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

This week, our team thought of doing something different from our usual postings – we decided to open up the NDSP-500 digital signage player and give you a brief look at what’s inside one of these players. The video is not of the greatest quality but it does give you an idea of the components inside a typical digital signage player and what connections are available. So here’s the video:

As you can clearly see, the unit is small… it’s smaller than half of an A4 paper. With this particular unit, there are several connectors at the front:

1. RS232 – this is usually to provide serial communications with another device. It can be used to control and manage an display screen – that’s if the screen supports RS232.
2. Secure compartment to store the SD card – it’s also a quick way to easily swap out the SD card without having to open up the box

At the back of the unit you will notice the following connectors:

1.Video output:  the unit has these typical connections – S-Video Output/Composite Video and Audio, DVI, and VGA.

2. Video Input: Composite Video and Audio. With this particular unit you will be able to connect a video input source such as a DVD player, Foxtel, CCTV camera etc.

3. S/PDIF – for great audio quality

4. LAN port which support 10/100 Mbps

5. Two USB ports for connecting USB Storage

6. Power plug to connect the power supply. This power plug was different from other digital signage players we’ve seen in the past. It basically has a connector which allows you to twist and screw the power cable to the power plug.

Inside the player, all you will find is a circuit board, a frame for a small hard disk and several cables. As you can see from the video, you will not find a fan inside the player – this makes the unit very quiet when it’s turned on.

Would you like to see more videos? Let us know what you’ll like to see and we’ll try to get it done.

Feel free to submit your answer as a comment.

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