Brazil Added to SMIL Top List

Digital signage media player maker IAdea released its September report on top-ranking countries as visitors to A-SMIL.org, the site that promotes W3C SMIL as an open standard for digital signage.

According to the report, the top three countries this month are U.S.A., Germany, and new entrant Brazil. About the appearance of the new player, the site says:

Indeed we have heard activities in that region but its shear speed nevertheless surprises us

The report also includes a map that highlights countries by their degree of involvement with the SMIL web site.

The graph clearly shows the BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India and China) countries all active with the SMIL technology.

Read the full article Brazil Enters Top 3 on SMIL Website.

signagelive Adds New Features for IAdea's New SMIL Media Appliances

The upcoming product release from signagelive adds exciting new features to enrich support for SMIL digital signage media players from IAdea.

signagelive, the SaaS platform from Remote Media Group, has announced multiple new features, including the ability to automatically update thousands of digital signage screens, to enhance support for new IAdea media appliances.

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New digital signage appliances address cost concerns for SaaS

SaaS (for “software as a service”) is a popular service model in digital signage. For around $10 to $20 a month, subscribers gain access to a number of easy-to-use yet powerful digital signage management software to get started in building a digital signage network. Nice and easy for a small business owner or marketing manager, as it comes out of the expense book without becoming a tough purchase decision. Then comes the cost of hardware, which typically runs up to $1,000 for a medium-sized screen and a PC-based player. For many users wanting to give it a try, the hardware investment often becomes show stopper. Fortunately, a number of hardware options are becoming available to make the SaaS ride much smoother.

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Digital Signage Opportunity for Software Developers

Digital signage is an emerging market that has grown rapidly in the past three years. More and more companies are deploying digital signage as the public begin to understand the impact of digital signage systems. If you are a software developer, this presents a great opportunity to enter this fast growing market space.

Traditional digital signage used a variety of DVD players and consumer-grade PC systems as their media playback engine. In recent years, a number of dedicated appliances-type digital signage media players have emerged and is forming the fastest growing technology sector in the industry. Compared to the traditional consumer-grade equipment, the specialized digital signage media appliances offer better hardware reliability and greatly simplified software programming interface. This combination creates a new opportunity for software developers that was not available before.

Digital signage media appliances utilize the W3C SMIL open standard as their application programming interface (API). SMIL is an XML-based mark-up language sharing roots with the HTML language popular for web development. SMIL adds the benefit of simplicity compared to the typical Windows or Linux environment. A typical multi-zone animated digital signage application can be written in SMIL in as little as a dozen lines of code, compared to a typical implementation in Windows that would require at least ten times more work. The SMIL language also provide advanced digital signage features including synchronization, parallel scheduling, playback logging, event reporting which greatly improve the robustness of a digital signage system made up of SMIL players.

The SMIL standard is being embraced by a growing number of digital signage vendors in the industry. Several large scale digital signage systems using thousands of SMIL players have been deployed worldwide, showing the maturity and scalability of the technology.

Several low cost digital signage players are available in the market. Software developers interested in starting up in the digital signage market should seriously consider leveraging the maturity and cost effectiveness of the technology today. For more information on SMIL-enabled digital signage players, visit http://www.IAdea.com.

400+ Digital Signage Systems by IAdea Streamline Operation at Taiwan International Airport

IAdea's digital signage media appliances are selected for deployment at Taiwan's largest international airport. Over 400 systems from IAdea provide vital information to travelers to help streamline their way in and out of the country.

Background

Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport (previously known as the CKS or Chang Kai Shek International) is the largest of three international airports in Taiwan, serving over 20 million passengers each year. The recent opening of direct routes between Taoyuan International and major airports in China is rapidly driving up passenger flow, and major renovation of Terminal 1 and construction of the new Terminal 3 are underway to cope with the predicted growth.

As part of the renovation and expansion plan, digital signage is called upon to help streamline the transit process and improve passenger experience. Over 400 digital signage systems powered by IAdea media appliances have been deployed in the terminals, providing vital information to visitors in and out of Taiwan.

Read full case study at: http://www.iadea.com/story/400-digital-signage-systems-iadea-streamline-operation-taiwan-international-airport

Up-to-date digital signage industry news

IAdea is starting to provide live-updated news feed related to the digital signage industry. Please visit the news page regularly for updates.

Enforce media validity period in SMIL for Digital Signage

IAdea players support the SMIL conditional play construction which allows digital signage systems to:

• Enforce media license terms by limiting playback of specific items within a date/time interval
• Play back certain media files subject to special conditions

The technique utilizes W3C XPath expressions and functions which are standards-based and highly flexible in forming conditional expressions. Playback of media items can be bound to the result of the expressions evaluated at run time.

Tecchnical specs are available from A-SMIL.org under the conditional play topic.

For information on IAdea players that support the SMIL conditional play expression, visit IAdea's product page.

digitalsignage.net Selects SMIL Players for SaaS Service

Digital signage SaaS service digitalsignage.NET has just announced to open shop in September.

According to the company's blog, two of its three hardware options are SMIL-based media appliances. These devices feature core functionality required by digital signage for a small fraction of the cost of PC-based hardware.

Read more about SMIL-based hardware options at leading media appliance vendor IAdea.