Digital View Blog

The Society for Information Displays (SID) held their annual SID conference and exhibition in Seattle, Washington last week. LCD panels have been the star of the show for many years now and this year was no exception – the surprise was the general absence of large OLED panels.

Not surprisingly 3D was very much in evidence both large and small for TV’s (with glasses) and mobile applications (without glasses).  Also touch and multi-touch panels were well represented as were displays for e-books, for example E-Ink was showing it latest color electrophoretic displays, ie the technology used in the Amazon Kindle and similar .

A few non-LCD technologies that have been in development for a few years were on show including:

• Air gap MEMS: This uses the air gap between two plates to create colors from reflected light, see http://www.mirasoldisplays.com/mobile-display-imod-technology for a very clear explanation.
• Shutter type MEMS: This uses extremely small mechanical shutters, quite amazing, see http://www.pixtronix.com/technology/index.asp for details.
• Electro-wetting which uses fluids that are literally moved in and out of very small chambers, details of this are explained at http://www.liquavista.com/technology/whatIsElectrowetting.aspx.

Other than that one novelty was a transparent 46″ LCD display from Samsung. This was being demonstrated for digital signage applications with a mock up retail window display – it was very effective and appeared to draw constant attention.

And Digital View – this year we put our new Integre integrated chassis centre stage. Integre is designed for display system integrators using Samsung LCD displays of 32″ to 82″ providing an easy to use interface, power and monitoring solution, see more details here (press release).

‘Digital signage’ covers a very wide of uses of digital media and is definitely not limited to the professional advertising networks that get most of the publicity. For many of these other uses the cost and time involved in using a professional video production company would be prohibitive.

Fortunately it can be very easy to create and produce video and over the course of future blogs we will look at various accessible and useful techniques. Just as a quick overview some of the issues for consideration include:

• Methods for creating original media such as video, stills and audio
• Using stock media
• Editing and related creative techniques
• Encoding & transcoding

We will also look at how to add various types of interactivity and many of the creative possibilities enabled by Digital View media players.

Recently we have been testing Samsung’s 43″ very wide LCD panel. With an aspect ratio of 4:1 and a resolution of 1920×480 this is a great panel for many digital signage applications.

Great for Digital Signage

For the interface we used a Digital View SVX-1920 controller. This is ideally suited to a panel like this and to usage in digital signage installations due to its high reliability and range of relevant features.

For the media player we tested with three models from the Digital View ViewStream range, the soon to be released ViewStream 320, the ViewStream 450 and the ViewStream 500. These all worked very well and are available as stand-alone and networked versions.

It works well, looks good and has a great novelty factor.

In a move that has quickly attracted some well known major digital signage companies the Screen launched the Green Screen initiative at ScreenExpo in London on 5 May 2010.

Digital View is a major sponsor of the Screen and I was pleased to be able to introduce one of the ’12 Steps’ (see here for details). As a media player provider for the digital signage market we took to championing Step 6 which states ‘Computing power has been kept to a minimum, lower power computers generating less heat, needing less cooling and lasting longer’.

Whilst Digital View plays an important role in enabling quite a number of the Steps number 6 is very appropriate given the low power solid state ViewStream players. These consume as little as 4.8W when playing video and the ViewStream 500 only consumes 6W when playing full 1080p video. Contrast this with a PC based media player that will likely consume at least 4 times as much and for many systems even more.

I am excited about Green Screen as it is the right time for an initiative like this in the industry and judging by the support it is getting already it seems many would agree with this.

James Henry, CEO

Digital View at screen media expo

Well that’s it for Screenmedia Expo 2010, the 2 day event at Earl’s Court in London. The show was reasonably well attended and a positive experience for us, but what’s more interesting is how the market seems to be moving.

Exhibiting in a stand next to our partners Magenta and True Colours, we brought our 2 media player families to the show, the ViewStream™ range of digital media players and the VideoFlyer™ range of all-in-one LCD and media player ‘off the shelf’ products. These all exhibited with their associated OEM versions. As market leaders in the dedicated digital media player range we always get happy customers popping by to tell their stories which we love hearing, and this year is no exception.

The ViewStream™ 300 – Standalone digital media player received a lot of interest from spectators wanting to display standard definition signage that doesn’t need to be updated often. This player is incredibly competitive on price and offers a great range of features and free software for content management. Easy to use and update, this player is appropriate to a lot people. The ViewStream™ 320 – standard definition network digital media player also caught punter’s eyes for its network capabilities, making small affordable networks achievable.

However, what is really interesting is the reaction to our newest addition to the ViewStream™ family – the 700 series, which are dedicated network media players built on either Linux or PC, completely capable of running virtually any signage software on the market. But how does this reflect the market? Well, we received a lot of comments indicating that cost of ownership and reliability are main factors. Clearly anyone can get their hands on a cheap PC and set it up to run as a digital sign, but what made a big impression was the 700 series (being built for purpose) not only allows an organization to enter the digital signage arena with a full arsenal of capabilities, but as importantly these devices are completely reliable.

The DigitalView brand is synonymous with quality, innovation and reliability and the 700 series is no exception with much consideration given to easy upgrade paths, high quality components, exceptional graphics, more memory than an elephant and an almost indestructible enclosure design built with seriously demanding deployment conditions in mind. In brief, the 700 series has cracked open the digital signage market for smaller companies and it works really well.

So, coming full circle, what we’re seeing is that not only are bigger companies looking to take advantage of the Scala’s and signagelive’s of this world (both excellent software solutions by the way) but more and more smaller companies are rolling their own dedicated signage solutions and offering them into the market place. Products like our ViewStream™ 700 series are making this an affordable reality. What will be really interesting is to see what features become most prevalent or are introduced as this slice of the market grows.

For more information visit our digital media players pages on our website

Another novel accessory for the ViewStream is currently being tested, this is a numeric keypad (as pictured) for track selection. It works with the ViewStream’s RS-232 port and can call up JPEG’s or videos using assigned codes. Very easy to use and a great way of providing interactivity.

For more details on the ViewStream range see www.digitalview.com/products/digital-media

Direct from NAB in Las Vegas: We are having an excellent NAB show. I am not sure about NAB attendance numbers, but we have had more people on our booth looking at products than I ever remember in the past years at any show.

Interest in the converter products is high, and by the time we get to Infocomm we will have much more information and application ideas to show. Our digital media player family of products are getting a lot of interest also, especially the ViewStream 320 and the ViewStream 500 .

Shown here is a panel we connected up the other day for testing, a Sharp 1280 x 480 pixel display. This panel is certainly novel with a 8:3 aspect ratio and looks very suitable for a range of signage and instrumentation applications – we are considering using it with our media players and providing it as a display for digital signage applications such as in retail and museums.

For this test it was connected to a Digital View ALR-1400 LCD interface controller but it can also be matched with other Digital View controllers.

Details are on our controller solution generator here, the model is Sharp LQ123K1LG03.

As a proof of concept for the use of the RS-232 capability on our LCD controllers we recently made a small joystick, slider and button control board for our SVX-1920 controller (see picture), this connects to the controller RS-232 port. For this test we programmed the board for:

• Picture in Picture (PiP): A single button press turns the PiP window on/off. The joystick moves the PiP window around and the slider adjusts the size of the PiP window. Another button selects different PiP modes.
• On-screen markers: A single button hotkeys through various on-screen markers.
• On-screen (OSD) menu: A single button turns the OSD menu on//off.

It works excellently, the PiP window size adjustment is very responsive and smooth using the slider and the position is easily and quickly adjusted with the joystick.

The idea behind this is to show a few of the ways that the RS-232 interface can be used to make a display much more than just a simple monitor by using some of the innovative features in Digital View controllers.

We will be putting this control board in a housing and also test with other other control presets for the buttons, slider and joystick. The SVX-1920 protocols for RS-232 are extensive so the range potential functions that this sort of interface board can be used with is considerable. Other Digital View controllers also support RS-232 so this capability is not limited to the SVX-1920. 

Update: We added a housing as shown to make it easier to use the joystick for demonstration and testing.

Many people associate night-vision with red or green images however when designing a display system that optimizes image detail and preserves a users ability to see in low light other factors are worth considering:

• Color palette: Tuning the color palette for night-safe colors may help preserve image information and usability. Factors to consider:
  • De-saturating shorter wavelength colors, ie those towards the blue end of the spectrum.
  • Adjusting the gamma curve to emphasize detail in low light areas of the image.
  • Combining all colors to Red mono or Green mono.
  • Using the Red or Green channel only.
• Brightness: When working in a low light environment a night-save setting may require a maximum limit on the display brightness setting. When invoked it makes sense that brightness adjustment operates with a suitable level of adjustment resolution over the new limit.
• Controls: Being able to invoke the night-safe easily and effectively will be a key element:
  • Auto settings: For example an light sensor is used to invoke the night-safe settings.
  • External control: This is where external equipment switches the display system to its night-safe settings, it could be a clock or as part of a larger display and system infrastrcture.
  • User control: To make things easy for a user a single button access for night-safe settings as well as controls that remain readily accessible and readable in low light conditions.

IMAGES

The top image is the original; the 2nd is with blue removed, gamma adjusted to bring out detail in shadows and is suitable for having the brightness reduced in low light conditions; the 3rd image is red only; the 4th is green only. (Note: It seems that the pictures align properly on the right in Firefox and Safari but not in Internet Explorer).

Various Digital View controllers support all of the above, details can be found from the individual controller manuals, the application notes for RS-232 and the Serial Utility as well as from Digital View directly. A good model to consider is the SVX-1920 or upcoming harsh environments version the HX-1920.