundled together with all Digi-Sign systems. CCS offers a template for inserting images, Web site addresses for fetched content, text captions, audio clips, slide-show display times and a range of special effects that can be applied to each image. Image file formats ranging from JPEG to TIFF, BMP, GIF and PNG are all compatible with the CCS software, he said.
Even though Digi-Signs are complete, all-in-one systems, solution providers can find plenty of upsell and cross-sell opportunities with the product.
Todd Phillips, a partner with Sleek Concepts, a systems integrator and digital signage solution provider in Brampton, Ontario, said he often sells Digi-Sign as part of a larger imaging package.
"We don't sell [Digi-Sign] as a stand-alone product very often. We almost always sell them as part of a wireless or hardwired network and with a variety of display sizes and content management and content creation systems that we sell as well," Phillips said. "Because it's such a unique product we can almost always bundle it in a solution."
Digi-Sign's affordability and ease of use of Digi-Sign means Phillips can target a wide customer base. "Because of the nature of the product, I can approach a lot of medium-sized business, not just large ones. They all see it as a fantastic marketing tool and means of communication, and it's simple enough that I can train a customer in a hour and a half," he said.
A range of accessories are available for Digi-Sign, including desktop and pole stands, mounting brackets, wireless adapters, Ethernet adapters and decorative frames. Commercial mounting and wall-mount options are also available.
Digi-Sign comes with onboard memory that can store up to 80 images and can run off a standard 12-volt car battery, making it possible for users to operate a Digi-Sign outdoors where no Internet or wired electrical current are available, Scarbo said.
More improvements to the Digi-Sign system are on the way. Early next year Digi-Sign plans to launch a host-based software scheduling package that will allow users to change slide-show content or swap out entire slide shows automatically, said Scarbo. The software scheduling package also can be used by solution providers as part of a managed services offering, Scarbo said.
The list price for HTTP-fetching Digi-Sign is $995, according to Pacific Digital.