I have been trying to think of a way to get more people to look at our Cost Ramifications of Player Placement in Digital Signage Networks white paper, which discusses the choices you have in placing your players in your Digital Signage network.

Over the past month or so I posted the following questions in a few Digital Signage / PRO AV discussion groups on LinkedIn:



What is the best way to promote the message that players are more easily serviced and maintained when they are NOT placed at the screen in a Digital Signage Network?

and

There are nightmares servicing Digital Signage Players at screens. Needing to bring in a forklift at 11:00 PM to dismantle the 46” LCD because the player was attached inside. What is your experience?



The answers I got were quite useful – what do you think?

Jim Caldwell of AVisuals writes “Simple. Chose one that’s really high up or out of the way, then get a ladder and make THEM crawl up there and swap it out. When they walk a few steps in your shoes, learning happens.”

and Kane Fritz of Entertainment Techknowledgy, LLC added, “Take a lesson from the Theme Park industry and keep your electronic devices in a centralized, conditioned location. Maintenance can take place while the venue is open, and repairs can be made without disturbing guests. “

Guy Avital of UCView Media had this to say, “I am a strong believer in building something you can support. In digital signage you need to use the right equipment for the job to make it reliable and serviceable. We got our digital signage experience with large department stores deployment and retail stores. The key factor servicing in retail is that you cannot service any equipment during operation hours using any kind of tools or ladder. Therefore if you have a player mounted on a back of a display you cannot service it until the store is closed. Because of our experience selling deploying and supporting digital signage equipment, we have built a concept called Centralize Digital Signage Player.

This type of players will be mount in a rack in a centralize location in the store and we’ll use DVI/VGA over cat5 extender like to send the signal to the screen for more info check out our blog.

And finally, Adrian Sanchez of Fenix Global , a certified Scala partner had this to say, “We installed several systems and have been able to advise our clients and the IS/IT Departments that it is not always the best practice to install the player at the screen location for several reasons. Listed below are some of the most popular reasons that we provide the client. I have personally designed and engineered multiple digital signage installations. Please feel free to contact me should you have any additional questions.

1. Security – if you can disconnect the player from the display device the clients messages may not get displayed.
2. Access – if you can reach the player easily therefore it is not easily manageable for maintenance.
3. Operation – the player as well as the screen need to be able to vent properly, sometimes placing an additional bracket or mounting device on the back of the display inhibits the ability for the screen to vent, thus causing potential equipment failure or shorter life cycle. The same goes for the player, if it cannot vent properly the potential to overheat is bound to happen.
4. Appearance – many times you see players installed in a very half thought-half done manner. Cable management is always a good thing to think about. Less is more, the fewer cables behind, above, or around the display device the better. A professional installation sometimes means installing a video distribution system to reduce the amount of cables hanging off of the display.
5. Administration – players that can be centrally located are far better administered. If you can access all your players in one location (if possible) you can monitor their operating temps, as well as ensuring that your weekly reboot process is occurring as scheduled in Content Manager. If it is not you can easily manually invoke a reboot.
6. Replacement – easy access to players if they should fail means faster ability to replace or repair the problem hardware.”

There were many other comments as well that basically reinforced
several practices that we believe reduce the overall cost of ownership of a digital signage network over time. You can find the comments on LinkedIn.

They are:

1. By locating you players in an accessible, environmentally friendly, secure location – you will save tremendously on maintenance and service over the life of your network.

2. By locating players in a back room and distributing same content to multiple screens you will save on up front costs of multiple players at each screen and on software licensing costs.

What do you think?