I thought I’d bring this up again since I just saw a video of a digital signage presentation that I believe breached several legal aspects. I want our readers to understand this clearly before they take the next step further.

The first legal area is about copyright. Yes, it’s something we all know about but the Internet provides us with so much as information, images and videos that we sometimes forget how easily the content can be easily re-used. So for those creating content, don’t be tempted to just use content that you find on the Internet. There are many companies out there that is able to provide stock images, videos, templates etc. Most importantly, in the video I noticed that there was an option to add an RSS news feed from CNN news. Even thought the video was a demonstration of a digital signage system, I believe there was a breach in the RSS terms and conditions. The CNN website clearly mentions that the use of the RSS is for non-commercial purposes. We previously talked about breacking RSS copyright laws in the post titled: Are you breaching RSS copyright laws? By the way, in that post we mentioned that we were getting 100 RSS feeds per day(statistics from early 2009 and as of today, we receive over 1000 feeds per day).

The second legal area is about overlaying RSS text or advertisements or any other type of content over live TV feeds. We also talked about this in one of our previous posts titled Embedding live video content in digital signage. Is this a breach of copyright in Australia? For example, if you were showing a live feed of a soccer match and you overlayed an RSS feed at the bottom of the actual feed then you’re breaching some of the broadcasters terms and conditions. Besides all the legal jargon that you will find on the broadcasters websites, I believe the main reasons why commercial businesses are not allowed to do this is for the following reasons:

1. It costs big money to broadcast video content and they make the majority of their money by displaying advertisements during the ad breaks. By you displaying other content such as ads then the broadcasters are not making money from you and they obviously want to avoid this.

2. The broadcasters do not want to give the viewers the impression and confusion that the other content on the live TV feed is actually displayed from them. They don’t want the affiliation simply because they are unable to control what is displayed on the screen. Just image you’re displaying live TV of a news channel and all of a sudden you display an overlay RSS feed of the CNN news. Now, that will be confusing.

I simply want to make our readers, system integrators or digital signage users aware of some of these legal issues because I don’t want you to be in a legal battle – I’d rather you spend the time rolling out digital signage solutions than sitting in a court case. I also thought that our readers needed to be better educated on how to best use the features in a digital signage system and  not breach any laws.

Has these laws changed? If not, then think twice before you use some of the advanced features in a digital signage system and don’t blame the solution provider or manufacturer for giving you the functionality to do this!

Category: Digital Signage Blog News

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.

Category: Digital Signage Blog Info, Digital Signage Techie, Featured Post