This week we were up to no good and opened up two digital signage players to have a look to see what is inside the unit. Here’s some pictures of what we discovered:

Digital Signage player 1	Digital Signage Player 2

As you can see from the picture, these players have the same components as a computer – basically it is a computer. It has a CPU, Motherboard, PSU (Power Supply Unit), Graphics chip, HHD, Memory, Storage Drive and heat sinks/FANs.

Most of the digital signage players that we have seen have an Intel Central Processor Unit chip. The CPU requirements will depend on type of content and software you intent to use the player for. For example, if you just intent to display images and text an Intel ATOM CPU will suffice but if you need to display High Definition videos with flash and images, then a Dual Core CPU will be required.

Digital Signage Player Intel CPU

In addition, the Graphics chip is also a crucial component when determining what digital signage player is required. In particular, there are different types of Graphics chips and cards that has many useful features e.g multiple video outputs (HDMI, VGA, DVI), extended or clone video (the ability to duplicate or extend the content to multiple screens)

If you intent to display lots of Videos as content, then the bigger the HHD the better. SATA is generally faster than IDE. These days, HD Videos can take up as much as Gigabytes of storage, and given that storage is quite affordable then why not have the large storage space.

Digital Signage Player HHD

RAM (Random Access Memory) is temporary storage that loads much faster than a HHD. Memory is also cheap, so the bigger the memory the better. Obviously, costs is always a deciding factor when purchasing any type of product but before you do decide to make that final purchasing decision, make sure you thoroughly review and test the unit.

Digital Signage Player Memory

Category: Digital Signage Blog News, Digital Signage Reviews

Routine maintenance is a critical task for all digital signage operators but how often should you do this and what type of maintenance tasks would you perform?

Some of the maintenance tasks that I could think of are:

Digital Signage Players

• Rebooting the digital signage players so that memory and running system files are flushed – this should be performed at least once a day to ensure smooth operation of the players. Some players can be scheduled to perform this task automatically at a predefined schedule. However, make sure you at least monitor the players to ensure they are still operating after a reboot
• Depending on the location of the digital signage players you should also physically wipe down any dust or clean the fans once a year. If it’s located in a rack with adequate ventilation then you won’t probably need to do this that often but it would be good to check.
• Sometimes we forget to delete old content that we store on these players, so depending on the size of your storage space then you should at least once a week just go through and delete any old content that you may no longer use. The only thing you should be careful with is not to delete any content that may be used reused in the future. There are several tools that can be used to manage the content better by setting expiration periods.

Display Screens

• The instruction manuals that are packaged with these screens have quite detailed information about how to maintain the screens. Sometimes we forget to realise  how important it is to ensure screens are operating and maintained for full optimum usage especially if your viewers are looking at these.
• Some of the tasks would be to physically clean the screens, who likes to look at a dirty screen and this may potentially will reflect back on your company.
• To remove or reduce screen burns try to avoid using bright colours and run some of the functions built in to the screen.

Can you think of any other tasks?

Feel free to submit your answer as a comment.

Category: Digital Signage Techie