Sixteen:Nine - All Digital Signage, Some Snark

Rick Mills, Creative Realities, Inc (CRI)

Creative Realities is a solutions provider heavily focused on retail, an industry that has been pretty much shuttered in the United States and everywhere other than Sweden because of COVID-19.

These are rough times for store operators for the people who run them, the people who work in them, and the industries that support retail, like digital signage.

While CRI's CEO Rick Mills agrees it's a dark period, he also has a lot of optimism - particularly for the retailers who have the fundamentals to be around when doors are allowed open again, and for service providers who have the tools and know-how to help address what will be new norms.

Mills and I chatted last week about what CRI is doing, as well as about new pandemic-focused tools like thermal sensing screens that his company has started marketing. We spoke, as well, about his company's outlook, including thoughts of acquiring one or several of the companies who are competitors right now, but might not come out of this situation in one piece.

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Remi Del Mar, Epson

For a bunch of years, projection seemed like one of these digital signage technologies that had seen its day.

But that's changed in the last two or three years, and if you follow the industry and go to trade shows, you're seeing more projection product and applications.

The big reason is lasers, which last way, way longer than the lamps that were used for many years in projectors.

The big projection guys like Christie, Barco and NEC have a range of suitcase-sized products that get used for big budget events, but another company more historically known for office products has made a strong and interesting expansion into digital signage and visual experiences.

Epson has a variety of projectors that can be applied to signage jobs, but the one that has got most of the attention lately is the LightScene. It looks entirely different from boxy projectors - instead looking very much like the spotlights you see hanging from track systems in shops and galleries. It changes the whole idea of projection in key markets like retail and museums.

I spoke with Remi Del Mar, the LA-based product manager who runs Epson's LightScene team.

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Chris Riegel, STRATACACHE (2020)

These are some of the oddest, craziest, scariest moments many of us have ever experienced.

If you're sick, you'll hopefully recover quickly.

But the global economy is now very much under the weather, so to speak, and it is not at all clear when it will get better. Businesses are shuttered and many won't open again, or if they do, they'll probably come back in a different way.

The digital signage and digital out of home sectors are hit just like everything else, and this virus is going to take out companies the way it is indiscriminately taking out 100s and 1,000s of people.

I wanted to spend some of  the next few episodes talking to smart industry people about what they're hearing and seeing, as well as what they're doing.

First up is Chris Riegel, who runs what is now the STRATACACHE Group of Companies. We've spoken in the past, but I wanted to speak with Chris because he's very smart, well-travelled and connected, and always has an ear to the ground.

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Stefan Thorarinson, Pristine Screen

At the best of times, using an interactive screen can be a slightly dodgy experience because of the presence of dirt, grime, bacterial build-up and other stuff you really don't even want to think about.

But in this new age we're living in - hopefully temporary, but who knows - touching an interactive surface that's already been used by dozens or scores of others that day could put you in a hospital bed, or coffin.

One of the counter-measures to the risk of transmission of contagions like COVID-19 is the regular cleaning of that screen, not to mention hand-washing or sanitizing after an interactive session.

Given everything that's been going on - and having walked to the self-serve checkout at my local grocery and thought, "Hmmm, how do I do this safely ... " - it's useful to get some insight from a business that's all about clean screens.

Toronto-based Stefan Thorarinson runs North American Ops and Sales for Pristine-Screen, a UK-based company that's specifically in the business of cleaning and protecting digital signage and digital out of home screens.

We chatted about how a global pandemic has raised awareness and attention for keeping screens clean, and what operators should be doing, and not doing.

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Tina Williams, Greater Toronto Airports Authority

Airports are very different places from when I started my working life, and technology has done a lot to not only change travel experiences, but also help monetize what are, often, very busy public places.

The Greater Toronto Airports Authority runs that city's Pearson Airport. It is the busiest airport in Canada, with some 50 million passengers going through the two terminals each year.

Tina Williams runs the media and partnerships programs at Pearson, which is increasingly using technology for everything from fixed, standardized ad positions to very customized, elaborate brand activations that mix mediums. In one case, an automaker's brand messaging starts with projection mapping and video walls in the parking garage and extends all the way to a micro showroom across from the airport's busiest gate.

I've known Tina for a bunch of years, extending back to when she did similar work at Canada's busiest shopping mall. We spoke last week at an airport that, at times, has felt like a second home for me.

We grabbed a room at an Air Canada lounge, which is why it's got a bit of an echo.

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Jim Wickenhiser, SiliconCore

Trying to develop and maintain an understanding of the direct view LED industry is a challenge even for industry veterans.

There's a lot of different tech, a lot of jargon, and a lot of liberal interpretations of what something really is. One company's miniLED may be the next company's microLED.

One of the most well-established manufacturers in LED displays is Silicon Valley-based SiliconCore, which is known for very high quality, fine pixel pitch displays.

Jim Wickenhiser, the company's Senior VP of Strategic Initiatives, kindly agreed to walk me through the different types of LED out there, as well as go into some detail about what makes his company's displays different. 

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Bob O'Brien, Display Supply Chain Consultants

There is very little that's simple about the display industry - whether it's on the consumer or commercial side.

At first glance, it would seem to be all about the electronics, but a flat panel display, in particular, involves a lot of specialty glass and chemical compounds. What gets pulled together for a digital signage display may originate in multiple factories from multiple companies in multiple countries.

A consulting firm called Display Supply Chain Consultants (or DSCC) is in the business of making sense of it all, and relaying that expertise to the manufacturing ecosystem. DSCC does consulting, produces reports and stages business conferences.

I spoke with DSCC Co-Founder and President Bob O'Brien about emerging technology, as well as the impacts being seen by the COVID-19 outbreak. Time will tell, but for now, O'Brien says the impact on commercial display production and availability looks pretty negligible.

It gets a little technical at times, but listen and learn.

 

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Taylor Hunter, Impactrum

I love the notion of transparent LED displays - the idea of taking a big surface and making it active, without also creating a big, solid wall that blocks the view in and out.

There are "transparent" LED display products - tech that has matured to a level that they look great from the front, but still tends to look terrible from the back side that's not illuminated.

There is LED on transparent film. LG's looks great, but the pitch is so wide it has limited application. I've seen much finer pitch LED on film from Chinese companies, but like the companies using metal grids, this looks like crap from in behind.

So I was really intrigued when I was made aware of a new company called Impactrum, which is starting to market a truly transparent film on LED that can have as fine a pitch as 6mm, but looks great front and back. And can be used on the OUTSIDE of buildings.

The company is actually a spinout from a decade-old Korean LED maker. I spoke with Impactrum's US-based President, Taylor Hunter.

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David Nussbaum, PORTL

David Nussbaum has years invested in the whole idea of creating what are called holograms - but aren't - for high profile concerts and other events.

If you remember seeing video of the Coachella festival a few years ago, and rapper Tupac “coming back to life” to perform, that was done, and many similar events that followed, using a very old visual trick called Pepper’s Ghost.

Nussbaum was part of the company that bought the patents right after the Tupac event, and he had a hand in nearly all the holograms that came after it for the next few years. Nussbaum then went on his own, creating a company that does that same sort of thing, but in a very different way, and a very different business model and proposition.

He took transparent LCD display technology most commonly used for grocery fridge marketing, and tweaked the hell out of it to create more, better light and visuals.

The result is a company called PORTL and product he calls Holoportl, which does what he calls single passenger holoportation.

That sounds way too Star Trek-y for me, but in simple terms, his company has developed a process to capture people on camera and show them in lifelike size on one of his closet-like display display units.

The idea is that someone - let's say a politician - could make a personal appearance, talk and field questions, without going there.

There are a bunch of potential applications for this sort of thing, and while this is not pure digital signage, one of these units could absolutely find a home in a flagship store.

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David Title, Bravo Media

Experiential is a huge buzzword these days in the digital signage world, and it tends to get pretty loosely applied to all kinds of things.

I've seen projects and read PR pieces describing the work as being experiential, and thought, "Ok, in what way?"

A creative company down in the Chelsea district has been doing experiential media for years, and from the moment the elevator opens up into the offices of Bravo Media, you're into experience. There are projections all over the walls and off-the-wall gadgets like vintage slot machines retrofitted to shoot selfies.

I was in New York last week and had a great chat with David Title, the Chief Engagement Officer at Bravo, about what the company does, and how he defines engagement and experience.

This is the last podcast until the new year, as people should have better things to do around the holidays. There are some 180 back episodes to listen to, if you did need something to pass time or fall asleep. 

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Daniel Black, Glass-Media

Projection on window film is one of those things that I thought had come and gone from digital signage, with too many technical challenges to make the idea really workable.

But projection is having a comeback, and arguably the company doing the most with it for retail and campaign-based marketing is a scrappy little startup in Dallas, called Glass-Media.

I chatted with Daniel Black, who co-founded the company roughly five years ago and is its CEO. The big differences between the first wave of projection in signage, and now, are better technology and smarter vendors.

The film is better. The projectors are brighter. Specialty lenses mean the set-up takes less space. And the big one - laser projectors are supplanting older-style projectors that steadily needed expensive bulbs replaced, and weren't engineered for commercial applications.

The other factor is guys like Black selling this as a solution, with measurables for retailers and brands, as opposed to a technical thing with short term Wow Factor.

If you've been curious about the state of projection in signage, this is a worthwhile listen.

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Trey Courtney, Mood Media

There's a decent chance that when you walk into a retailer in a developed country, and you hear music or some sort of in-store audio playing, that's Mood Media.

The company is in more than half a million subscriber locations in a 100-plus countries delivering in-store media solutions. While that started with music, it was natural as digital signage technology matured to add on visual messaging.

Now the company has launched something called Mood Harmony, a new platform that grew out of a signage CMS and offers a single user experience to do sound, visuals, social media and even scent marketing off of one platform.

I had a great chat with Trey Courtney, the Global Chief Product Officer for Mood Media, to get the back-story on the company, why it developed Harmony, and how retailers are defining and using technology designed to deliver on customer experience. 

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Maris Ensing, Mad Systems

I wouldn't want the job of trying to boil down what Mad Systems does to an elevator pitch, unless it was a very tall building with a very slow elevator.

Based in Orange County, California, Mad Systems is technically an AV system designer and integrator, but these are not the guys you'd hire to put in some video-conferencing gear and some screens in the lobby.

It's not unfair to suggest the Mad in Mad Systems has to do with Maris Ensing and his engineers being a bunch of mad scientists. Go through the company's project portfolio and you find out they've put together a steam-driven aircraft and a 20-foot high tornado.

The company also did a big part of one of my favorite projects - the alumni center at the University of Oregon, which has a set of very tall, but moveable stacked LCD displays.

Ensing and his team have got involved in all kinds of things over 20 years, but in our chat, he talks a lot about a new AV management system the company has built from nothing - called Quicksilver. Among many things, Mad has patent applications underway for a new kind of facial color and pattern recognition system designed to instantly personalize visits to places like museums.

I'll let Ensing explain that and other things. This was one of my easier podcasts. He had a lot to say and there was little room for questions. Enjoy. 

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Daniel Griffin, Userful

 Like a lot of people in the digital signage industry, I tend to think about video walls in terms of the display hardware, and what's running on those big beautiful screens. I know precious little about what's happening behind the wall to ensure it all looks good. 

Userful has been making waves for a few years now by offering a software-driven product that drives visuals accurately to screens, and allows for the sort of flexibility and instant switches that are needed in scenarios like control rooms.

While traditional video wall systems can tend to have a lot of often expensive hardware and software to control the screen and send pixels where they need to be, Userful has been marketing products that are now cloud-based and require minimal hardware.

I spoke with Daniel Griffin, the company's VP of Marketing and a company long-timer. We talked about how Userful came about and about a business that's still known for video walls, but is finding its way into other aspects of visual communications around workplaces because of its AV over networks capabilities.

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Paul Peng, AUO

 I was in Taiwan recently for a trade show called Touch Taiwan, and managed to grab 20 minutes with Paul Peng, the Chairman and CEO of display manufacturing giant AU Optronics.

AUO is based in Taiwan, with its main office about an hour south of Taipei in the manufacturing city of Hsinchu. The company has about 42,000 employees globally, including a digital signage business unit that came with the acquisition of the CMS software company ComQi.

AUO makes LCD displays primarily, with a production line that can do glass sizes from Gen 3.5 to 8.5. The bigger the size, the bigger the display.

At one of the two biggest stands at Touch Taiwan, AUO was showing the wide range of display options, from stretch LCDs for retail and transport applications to super-premium 8K displays.

We grabbed some chairs at the back of the AUO stand for the chat, and while Peng does most of the talking, ComQi CEO Ifti Ifhar also gets in on the discussion. The audio quality is a little iffy, just because of where we were ...

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Garry Wicka, LG

LG has gone very big on OLED displays in recent years - making the super-thin, flexible and generally gorgeous displays the centerpiece of the company's marketing efforts at trade shows.

They bend, they curve, they hang like wallpaper and for some of them, they're see-through.

I had a chance to grab a very busy Garry Wicka, the VP of Marketing for LG's US business, to chat about where OLED is at, and how it is being used. We also get into some of the perceived technical issues with the organic displays.

Wicka also walked me through what LG is doing with direct view LED, microLED (which is still an R&D thing for the company), transparent LED film and smart displays.

We also talk about where the company is seeing strength right now in the marketplace.

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Jay Leedy, Diversified

There are a handful of big AV systems integrators in North America genuinely active in digital signage, but I'm feeling pretty comfy saying New Jersey-based Diversified is the most active, experienced and directly knowledgeable about this industry.

The company has built and then managed many of the larger networks out there, including most of the big US banks that the average person could name. While some of the other big AV/IT guys have some dedicated resources, Diversified has a whole and big group pretty much doing nothing but digital signage and digital out of home work. The company also put the time and money into hiring a series of subject matter experts on digital signage - one of them being Jay Leedy, who is now Director of Business Development for what many people in the industry know as Diversified's Digital Media Group, or DMG.

Jay's based down in Atlanta but works with people and companies across the country. In this talk, we get into what DMG is all about, how they plug into this sector, and how they tend to work with clients and partners.

We also talk Adobe - a company more active in signage than many of us probably think - and Google, and the adoption rates out there for smart signage.

 

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Tom Milner, Service And Support

Much of the focus in this industry is on the hardware and software used to put digital signage networks together, and increasingly, mercifully, on content and creative.

Not that much attention gets paid to the service side of the business - installing screens and fixing devices when things go wrong. Even less attention is paid to keeping the hardware clean.

That's what Tom Milner, and his UK-based company Service and Support, are all about, and have been for 10 years. Milner has built up his install and service business in the UK and Ireland, and more recently, built a book of business in North America for something called Pristine Screen, a service company specifically in the business of keeping screens clean, inside and out.

In this talk, we get into the roots of his business, how it has grown, and the decision to get into a spinoff business that's all about keeping screens pristine.

 

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Joe' Lloyd, NanoLumens

I sometimes get white papers and research that a vendor hopes I report on or talk about, and then decide against it because the information is hopelessly skewed in favor of that vendor.

It's a bit like those recipe pamphlets that suggest you don't just add a cup of this, it has to be specifically the vendor's "this."

That's not the case with an interesting total cost of ownership report that looks at the perceptions and attributes of LED vs LCD video walls. The report was put together by the Atlanta LED manufacturer NanoLumens, but you'd barely know Nano made the big effort to put this together.

It's an interesting read, and a free download - albeit with the understanding the company wants to capture who all is grabbing it.

I spoke with Joe' Lloyd, NanoLumens' Global VP of Marketing and Business Development, who put the survey together and got it out the door. We get into the why of the survey, and what turned up in results from more than 400 respondents.

 

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Ronnie Lee, Holocryptics

When DSE was on a few weeks ago in Las Vegas, I wandered down to the other end of the convention center to get a glimpse of the legendarily crazy Nightclub and Bar Show - where endless booths pour free drink samples.

I wanted to see how nuts it really was, but I was also on a mission to see the set-up of a Vegas start-up called Holocryptics, which is building a service around hologram-like virtual DJs that any nightclub or bar can rent by the hour.

Holocryptics provides to operators a packaged kit that includes a built-in media server, projector and mesh direct-projection surface. The DJs are custom videotaped in a studio, and high-end audio recorded, to produce files that look, on a transparent screen, like the bobbing and juking knob-twirlers are really there.

It could cost $1,000s to get a seasoned DJ to do a set at a club. With this set-up, there's a pretty reasonable one-time CAPEX hit, and then a DJ set costs less than $30. And it can get launched and controlled off a smartphone app.

I spoke with founder Ronnie Lee about the roots of his company, how things work, why holograms and how this could - in theory - be applied to all kinds of things, like political whistle-stops and distance learning.

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