Digital Signage without a Computer

[mjstrand]

We are considering adding some additional digital signage in our new learning center that will open in late May of this year. I would like to find a solution that does not require a local PC to drive the sign to save cost, energy, and avoid having to hide the unit with our open concept space.

How close are you to supporting that type of solution?

[mjstrand]

as you can imagine, there needs to be computer technology in any digital signage system. How it is packaged is another question though.

Some do it with memory cards that just play the image or video in sequence. There are embedded pc's inside of lcd screens (which are quite expensive). There are small form factor pc's that can fit on the back of tv's. There are VGA/DVI extenders that allow the pc to be in a remote room with a small receiver box attached to the screen.

We have the pc-2-tv.net products that transmit from one computer to one or many screens through cat5 or cat6 wiring. They also transfer the keyboard, mouse, audio in/out and remote control signals.

We have knowledge of several small form factor pc's - have not tried any yet. Many of those have less computing power, so we would need to look into that. We are almost finished with a Linux player system which may work more efficiently on lower power pc's.

The screens with memory cards are typically are difficult to update. We do not support that at this time.

It has been a couple years since we have worked with screens with embedded pc's. At that time, they were over $1k more than if you bought the pieces separately. Since they are proprietary, it probably is still more costly. Most of them have wireless as well as wired networking.

Are you planning on having the students learn how to setup digital signage, or just playing it in that area? If you are teaching it, that would make a difference too.