Digital Sign of the Times

Big-screen display vendors and solution providers see growing market opportunities for networked digital-signage system deployments, but not in the places you might expect.

The use of large-screen LCDs and plasma displays in place of traditional signage has already gained traction in such verticals as transportation and retail, with the more advanced systems enabling remote management and scheduling. But solution providers are starting to look outside of these traditional outlets for new sources of opportunity.

Airports and other transportation hubs, the earliest vertical adopters of electronic signage, are now saturated with suppliers of specialized solutions, say insiders. And in the retail industry--where flashy, flat-panel displays influencing buyers at the point-of-sale with targeted ads are viewed by many as the future of digital signage--vendors and suppliers struggle to justify ROI.

"Advertising is the bulk of what everybody thinks about, but the business models, the ROI, haven't always proven themselves," says Scott Stanton, director of product and technology services at The Digital Signage Group, a consulting and project-management organization in Poulsbo, Wash.

The number of displays and projectors used in retail signage is expected to grow to 1.4 million in 2010 from 342,000 units in 2005. But at the same time, display prices are expected to continue their downward spiral, so total revenue for the retail-signage market is predicted to grow only modestly--from $1.3 billion to $1.4 billion during that same time frame, according to market research firm iSuppli.

So where should solution providers be targeting their innovative display solutions?

One area that's gaining more traction is corporate communications.

"It's easier to understand how things get paid for, and it's an ROI they can communicate," Stanton says. "I think it's an easier deal for the VAR, and we see a lot of movement in that area."

For example, displays in an outbound call center that show metrics such as current caller hold times, number of callers on hold and up-to-the-minute product-inventory information could drive both productivity and sales for end users, Stanton says.

VARs also point to new opportunities for advertising and internal communications in the corporate arena.

"I think digital signage is more integrated into business processes than it used to be. A lot of our reps see value in selling it more than they used to," says Chris Drynan, director of business development and marketing at En Pointe Technologies, a solution provider based in El Segundo, Calif. "We've seen a good spike in sales over the past six to 12 months, and we see more opportunities in the pipeline.

"We see [these displays] all the time in client hallways, where we didn't see them 18 months ago," Drynan adds. "We've even started to use them internally, and we're seeing the benefits of internal messaging for our sales reps. We also plan to put [digital signage] in our entryway in the future, so when people are sitting out there, they can get a feel for what we're doing and what's new that they might not have known about."

NEXT: Opportunities with SMBs.

Small and midsize businesses are warming to digital signage as display prices continue to fall, and major distributors such as Ingram Micro and CDW are starting to offer digital-signage-in-a-box solutions targeted specifically at SMBs. Just last month, D&H Distributing signed a deal with American Industrial Systems to resell all-in-one digital-signage displays to small and midsize companies.

"Historically, in enterprise deployments, you're mixing hardware with proprietary software, then tying it to standalone PCs or to a network," says Dan Schwab, vice president of marketing at D&H in Harrisburg, Pa. "This is much easier."

In the future, the distributor will also offer MediaView and SmartView products for wireless capabilities and an integrated PC that allows video, pictures and text to run simultaneously.

Schwab points to what he considers an ideal application for an all-in-one display offering: a real-estate office that simultaneously offers a slide show of available houses, lists the phone numbers of local contacts and provides information about regional events such as open houses.

Industries such as health care, government and education are among other verticals that offer new areas of growth for digital signage.

"Everyone's looking to get huge multi-thousand unit installations, but those are going to be hard, and few and far between," says Hans Baumann, senior product manager at NEC Display Solutions. "There are a lot of smaller opportunities at universities and hospitals."

Hoping to cash in on that vertical growth is Planar Systems, which last month bought digital-signage vendor Clarity Visual Systems for $46 million. Planar plans to tap Clarity's digital- signage hardware and software savvy to offer vertically targeted solutions.

Plasma displays are currently the dominant choice for retail-signage implementations, but by 2008, LCDs are expected to dethrone plasma displays in that market, according to iSuppli. Transportation, the first vertical industry to embrace digital signage, has already moved predominantly to LCDs.

While plasma displays remain the medium of choice for video, the drive toward LCDs is being fueled by the move to combine static and dynamic elements onto one display screen. That trend is hampered somewhat by a drawback of plasma displays: burn-in, or the tendency for the screen to "retain" some images.

ViewSonic's recently released ND4200, a 42-inch network LCD, allows five different applications to run on the display at one time. This fall, ViewSonic plans to add a scheduler to the product, enabling content to be pushed out at a specific date and time.

Also new on the market this summer: new large-screen LCDs from Samsung Electronics America targeted at the digital-signage space. The 40-inch SyncMaster 400PXn and 46-inch SyncMaster 460PXn run Windows XP Embedded and allow users to remotely control content over a network through Samsung's MagicNet software.

NEXT: Toshiba projects a good image.

To help alleviate some of the stress of delivering presentations in front of large audiences, Toshiba America Information Systems has rolled out a new projector designed for large venues.

Among the notable features of the TDP-TW350U DLP (Digital Light Processing) projector are built-in 802.11g wireless connectivity and network-management capabilities to help IT administrators remotely diagnose and monitor projector problems. With these capabilities, IT administrators can set up automatic e-mail notifications on the monitor's status.

The 12-pound projector displays images with a brightness of up to 3,500 ANSI lumens, a 2,000-to-1 contrast ratio and a native XGA resolution of 1,024 x 768. It also includes an auto-focus feature and a 1.5x motorized zoom for automatic display adjustments.

Inputs include one 15-pin RGB, one five-pin BNC and one DVI. There are also two video inputs for composite and S-video, three components shared with computer inputs, two 4-watt stereo speakers, one Type A USB port and wired LAN connectivity.

The projector is available now for $2,339.