The one media player video wall

A video wall makes an impressive addition to your store or reception area. Video walls are something always noticed and you will catch the attention of your customers. However, creating content for video walls is by many considered to be rather tricky. But with the MultiQ split video concept, making video wall content becomes a piece of cake.

Full HD makes the way for video walls

The MultiQ digital signage widescreen monitors can be set to display a desired portion of a video signal. The most common way is to split a video signal to four monitors as is shown in the figure (upper part). The monitors are easily programmed for this task using the remote control that comes with each monitor. The setting is preserved if the monitor looses power or if it is switched off. 

Today, most digital signage is in standard resolution. However, the MultiQ media players support high definition up to 1080p (1920x 1080 pixels). If the signal is split to four monitors you will get a video wall consisting of four monitors each having a resolution comparable to standard resolution using just one single media player.

Using non-expensive and easily accessible HD video editing software (such As Serif Movie Plus X5) you can create a common video signal from four original video signals. This makes it possible to have separate messages on each monitor and to make an immediate switch to a common message that extends across all four screens by adding a transition to just one full screen video signal.

If you need larger video walls or other configurations, the video signal may be stretched across several monitors to your preference. Any matrix less than 4x4 monitors can be generated. Spectacular alternatives, such as 4x1 monitors in landscape or portrait orientation can also be achieved. By using animation software, such as Web Draw Plus X5, you can adapt your dynamic signs to any aspect ratio and video wall matrix configuration.

You can get more information on how to build video wall content in the MultiQContent Creation Quick Guide Part 1.

Release your creativity with MultiQ video wall technology.

Several MultiQ media players can share a common Full HD video signal.

 

Lars-Ingemar Lundström

Documentation and Training Manager, MultiQ

Display your website in your store with the MultiQ web kiosk

Your business already has a website intended for your customers. The customers can get all information about your products and offers at home or in the office. However the website is not easily accessible for the customers while in the store. Some customers are not even aware of your website. The MultiQ web kiosk displays your website in your store or in any other public environment and brings all the website features that you have invested in right to the point of purchase. And it is a wonderful way to promote your website too. Web kiosks are also practical for corporate- or governmental use in factories, offices and at other locations where the staff or visitors do not have access to a personal computer to get hold of corporate- or governmental information. The web kiosks will also fit very well into any public location as in hospitals, train stations, airports or hotels.

The MultiQ web kiosk

The MultiQ web kiosk is an “off-the-shelf” product, based on the MultiQ media monitors, that brings your website right into the retail or corporate environment. Using a keyboard and a traditional pointing device makes the web kiosk easy to understand and makes your website to work as a kiosk with only minor (if any) modifications to your website.

By reusing your website, the customer can reach everything that is already there such as the availability of products in a particular store or in your e-commerce system. No special adaptation needs to be done to connect to your existing databases. The customer will quickly learn how to take advantage of the information available in your website. This will make the customers to use your website even at home and increase your hits. Your store is probable one of the best places to promote your website. 

The website can be displayed in landscape or in portrait orientation. When oriented as portrait (see figure) most websites (being 100 pixels or less) will be displayed beautifully on the SXGA (1024 x 1280 pixels) media monitor. Using this orientation will fill out the width of the screen and will reduce scrolling to a minimum. An internal “zoom” feature allows the size of your website to be adjusted for optimum performance.

It is extremely simple to set up a MultiQ media monitor as a web kiosk. The only thing needed to be added to the web kiosk is the address of your website. As you update your website the web kiosk will be updated too. 

The MultiQ media monitors consume less than 40 watts of power in full operation. Also, you can set the web kiosk to switch to standby operation outside business hours to preserve energy and prolong the lifetime of the appliance.

The MultiQ high reliability technology with no fans or hard drives and Linux based software with a built-in watch dog system to prevent the units from hanging will give you years of worry-free operation without maintenance. 

To make the web kiosk respond even quicker and to minimize need of bandwidth it is possible to store parts of your website locally in the media monitor. This will result in superior performance when it comes to quick response, compared to conventional websites.

A web kiosk can be set up as a standalone unit with no central server required. Each unit can be accessed and controlled using the Internet from the location of your choice.

If you have a number of media monitors out there, you may benefit from using a central server making it possible to manage many units simultaneously without addressing them on a one-by-one basis. You also get the possibility to monitor all units simultaneously and to generate alarms if the server looses contact with any of the web kiosks. The server can support systems ranging from a few units to thousands of units at hundreds or thousands of locations. The largest MultiQ system has more than ten thousand units connected.

The MultiQ media monitors are future proof investments since they can be used together with the MultiQ media players for digital signage. All units can be handled using the common MultiQ digital signage management system, DSMS3. This makes it possible for you to expand the system in any way you like. The server can be hosted either by MultiQ or by yourself (preferably using your normal web server hosting provider).

Finally you can add printers, scanners and card readers to the media monitors.

The off the shelf web kiosk comes with the stand of your choice. The floor stand (as well as the monitor itself) can be delivered in customized colours. There is space to add a printer or a scanner to the stand. Table stands and wall mounts are available as alternatives to the floor stand. Most websites will fit beautifully into the 1024x1280 pixels SXGA screen.

Lars-Ingemar Lundström

Documentation and Training Manager, MultiQ

Give the customers an improved impression of the PVM

Security cameras have been around for a long time. And you see them everywhere, the PVMs (Public View Monitors). These monitors are there tell that there is surveillance and nothing else. However now, digital signage can add a new dimension to the previously quite uninteresting and sometimes quite ugly PVM. Now you can digital signage to make the PVM screen much more interesting, flexible and useful to the customers than ever before.

Public View Monitors, PVM are common in stores and other public places. The appearance of PVMs is not only a way to decrease theft but also to get people to feel more secure. However, today’s large flat panel monitors give an opportunity to combine security camera images with other messages. This makes the screens more interesting.  Adding other messages make it obvious that the monitors do not only serve as a way to warn potential shoplifters and to assure the customers that they are in a secure environment but also make the screens more useful to whomever is watching them.  

To the retail chains, the combined digital signage- and security camera monitors creates an opportunity to advertise their offers and to communicate with the customers. On top of this the monitors also get more attention if the screens, on top of security camera monitoring, contain other useful information such as weather reports, news or stock market information. The MultiQ digital signage system contains all the tools needed to make your PVM much more than just a PVM.

A simple way of increasing the value of the PVM to the customers is to add a text ticker at the bottom or the top of the screen. The ticker can contain manually added text or pull text directly from an RSS feed on the Internet and only occupies a small fraction of the screen. There are RSS-feeds available that covers news, weather, sports, economics and lots of other subjects. RSS feeds are a valuable source of information ideal to digital signage but still unknown to many people. The MultiQ digital signage system pulls the RSS information directly from a source on the Internet and creates the ticker on the screen. As the RSS feed is updated the ticker gets updated as well. You can choose the appearance of your ticker when it comes to font size, colors and speed (how fast the text moves across the screen).

The security camera part of the screen can present a sequence of spots from several cameras as well as quad views containing four simultaneous cameras. The spots can be arranged in any order and the selection of each view can be chosen freely. You can have an unlimited number of full screen camera spots and quad spots played in any combination you like.

A simple way to add information and advertising is to mix the video from the cameras with other images and video clips. This can be done in a pre-determined sequence or in a random way using shuffling between the camera spots and the advertising spots.

It is possible to schedule when to monitor different cameras. This makes it possible to automatically change between different views at different times of the day or different weekdays. The scheduling feature is of course valuable when it comes to deciding at what hours to display specific advertising or when running advertising campaigns. Signs containing instant messages can be added at short notice by the local staff.

Digital Signage allows the screen to be split into several areas. One area can be used to monitor the security cameras while the other areas can be used for advertising and information. This makes it possible to display security camera images, advertising and messages simultaneously. You can decide freely how to split the screen. I.e. that it is possible to determine exactly the size of the area where you put the security camera monitoring in relation to other messages. The PVM can occupy a large portion of the screen or a very small part of the screen.

Live TV delivered by a streaming device can be used as an alternative to camera monitoring and video clips. This way you can schedule live TV events to be shown on the screen. In the MultiQ system, security camera streams, live streams, video clips and images are all regarded as media spots that can be mixed to play in the same sequence or be scheduled to play at any time you like.

In most PVM applications the audio is not used. Then the audio part of the MultiQ media players can be used to provide an in store radio channel since the audio can be completely separated from the video. Hundreds of songs can be stored in the media players.  By shuffling the songs, an in store radio channel is created that adds to the atmosphere at any location.

You can run a MultiQ PVM as a single unit (without the need for a central server) that can be locally or remotely controlled and supervised via the Internet.  Alternatively you can manage a number of screens as a group (up to thousands of units) located at hundreds of sites using a central server.

The MultiQ digital signage system lets you combine the security camera images with all kinds of messages on the same screen. It can also provide you with an in-store audio channel.

 

Lars-Ingemar Lundström

Documentation and Training Manager, MultiQ

Get an introduction to digital signage and kiosk content creation

Use the opportunity to learn about digital signage content creation. Two new quick guides give the answers to some of the common questions about how to start with design content for digital signage and kiosks. You will learn how to set up your own content using inexpensive drawing-, video editing- and web development quick-to-learn tools.

The MultiQ Digital Signage Creation Quick Guide Part 1 & 2 can be
downloaded from the MultiQ website along with sample files.

The MultiQ Digital Signage Creation Quick Guide tells about how create your own digital signage content using external tools that are easy accessible and inexpensive and then how to distribute and present the content in Full HD format using the MultiQ digital signage system.

Part 1 of the guide covers the key elements in setting up digital based on photos of your products.

Digital signage is in many cases based on the simple elements of a trademark or a logo combined with a product image and some selling text. You will learn how to set up a sign using these basic elements. After having produced your first sign, you can make more signs and create a slideshow.

Easy-to-use video editing software let you add professional effects such as transitions including stunning effects and animated text. You will also learn how a number of photos can be put together to form a collage that adds to the atmosphere in the store. Special graphical effects and animated text will increase the impression on the customers even further.

Take the opportunity to use the media players for in-store audio. Playing shuffled music in your store is only a few mouse clicks away.

Extend your digital signage into video walls with dynamic use of the monitors. Learn how to easily produce content covering the whole video wall with a common message. The minute after, let the wall display a mosaic of individual messages on each of the monitors.

For the ambitious, an unlimited number of media players can be synchronized to produce stunning environments with high-resolution animations that move across several screens in high definition. Par 1 of the quick guide tells you how.

You will also learn how to go the other way around and split a screen into separate areas with content originating from different sources. Adding an RSS ticker is perhaps the most well known example but all kinds of content ranging from images to video clips and online web pages can be used.

Finally, part 1 of the quick guide covers how to introduce live content from cameras and live TV services using sources on the local network as well as external streams available on the Internet. You can also combine the live feeds with commercial spots and signs.

Part 2 of the quick guide introduce you to the fascinating world of kiosks. Kiosks are intended to activate customers and make it possible for them to find the information they wish for. Using a web kiosk you can promote your website into your store and let your customer find the right information at the point of sale.

You will also learn how to create touch panel information kiosks and getting the right touch-and-feel into your applications. There are alternatives to create interactive touch buttons using drag and drop WYSIWYG tools as well as using more traditional text editing methods described in this guide.

The MultiQ Content Creation Quick Guide is a shortcut to effective digital signage.

The MultiQ Content Creation Quick Guide along with content files used and created can be downloaded here;

• Part 1, Get a start with Digital Signage (pdf)
• Part 2, Activate your customers with kiosks (pdf)
• Content (zip)

Lars-Ingemar Lundström

Documentation and Training Manager, MultiQ

Schedule your message

Dynamic content is better than static content. But why not adapt the content to the time of the day or the day of the week? To Show the right content at the right time is crucial to advertising.

Digital signage is very versatile in the way that you can plan your advertising campaigns down to the minute. You can start using particular content at a specific date and then have it all replaced at another date. This is very practical since you can prepare holiday advertising in advance and you can be sure that the right content is shown at the right time. Unlike traditional signage you do not need to rely on local staff or other personnel to get the messages updated.

Lars-Ingemar Lundström
Documentation and Training Manager, MultiQ

Low power consumption -Economical and “green” digital signage & kiosks

In a pilot system involving a limited number of media players and monitors at a handful of sites, the power consumption of each unit is perhaps not the first thing you think about. But in a fully operational system with perhaps hundreds of media players it should to be taken into consideration.

A successful digital signage or self-service kiosk system will grow. By numbers the total power consumption of such a system can be significant. Therefore the power consumption of media players and media monitors used as kiosks are an important part of the total cost of ownership. Unfortunately many people forget to calculate the total energy costs for a system during its depreciation period. Both from an economical and environmental point of view, this should be taken into account.

Conventional PCs may have power consumption up to 150W depending on various factors. Industrial PCs with passive cooling may have a power consumption of 35 watts and more. Sometimes you may get better performance from a computer with higher power consumption but it comes with a cost. 

Each 50 W of power consumption means 432 kWH/per year. With an electricity cost at 0,1 Euro/kWh (which is only applicable in European countries with a very low price tag on the electricity) this means 43,2 Euro/year. During a 5 year period this corresponds to 216 Euro which is a considerable part of the initial cost for the individual media player.

To make more calculations on power consumption you can use the “MultiQ Kiosk Cost and Environmental Impact Estimation calculator”:

http://multiq.com/doc/developers/cost_saving_using_multiq_media_monitors.xlsx

The MultiQ media players consume less than 10 W and the media monitor with integrated media player consumes less than 50 W.

The power consumption is decreased further by scheduling the display hours. This means not only saving energy but also increase the lifetime of the monitors since the panels are preserved when the monitor is set to standby mode.

Also, electronic equipment that consumes less power emits less heat. In most cases less power dissipation means longer lifetime expectancy. Calculating the total energy consumption during the entire lifetime of the system is good both for the wallet and the environment.

Using media players and monitors with low power consumption (media player <10W and media monitor with integrated media player <50W) combined with scheduled display hours (outside which the monitors are set in standby mode) assures for low total power consumption.

Lars-Ingemar Lundström
Documentation and Training Manager, MultiQ

 

Reliable digital signage -Never a black or a blue screen

Black or blue screens, messages about failed security updates; those are most certainly among the nightmares of any digital signage- or self-service kiosk system operator. How to avoid this happening to you?

Today’s digital signage technology makes use of all advances that have been made during the last decade to ensure flexible and adaptable computer solutions. However, digital signs are used for 24/7 operation which is quite different from home appliances or computers and equipment used in an office. Therefore conventional PCs are not suitable for this task. Just as you have professional demands on kitchen stoves and other machines used in a restaurant kitchen compared to appliances in a home kitchen, there are special demands on computers used for digital signage and kiosks in stores and in other public environments.

There are a number of things that may cause problems in a digital signage system.

There are several reasons for avoiding fans in media players. Apart from being noisy, dust is dragged into the media players and is accumulated there which eventually calls for vacuum cleaning to avoid fan failure and overheating. In most cases the fans need to be replaced after about three years more or less. This causes a lot of maintenance. Due to low power consumption, the MultiQ products only use passive cooling resulting in noiseless operation without maintenance for many years.

All moving parts result in noise and maintenance. To completely avoid this, the hard drive can be replaced by a flash memory. Today these memories are inexpensive and have large capacity. The MultiQ media players and media monitors make use of these advances. With a system based on an economic distribution of Linux, which fits into less than one GB, the remaining flash memory is enough to house even commercials shot in full HD format. If needed, the internal memory can easily be expanded using an external flash memory.

Security update messages and security updates that fail are common in Windows based systems. When using Linux, you do not have these kinds of problems.

Computers tend to hang themselves sooner or later. A corrupted file gets downloaded to a media player and gets stuck, power transients affect the computer or something never tested before may occur in the software. We all know that PC users are very patient people that accept to do some maintenance work almost every day such as taking care of error messages or restarting the computer now and then. In a public environment the local staff should not and do not want to restart the media players now and then. To solve this, the media players or kiosks must be able to reboot themselves autonomously. In the MultiQ media players and media monitors there are two watchdogs monitoring each other and rebooting if there has not been any signs of life from the other watchdog for a certain amount of time. The watchdogs see to that the media player or media monitor reboots before anyone grabs the phone to call for assistance.

The MultiQ media players and media monitors are based on hardware and software specifically designed for digital signage. They are based on Linux, and do not use any moving parts for cooling or storing the content. This assures for a long and lifetime with no worries and no or limited maintenance. The units have 3 years standard warranty and 5 years as an option. This is similar to the lifetime expectancy for cash register systems which are 5-7 years.

In the long run, reliable hardware and software that require a minimum of service is the key to successful digital signage and kiosk systems. As the number of units in the system increases, these aspects become more and more crucial.

Things that assure for long-time operation free form maintenance and worries.

Lars-Ingemar Lundström
Documentation and Training Manager, MultiQ