We were clearing up some of our documents and stumbled across one of our very first digital signage proposals and we thought we’d share some of this with you all. Just keep in mind that this was one of our very first proposal…

In today’s day and age, the Internet and email technology has revolutionised the way we communicate with people all over the world. Both of these technologies are critical and vital to the operations of any business. Without these technologies, your employees and company will come to a standstill.

Moving forward with technology, digital signage is a new form of digital medium for corporate businesses with multiple offices around the world to deliver dynamic messages to its employees. It is a proven fact that dynamic images and information attract more attention than static images such as posters or billboards by a factor of 10.

XXX  is a large global organisation and it can embrace this technology by keeping its local and remote employees up to date with; business events (National Sales Conferences, annual Christmas party), corporate headlines (the launch of new xxx products or systems) and local business effecting announcements (building renovations, Information Technology business interruptions).

What is digital signage?

Digital signage is the method of displaying multimedia content on a display unit such as a LCD screen, a plasma display panel, a monitor, a video wall composed of a number of screens to deliver informative and entertaining content to employees, visitors, captive audiences and passers by.

As opposed to still images, multimedia content is the new standard of digital communication. The information presented to your viewers will not only be exciting but also captivating.

Benefits

XXX can use the digital signage technology to impress both its visitors and employees. Imagine the following scenarios:

Your visitors are standing at your reception desk signing the visitor’s book. They look up and their eyes are caught by a large LCD screen. A message is displayed “Welcome to XXX.” The message fades and the next message appears “Dear visitor, please ensure your visitors badge is visible at all times whilst on XXX premises. Please also remember to sign out before leaving. Thank you and enjoy your visit.” The system can also be used to display Training timetable information (training name, time and locations) and help guide your visitors to the training rooms.

Your employees walk into the office and their eyes are caught by the LCD screen. There is a message on the screen “Reminder: Flash Presentation at 11:00 AM”. In this particular scenario, the system is being used as a bulletin board to efficiently remind staff of particular events.

Your employees are eating in the cafeteria, the LCD screen displays the message at all sites with the following “advertise me Christmas countdown: 2 days to go. Visit http://www.advertiseme.com.au for more information.” Staff members are updated with important company information.

There are infinite possibilities and scenarios where your business can benefit from this evolving digital signage technology. Take the step now and you will notice the difference.

Just by simply introducing the digital signage technology to XXX’s corporate environment, Advertise Me can guarantee the business can achieve the following:

• Promote new products to its employees
• Increase awareness of critical business projects to employees
• Improve business image to visitors and the public
• Achieve recognition from competitors by being the first YYY company to use this technology
• Keep employees informed with information with eye catching presentations

Proposal

A typical digital signage network consists of a small form factor Personal Computer, a 32 inch LCD TV (inclusive of a mounting bracket) and the digital signage software.  Our proposal for XXX is slightly different and is as follows:

• XXX will supply Advertise Me with a PC which meets our technical specifications. This will ensure that the PC has been qualified by a XXX employee and conforms to the XXX standards.
• We will supply XXX with a 32 inch LCD TV as a minimum or for an additional cost, upgrade to a larger screen size LCD.
• We will install, configure and support the software on any PC that is connected to a stand.
• Provide basic training to either IT staff or XXX employees who will manage the system
• Provide on-site maintenance for the equipment and software

XXX has the option to have the digital network set up on its own private network or on the Advertise Me network. Our preference is to have the PC’s on our network so that we can monitor and remotely manage each stand. We will provide Internet access points at each stand and set up VPN (Virtual Private Network) tunnels with the highest security back to our network. We will then provide XXX with access to the players via our network.

There are ZZZ XXX offices based in Australia; [locations]. At each location we propose to have an stand at the reception desk, and one in the cafeteria/lunch area. At XXX we can additionally add another stand in the Hub.

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Category: Digital Signage Blog Info

advertise me has been in the digital signage industry since its infancy in Australia and we’ve experienced the convergence of the Information Technology and Audio Visual industry. Both are now becoming so dependent on each other that professionals in the IT industry are learning skills from the audio visual industry and vice versa.

What are the main reasons behind this and which industry does digital signage fit in?

In this particular post I will attempt to explore these areas and hopefully others can follow and join me with sharing their thoughts and ideas on this particular topic.

Let’s firstly look at the roles and responsibilities of both industries:

The IT industry

Information Technology Network equipment

Generally speaking, when someone uses the term IT (Information Technology), the first thing that comes to their mind is computers – basically this is what the majority of digital signage players are (embedded computers, laptops, desktops, Macs etc). One thing that needs to be clarified is that IT encompasses much more than computers, it covers broader areas such as software development, desktop management, server management (Windows, Linux, Mac, etc), network infrastructure, security and helpdesk support. All of these areas form the basic foundation of the IT backbone and digital signage is one of those technologies which have a great dependency on the IT framework. The design, stability of the overall IT infrastructure needs to work in order for the digital signage network to also be reliable and efficient.

continue reading »

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When it comes to protecting your investment, physical security should be considered for any digital signage installation. Whether its for outdoor or indoor purposes, enclosures are the best form of physical protection. We previously touched upon some of the other security considerations in two of our previous posts called “How secure is your digital signage solution?” and “Secure your digital signage solution – here’s why“.

Enclosures are primarily designed to protect the display screens from:

• the environment – direct sunlight or extreme weather can cause damage to the screen
• theft – fortunately we haven’t come across this situation but I’m sure others around the world have experience this
• physical damage – vandalism is quite common in public areas continue reading »

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Coincidently on my third trip back to Melbourne for a digital signage project rollout, I came across something that is too familiar to me.

Digital Signage gone wrong

Almost 9 out of 10 times when digital signage goes wrong through my observations, they are running Windows. There is no perfect system out there regardless what hardware, operating system, or configuration you may have, but according to Murphy’s Law, when something does go wrong how do control it? Does your software allow you to show an exception or alternate display?

Weirdly enough, these observations have now become second nature to me, whereby I notice all other people would just walk right past it. Not to mention the urge for me to take out my blackberry to snap it.

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Its been a crazy past many weeks for us here at advertise me. In the past 2 months gone, I’ve been hopping between different cities every week for digital signage installations and meetings.

It is interesting to see where each city is at with the influence of digital signage, and I have noticed that the usage of its application differs between different regions across the country. However one of the disappointing things that I have picked up is the management of downtime for systems going offline. In less populated cities, when a screen goes offline it can be left like that for days without anybody coming to its attention. In more populated cities, the screen will be back live again by the afternoon, or the next day at latest.

I’ve got a couple more places to go before the end of this month, and that should leave me with an open, but not easy December where I can get my feet back on the ground and plan for the next year. By gosh its mid November already and Christmas is just around the corner!

Telstra building in Melbourne

Offline Screen in Perth Domestic Airport

Has anybody found any other trends with digital signage applications across different regions of your country?

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Several weeks ago I was in the Adelaide airport and I was surprised on how different the airport digital signage screens was being used and implemented there. This is what I saw:

Digital Signage At Adelaide Airport

If you look at the screen closely, you’ll notice that on the top right hand section there is a banner stating “Advertise Here…”. This is the first time I’ve seen an airport trying to promote advertising space which is great to see.

Digital Signage At Adelaide Airport

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This seems to be a common dilemma amongst a number of LCD/Plasma decisions in a lot of tender projects and client requirements. Do clients really know what they are asking for, and how important is screen resolution for digital signage rollouts?

Let’s clear a few things up first.

Native resolution is the fixed number of pixels on the screen. For example, if your screen has a native resolution of 1280×720 pixels, this means your screen is physically made up of 1280 pixels wide and 720 pixels high.

Maximum resolution is the highest resolution that the screen is capbable to display.

When an incoming signal to the screen does not match the native resolution, that signal must be converted (or scaled) to be displayed correctly on the screen. So lets use the same screen above, it has a native resolution of 1280×720. If an incoming signal is 1920×1080, the screen will scale this resolution down so that it can fit on the physical dimensions of 1280×720. Likewise if an incoming signal is 1024×768, then the screen will up-scale this resolution to fit 1280×720.

This process is possible because the screen has been programmed to recognise different input signals and to convert them as such. More often than not you will have a list of all the supported input signal resolution sizes, and the highest supported resolution is your Maximum resolution.

Now that we have that out of the way, lets talk about how important is screen resolution in digital signage?

In all my digital signage years until now, I have not had to focus on optimising the quality of the display in regards to picture sharpness and contrast ratio. The general technology of the Plasma/LCD screen makes up for this. What comes out of the digital signage player is just right for the display quality. The general conversation would be on how to most effectively capture consumers attention with the type of content and how it is designed.

However recently in Australia, digital broadcasting of TV networks have become more prominent and consumers are now well aware of terms like HDTV. This presence of high definition television has entered many homes and now the retail store fronts want to show this off also. Because consumers are already aware of such technology, there is an expectation on store owners to provide this service to them.

The question comes back to client requirements. Do most clients have the proper knowledge to determine what screens they want based on what they know or what they have been told? Is it important to match the right resolution of what is coming from the digital receiver into the digital signage player, and out to the screen?

We’d like to hear your point of view on this topic. There is no right or wrong answer, as each requirements are different, but we would like to hear your thoughts.

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Here’s a picture I took of a takeaway store that clearly had a problem with their digital signage solution:

Digital Signage Screen Failures

But what’s interesting is that they at least had a backup plan – ie. static posters.

So, what do you do when your screen fails?

We previously talked about this in another post called “Why Digital Signage Can Work Against You”

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If your digital signage solution is not implemented correctly it may work against you. Let me explain…

On the weekend whilst walking past a busy street I spotted across the road a real estate company with several LCD screens located at their front window. This is what I saw: (excuse the quality of the pictures but it was late at night and I was using my blackberry):

Digital Signage Screen not working

Digital Signage Faulty Screen

Digital Signage Faulty Screen

Now, in Australia quite a number of real estate agencies have moved away from using the traditional static posters for displaying their property listing and have implemented some form of a digital signage solution (visual display screens or touchscreen technology).

What I was most surprised about this particular installation and setup was that 1/3 of their screens was either turned off or had a fault with the LCD unit. Does this mean that 1/3 of the properties were not displayed? How would the property owner feel knowing that they are potentially losing interested buyers.

So what I have learnt from this situation is the following:

1. If there’s a hardware fault fix it immediately

2. Always have a backup plan – don’t be afraid to revert back to the old method of using traditional posters when required

3. Use a mixture of digital signage solutions and traditional posters

4. It looks unprofessional and embarrassing for both the digital signage solution provider and owner if the solution fails

5. You will definately lose customers if the problem is not rectified in a timely manner

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For this weekend fun, we want to share with you a comic on digital signage. I think this one has been floating around for a couple of days and it’s from the Blondie comic series by Dean Young & John Marshall. Thanks guys, we’re glad to see that the digital signage industry is getting noticed and acknowledged by the comic industry. Also, thanks to Ronnie for sharing this.

Blondie comic - digital signage

Source of the image: http://www.jsonline.com/comics/32402404.html?feature_id=Blondie&feature_date=2009-08-25

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Category: Digital Signage Blog Info, Digital Signage Weekend Fun

This week we were approached by an individual who was interested in purchasing one of our domain names. We are not too sure what their intentions were but we thought that for this weekend fun post we would ask our readers how much do they think this domain name (www.digitalsignageblog.com) is worth. By the way… we are NOT selling this domain name.

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Category: Digital Signage Blog Info, Digital Signage Blog News, Digital Signage Polls, Digital Signage Weekend Fun

It’s another weekend so you know what that means? It’s time for some weekend fun. For this weekend fun post, I thought I’d look around for a fun video to post. Generally, most of the content for digital signage is serious (depends on the environment) but I believe that sometimes it’s those funny ads that stand out and makes it go viral. So here’s a Youtube video clip of a McDonald’s funny advertisement:

What I found most interesting about this video from McDonalds is that it doesn’t matter which language the video is in, as long as it portrays the intended message to the audience then in my eyes it’s definitely a sure winner!

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This will be nice and short. If you want to follow our latest blog entries, forums, comments, and basically all our latest updates, then follow us on twitter.

You can follow us on twitter here: http://www.twitter.com/advertisemeAU

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It’s another weekend and for this particular post we’re going to look at a fun and innovative digital signage solution in Taoyuan Airport. Basically, as you’re waling down the duty free alley in the Taoyuan airport Terminal 2, you will notice that an advertisement follows you. I’m not sure whether the ads as targeted specifically based on the gender or characteristics of the person walking past but do you find this too intrusive? Have a look at the video:

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Category: Digital Signage Blog Info, Digital Signage Polls, Digital Signage Weekend Fun

For those of you that didn’t know, we have provided you the facility to use the Google translator to translate these blog posts in different languages. At the moment, you can translate these posts in German, Spanish, French, Italian, Portuguese, Japanese, Korean, Russian and Chinese Traditional. So no matter what language you speak, click on the flag at the top right hand column and Google will translate the post for you.

Happy reading… in whatever language you read.

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Here’s some of the translations (don’t blame us if it doesn’t make sense):

German

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We all knew this was going to happen and it eventually did. Coca-cola has released digital signage vending machines which are interactive. Here’s a video to show you what we mean:

And here’s a video of someone actually using the vending machine… I like it how he had to press the right arrow several times before it scrolled to the right and it also has the Pay Pass payment option (I haven’t really seen this been used in Australia):

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It’s the weekend and thought I’d share an exciting and fun video clip – you’ll be also surprised as well.

We previously talked about how the iPhone can be used as a digital signage player (there’s already a few companies out there who have created an application on the iPhone) but now how would you like to be served by a humanoid robot with an iPhone attached to it’s head? Watch the funky video and we’ll discuss later:

In the examples in the video, the humanoid robot with the iPhone attached as it’s head, can be used to:

• wake you up – morning!!! maybe even give you a hug or a slap
• entertain – it’s a dance machine…shake it’s robo booty
• teach it new tricks and moves – next thing you know it will start imitating your moves
• and if you’re nice to it… it might even make you a coffee (just kidding – ummmm may be it is possible)

BUT more importantly it can interact with YOU – think about it from a sales and marketing perspective and you’ll start realising that this robot can be used to attract more customers into your store and even possibly serve it’s customers (stick your own photo image as it’s head ). The screen itself can be used even to promote sales, products and specials whilst it’s dancing around entertaining it’s customers (yes it’s  digital signage after all). And yes…. I’ve said it before… the possibilities seem to be endless with the future of mobile phones as digital signage players.

So that’s our weekend fun for this week and we all hope you’re having a great weekend.

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Category: Digital Signage Blog Info, Digital Signage Blog Products, Digital Signage Blog Video, Digital Signage Ideas, Digital Signage Weekend Fun

Wirespring is currently running an interesting survey called: How much should digital signage cost and I’ve just completed it. The survey basically looks at how much different digital signage hardware and services cost – now I assumed that the survey was in US$ and not local AU$.

Bill Gerba explains in his post that participating in this survey is worthwhile because:

1.  demand-driven pricing estimate is a great way to check the accuracy of all of the supply-driven pricing estimates out there.

2. it’s easier than voting with your wallet: by choosing the fair-value price for each item, you get to (anonymously) tell everybody who receives the survey data what’s on your mind.

So let’s get to it, complete the survey here. I’m very interested to see what the results are but we’ll have to wait until the end of August when the survey ends.

How much should digital signage cost?

Feel free to submit your answer as a comment.

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At 8 stories above the ground, APN Outdoor’s 200m long billboard sets the country’s largest billboard at the Sydney International Airport.

The billboard is made up of two panels each over 100m long and just over 5m high. International airline V Australia is the first to take up the billboard located atop the Terminal 1 car park with their “fly girls” campaign exclusively for 12 months.

“V Australia will be noticed by anyone parking, driving or flying anywhere in the vicinity of the International Airport. Apart from being the largest site in the country, it also has a very high and consistent level of guaranteed traffic and visibility” – Paul McBeth, General Manager of marketing at APN Outdoor.

Source: http://www.bandt.com.au/news/75/0C062875.asp

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I’ve been using the blackberry storm for almost a year now and have also played around with my brothers iPhone during the same period so what I have found most interesting about these two mobile phones is the fact that they both don’t support flash on their mobile browsers. Now why is that – or have I not been searching hard enough?

Using flash is very common for most digital signage players/systems and ideally we would like this to be available on all browsers (both for PC and mobile).

Are you aware of any upcoming flash development/releases for the mobile phone browsers?

Feel free to submit your answer as a comment.

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Category: Digital Signage Blog Info, Digital Signage Blog News, Digital Signage Polls

Today’s great news is that Google is planning to release it’s own OS called Google

Image source: www.google.com

Chrome OS and will compete against the almighty Microsoft Enterprise. We believe this is great news for the digital signage community because of the following reasons:

1. It’s Open Source and will be free. Moving towards an open source OS, will provide a significant savings to you and your clients.

2. According to Google, the Chrome O.S is fast and efficient. This is perfect for digital signage.

3. It’s lightweight – you will be able to install this on a netbook and run your digital signage application.

4. Its secure – like the Google Chrome browser, Google has designed the security architecture of the OS so that users don’t have to deal with viruses, malware and security updates. This means spending less time patching!!!

5. Designed for the web – since most companies are now moving towards SaaS then this is a perfect match.

We look forward to testing various digital signage software on the Google Chrome and we can’t wait to get our hands dirty.

And a final note: Thanks google for making our life easier and cheaper for everyone!

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Image Source: www.apple.com

This may sound a bit ridiculous but has anyone thought about using your Iphone as a mobile digital signage player? I mean lets think about this, if people can use the Iphone to watch movies and video clips why can’t it be used as an integrated digital signage player. The unit can be easily connected to the Internet and it also has a touch screen so really its perfect for interacting with your intended audience. With the sheer number of Iphone users out there, setting a digital signage network can be easily established.

All we need now is a digital signage Iphone application… and my guess is that someone is already developing one.

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Category: Digital Signage Blog Info, Digital Signage Blog News, Digital Signage Blog Products

Australia has just launched Digital Radio (launched on the 1st July 2009)!!!

Now if you live in a more advanced country than Australia you might be thinking to yourself, “We had Digital Radio several years ago!” but this shows that Australia is slowly catching up with the rest of the world and are embracing and deploying new technologies.

For those that don’t know much about digital radio, it’s basically like switching from your standard Analogue TV to Digital TV. Surely you must have seen the difference – better video and audio quality and better features.

Basically this is the same with Digital Radio, switching from your Analogue radio to digital means you receive crispier audio quality and additional features (i.e you can receive on screen information of what is actually being played, easily tune to your channels). Now like digital TV you needed to buy a set top box and much like with digital radio you will also need to purchase a digital radio receiver.

The Australian Broadcasting Corporation is one of the main broadcaster of the digital radio services and if you live in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Adelaide and Perth you will be able to tune in to the digital radio service. If you don’t have one of these digital radio receivers you can easily purchase one at your local ABC Shop (even go to the ABC Shop website) or go to a leading electronics store.

How do you see digital radio being integrated with digital signage?

Feel free to submit your answer as a comment.

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Category: Digital Signage Blog Events, Digital Signage Blog Info, Digital Signage Blog News, Featured Post

I’m not a big fan of travelling, so I haven’t really been around to all the different parts of the world but for those that have here’s my question to you:

What is the most effective digital signage solution you’ve ever seen?

Feel free to submit your answer as a comment.

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There’s quite a lot of content out there on the Internet but this is the very first time I’ve actually stumbled across a Video Discussion on digital signage. I have learnt quite a lot just from watching these videos and I thought why not share it with our readers.

Now this discussion was organised/sponsored by Dynamax (thanks guys) and the companies involved included Dogobert, DigiCom, Stand Media, Imperative Group and Rocket Communications.

The main topic of the discussion was “Digital Out of Home is a multi channel multi touch-point communications medium. How should we design for the future to maximise viewer and user relevancy?”

The actual discussion was divided into several questions and there were:

PART 1 What do we mean by “multi touch-point” (devices/access points etc) in the context of Digital Out Of Home and what is it trying to achieve for viewers and/or users? (relevancy?)

PART 2 What does the existing Digital Out Of Home solution need to do more of to enhance the medium’s relationship with the end user? What – if anything – should we also stop doing?

PART 3 Does ‘multi touch-point’ mean ‘two-way’ communication? If so, how and where should this be designed into the medium to offer view & user value (however you choose to define that) when out of the home?

PART 4 How can multi touch-point digital media generate experiential value for users? Is this value easy to identify and reconcile commercially?

PART 5 What creative design elements are considered to be best of breed today and what trends are likely to emerge in the next 12 months?

PART 6 What physical design elements are considered to be best of breed today and what trends are likely to emerge in the next 12 months?

PART 7 What is the commercial challenge of delivering DOOH across multiple touch-points and how can this be best planned & managed?

Part 8 What challenges does the transactional nature of a multi touch-point model mean in terms of capturing, managing, storing and commercialising data?

PART 9 The collection of data means we can offer the viewer or the customer more value; what value does this offer?

PART 10 Which component parts of a multi touch-point proposition may offer the most commercial opportunities over the next 12 months and why?

PART 11 Does opening up the medium to users generating their own content necessarily make the medium more ‘relevant’?

Source: http://www.ddrmag.co.uk/links.php

Here’s the video of the first part of the discussion:

If you were present in the discussion, how would you have answer this question:
“What do we mean by “multi touch-point” (devices/access points etc) in the context of Digital Out Of Home and what is it trying to achieve for viewers and/or users? (relevancy?)”

Feel free to submit your answer as a comment.

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Category: Digital Signage Blog Events, Digital Signage Blog Info, Digital Signage Blog Video, Featured Post

Out of curiosity I decided to perform a Google trend search for the term Digital Signage – the exact term “Digital Signage” was performed to see what the trend has been over the years. From the image on the left, you can clearly see that the number of people searching for this term has increased over the years and I believe it will constantly continue to grow. But what I was more surprised from the information Google Trends provided was the regions that provided the highest searches. The majority of these regions where the Asian countries.

Here are the results:

Regions

1. Taiwan
2. Malaysia
3. South Korea
4. South Africa
5. Singapore
6. India
7. Canada
8. New Zealand
9. Australia
10. United States

From these results can one assume that there is a higher demand (based on search trends) for digital signage in Taiwan or Malaysia (I’m quite surprised to see malaysia being ranked second on the list) compared to countries like New Zealand, Australia and the United States?

Feel free to submit your answer as a comment.

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Category: Digital Signage Blog Info, Digital Signage Blog News, Digital Signage Polls, Featured Post

Who are we?

We are a group of technology enthusiasts who are passionate with the uses of gadgets and nifty pieces of equipment.
When digital signage came into our picture, we got excited and decided to take it for a ride. In fact, with the tremendous popular rise of digital signage and its applications everyday, it has now become part of our profession.

Our first success was Advertise Me, an established digital signage company in Australia.
Through establishing many clients and partners, we created the Digital Signage Portal.
And if that wasn’t enough, we decided what the heck – let’s blog about it!

So what is this Blog about?

We have been operating in the digital signage industry since its birth in Australia, and have come across many experiences in this line of business.

Apart from working, we also obtain many useful sources of news and information that we think would be beneficial to the digital signage community.

So where else would we collaborate all our experiences and news? Right here of course!

Contributors

There are currently several contributors to the digital signage blog.

From time to time we like to invite others to write something or submit a topic to us, and we will post it on the blog.
Having said that, if you would like to share a post with us, feel free to send it to info@digitalsignageblog.com.

Don’t forget …

To visit our Digital Signage Portal to interact with the digital signage community from around the world or visit the Digital Signage Articles for a mix of different digital signage articles from around the world.

Now if you’re looking to exchange links visit the Digital Signage Experts.

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Category: Digital Signage Blog Info, Digital Signage Blog News

It’s been a while since we last distributed our digital signage newsletter but our excuse is… we’ve been busy. I know it’s a lame excuse but we’ve been seriously inundated with businesses contacting us for quotes, responding to emails and we’ve also been involved in digital signage installations.

We recently posted in our forum what people wanted to see in our newsletter and one of our digital signage portal members suggested we should discuss about issues installers face during digital signage rollouts. So thanks to Jon for your feedback, we always value everyones feedback but more importantly we take action!

Lets quickly summarise some of these issues and recommendations:

Physical Security – we have talked about this in the past in one of our blog entries titled Does your digital signage solution pass our security checklist? point number 7 – If you can’t recall what was discussed you can read the article and refresh your memory. Just make sure you physically lock your monitors to prevent thieves from stealing the units.

Use smaller pipes/brackets for monitors -Jon advises the following: “when hanging monitors from ceiling joints, that some companies are using very heavy pipes to hold the monitors. The monitors are getting lighter and lighter and a pipe that is heavier than the monitor is not necessary. Cutting back the size/weight of the pipes can still hold the monitors, reduce costs for shipping and cutting them to length is much easier as well”.

Use pre made Cat5E cables – it makes it easier for installers. “That way you can just connect to the box in the ceiling and to the back of the monitor instead of having one long cable that runs from the PC or rack straight to the monitor. This also helps with replacement of cables, so you don’t have to run an entirely new cable, just replace the bad one and drop it thru the pipe.”

Be green – try to help the environment and try to use equipment that does not need power. For example, there are several Video extenders in the market that do not require power. Some are hard to find but let us know if you run into trouble.

Backup plans – always have a backup plan and NEVER rely on just 1 single supplier. Make sure you have a backup plan for everything, otherwise if you hit a wall during your installation you will still be able to get the job done.

Costings – From jon’s professional experience: “One of the cost saving measures I use for my clients is flat rate billing. It includes travel, time on the job and materials used. There is a little more cost if there is a concrete ceiling as opposed to a tiled or drop ceiling. This way everyone involved knows the costs up front and there are no suprises on the back end for the client” Once again Jon, thanks for your tips. We have created a forum thread on the digital signage portal forum, so that you can all discuss this further. Click here to continue the discussion.

To read past newsletters click here.

Want to automatically receive the newsletters? Join the digital signage portal.

Feel free to submit your answer as a comment.

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Category: Digital Signage Blog Info, Digital Signage Blog News, Digital Signage Newsletter

I just finished reading an article from TechDirt and was shocked to find out how much the yearly licensing fees are for playing music in a nightclub or a restaurant. Here is a short extract from the article:

“It wants to increase licensing fees in a 120-seat restaurant to $19,344 a year — up from $125. Small cafes would be slugged with a 4729 per cent yearly increase from $124 to $5860.”

Source: http://techdirt.com/articles/20090615/0329305236.shtml

For those digital signage businesses who provide their clients with a digital signage solution that plays music in the background, have you considered what legal implications are involved and what the licensing requirements are? Even if your client has paid for the music clips or videos!

In Australia, retail stores that play music – whether from the radio, purchased CDs, computers, digital signage are required to pay a licensing fee otherwise it may be considered breaching copyright laws and eventually be fined thousands of dollars.

Now we all know that music can set the mood and atmosphere in your store, nightclub, restaurant or cafe but did you know that you may have to pay a licensing fee for playing music in your business environment or anywhere in public areas? Basically, if you play music in your store you need to have a PPCA public performance license to play protected sound recordings and an APRA public performance license to play musical and literary works. For more information about this visit https://transactions.business.gov.au/BLIS/musiclicence.aspx

All I can say is, just make sure that if you’re running a business or if you’re installing a digital signage solution with audio for one of your clients make sure you mention these licencing requirements to your client otherwise they (or possibly your business) may end up paying a hefty fine – so don’t risk it.

After thinking about this situation, do you believe a license is required for playing videos of unsigned artists playing original songs from Youtube in your store or business environment?

Feel free to submit your answer as a comment.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but my understanding is that because these artists are unsigned (i.e don’t have a label) the PPCA, or APRA won’t be paying them one cent so why should you pay for the license fee if all you’re playing is songs from these unsigned artists. For example, here’s one of my favourite Youtube R&B groups called LEGACI playing an original song. Keep it up boys.

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