Digital Signage Expo Las Vegas

Well it's been a while since my last blog entry so it's time to give my impressions on the Digital Signage Expo in Las Vegas which ran from Feb. 26th to the 28th. I was fortunate enough to attend the show this year and it was nice to see the number of exhibitors and attendees climb since last year's show in Chicago. David Haynes has a nice article on his blog that goes over the numbers.

It was my first time in Vegas so I was quite impressed with some of the installations around the city. I didn't have time to do much sightseeing as I was working the Navori corner of the BroadSign booth but I did see lots of interesting stuff.


I must begin by commenting on the poor performance of the content displayed on the screens at the hotel we were staying. There were several Plasma screens hung around the Casino area and every screen was displaying the same Flash based content. The content itself was quite sophisticated but the app running the show was dropping frames at an alarming rate. It looked like the Flash content was too complex for the PC it was running on. You would expect a tech-savvy Casino would test these things as it was quite noticeable. It marred what was otherwise a very nice installation.

The Digital Signage Expo floor was the place to be (at least for me since I worked the show and missed all the seminars). All the usual suspects were there... My new bosses (BroadSign), Scala, Planar (CoolSign), C-Nario, etc... Not much new that I could tell from my spot. Actually, I was paying more attention to hardware. There was an interesting offering from a company called MediaVue Systems. Small form factor, fanless PCs able to display multi-screen - 1080p HD video. The system uses an innovative design which converts part of the case into a heat sink. Built in the US too... more to come, I'm sure.

A company called NetFaze Technologies was schlepping a HD resolution LCD screen/PC combo unit in various sizes. Very interesting design. The unit can let you play TV content separately from the Digital Signage application running on its PC. You can do the picture in picture thing or split the screen vertically so half the screen is playing live TV and the other half is running the DS application of your choice. It's quite refreshing to see common sense solutions to the whole "how do I play live TV and run my advertising" problem. The company is based in Las Vegas but also has an office in the Toronto 'burbs. I'm sure we'll be hearing more form them.

LG was displaying some interesting screen formats but I wouldn't want to be asked to create content for that puppy... It's bad enough we need to deal with multiple standards, portrait and vertical but now we're looking at "half" screens!

I am not going to talk about the various 3D screen technologies that were displayed everywhere because they just gave me a headache. I cannot for the life of me understand why anyone would want/need this technology. The image quality is poor. The visual effect is not all that great and you must be right in front of the screen to see any depth to the image. I would much rather see manufacturers concentrating on thinner, cheaper and more energy efficient screen technologies. Personally, I think 3D is a non-event.