Archive of the Digital Signage Category

Judging from the presentation of its new Entero rear-projection videowall product, Christie (booth SL7219) has moved LED techology onto a whole new application field. The company is billing Entero as the world’s first LED-based (SXGA+ and WUXGA resolutions) wall display system, geared toward control rooms, in particular. Christie officials told me their advances in solid state LED technology have allowed, at last, this form of illumination to be bright enough to work nicely for a video wall application. The bright, colorful display at their booth appears to back up the claim.

And because it does work, the company has essentially produced a wall display that does without lamps, filters, or even color wheels, relying only on red/green/blue LED’s firing in sequence, and is extremely low maintenance for up to 50,000 hours of punishing use. The company suggests this could be a big deal for facilities that need to run video and data almost 24-7, like command and control centers, particularly in these difficult economic times. more

As the editor of millimeter’s sister publication Sound & Video Contractor, it was informative to see quite a few professional AV technologies, applications, and players on the NAB show floor as I wandered around today. Digital Signage and various display manufacturers might well be expected, but what is interesting is that a handful of other hardware manufacturing types from the AV world are finding NAB a useful introduction to their own big summer show: InfoComm.

Case in point would be Kramer Electronics, which is displaying new switcher/scaler technology at NAB that is right in the wheelhouse of any AV man, and Kramer’s sister company, Sierra Video, as well. Kramer/Sierra are essentially showing most of the same new technologies they will have on display this summer at InfoComm in Orlando. more

Executives at the massive Harris Corp. (N2502) booth just clued me in about their plans to better interlink their numerous broadcast content management technologies with the company’s growing digital signage initiatives, built around its InfoCaster digital signage solution.

The notion is that Harris is working right now to port many of its broadcast tool sets into the building of new out-of-home market digital signage solutions that could, down the road, pave the way for more revenue opportunities for businesses and municipalities and, potentially, broadcasters themselves. more

It was a busy NAB. Of course any show is busy, with hundreds of vendors and thousands of products to consider. But even compared to the usual convention (this is my 20th NAB. Yikes!), NAB 2007 had significant new products to consider, with cameras, storage arrays, and NLE gear just three examples of product areas with significant churn. One prime motivator behind all the new technology seems to be the commoditization of formally high-end–read expensive to manipulate–technology. Now, innovative entrepreneurs living just about anywhere have a chance to introduce potentially significant products, right up there with the established players. With so much to cover, I can just offer a final quick look- in no particular order- of some of the more intriguing products I came across, both new and significantly upgraded. (Be sure to check out NAB wrap-ups in upcoming issues of Digital Content Producer and Millimeter): more

Blackmagic Design is excited to make three announcements at NAB 2007 and will show these products all week at NAB in their booth SL 11020: Multibridge Eclipse.

The world’s first editing system with 3 Gb/s SDI, HDMI and analog video capture and playback, 16 channel audio, and 2K film via SDI resolution capture and playback, for only US $3,495. Multibridge Eclipse is most sophisticated editing solution available, with the new 3 Gb/s SDI standard connections, it allows twice the SDI data rate than normal HD-SDI, while retaining compatibility with normal HD-SDI and standard definition SDI equipment. Read on at The Briefing Room: 2007 NAB Newslink