Episodes
Wednesday Jul 11, 2018
Nick Fearnley, Signstix
Wednesday Jul 11, 2018
Wednesday Jul 11, 2018
I am guilty of thinking about SignStix as yet another smallish digital signage CMS company scratching out a living with low-cost subscriptions and equally low-cost Android stick players.
Based in Yorkshire, England, SignStix is a lot more than that. The company is indeed small, but doing some stuff that is a little bit mind-blowing. It does digital signage, but for some significant clients it is doing a lot of back-of-the-house data-mining and aggregation for communications that go beyond screens.
What I found really interesting is learning from CEO Nick Fearnley how the company is using the intelligence on system on chip "smart" displays to do things like manage and aggregate geo-fencing data from trucks moving in and out of a retailer's loading docks. It's stuff that would much more normally be done by full PCs, and it is completely counter to the suggestion still out there that these smart displays aren't all that bright.
Fearnley and I chatted at the back of one of the halls at InfoComm, last month in Las Vegas. You'll enjoy the chat, and particularly his Yorkshire accent.
Subscribe to this podcast: iTunes * Google Play * RSS
Wednesday Jun 20, 2018
Brett Jones, Lightform
Wednesday Jun 20, 2018
Wednesday Jun 20, 2018
One of the most interesting companies I saw recently at InfoComm in Las Vegas was Lightform, a San Francisco start-up that is making the once dark art of projection mapping available to just about everyone.
It wasn't that long ago that projection mapping was all about very ambitious, very complicated, very expensive projects that only a handful of companies had the chops to pull off.
Now we have a company with a $700 device and related software that makes it possible for just about anyone to do small-scale projection mapping on things like a merchandising display or a wedding cake.
Lightform calls this Projected Augmented Reality - the idea that AR is not something that needs to be seen though the lens of a smartphone.
I spoke with CEO and co-founder Brett Jones, and we did our best to describe to listeners what we were seeing as we walked around the booth.
Subscribe to this podcast: iTunes * Google Play * RSS
Wednesday Mar 28, 2018
Stan Richter, SignageOS
Wednesday Mar 28, 2018
Wednesday Mar 28, 2018
One of the big challenges on the technology side of digital signage is keeping up with all of the emerging hardware and software options on the market.
It used to be a reasonably simple case of developing software in one OS or another and getting it running on a PC. But now there are Android players, Chrome devices, set-top boxes and a variety of so-called smart displays from different manufacturers, most of them different from one maker to the next.
It's a bit of a mess - particularly if you have a content management system and clients asking constantly if the platform works with this or that.
Stan Richter and his company SignageOS saw all of that, and have launched what's being called a unification platform that makes it easy to get a CMS and its player running on multiple kinds of devices. SignageOS sits in the middle and also handles the management and maintenance of the various devices.
The service is white-labelled, and the idea is for software companies to subscribe to SignageOS and build that functionality and cost into their own licensing fees. The company, based in Prague, just launched a month ago, and have 30 NDAs going with software firms. They've got people at DSE today, way at the back of the hall, and eager to talk to potential North American partners.
CEO Stan Richter, who I first met at ISE, filled me in recently.
Subscribe to this podcast: iTunes * Google Play * RSS
Wednesday Feb 28, 2018
Bryan Crotaz, Silver Curve
Wednesday Feb 28, 2018
Wednesday Feb 28, 2018
The top prize at the Digital Signage Awards that were announced and handed out recently in Amsterdam was a project to modernize the display system at the cradle of cricket - Lord's Cricket Ground in London.
The project was pulled together by a small London consultancy called Silver Curve, which is run by one of the brightest minds in digital signage, Bryan Crotaz.
Bryan had been telling me about the project for more than a year, but he was only recently in a position to make some noise about it.
In our conversation, we talk about the effort to modernize and greatly simplify the display control system on the ancient grounds, and how he used very technologies like HTML5 and Raspberry Pi to make it all happen.
Subscribe to this podcast: iTunes * Google Play * RSS
Wednesday Nov 15, 2017
Mike Kilian, Mvix
Wednesday Nov 15, 2017
Wednesday Nov 15, 2017
Mvix is another one of those companies in the digital signage ecosystem that ticks along, doing its thing, without making a lot of marketplace noise.
I assumed the software and solutions provider, based in the high tech corridor west of Washington, DC, had maybe 20-25 people. But I found out Mvix has about 70, mostly in the DC area. They also have a sizeable development team in India - not outsourced, but staff.
The company has been around for a dozen years and has put much of its focus on government, healthcare and education, and picked up a lot of business based on an easy to use platform and turnkey services.
I spoke with Mike Kilian, a senior director at the company, about how Mvix goes to market, what they’re up to, and how the company’s platform is opening up to deal with a much wider range of playback devices, like Chromeboxes.
Subscribe to this podcast: iTunes * Google Play * RSS
Wednesday Nov 08, 2017
Sean Levy, MediaSignage
Wednesday Nov 08, 2017
Wednesday Nov 08, 2017
There’s no question that consumers like the word free, and it’s a term that has certainly worked for LA-based MediaSignage, which sees about 100 new accounts opened up everyday for its mostly free digital signage platform.
There are lots of software offers in this business that are free for the first account, but you pay after the second and third, and so on. Or ... the software is free, but if you want more than very basic functionality, you need to send the vendor real money.
In this case, MediaSignage says about 80% of the functionality of its platform is indeed free. And if clients do need the rest of what’s on offer, the most they can pay a month is $100 for an enterprise account, no matter how many players they have in a network.
In this episode, I speak with Sean Levy, one of the two co-founders of MediaSignage. We talk a lot about free, and how that works as a business model. The company has run lean, has no sales people, and leverages the hell out of cloud services. We also get into the technical side of the platform, and talk about where the digital signage marketplace is going.
Subscribe to this podcast: iTunes * Google Play * RSS
Wednesday Sep 06, 2017
David Douglas-Beveridge, SmartContent.TV
Wednesday Sep 06, 2017
Wednesday Sep 06, 2017
If you spend any time clicking around the internet, you are very quickly going to bump into a website that is using a slider - a piece of browser functionality that shifts text, images and video in and out of a web page.
The most heavily used slider out there comes from a German company called Themepunch, and that little coding shop has spun off a new company and product called SmartContent.TV.
The company’s digital signage platform is built directly off the Revolution Slider that’s been licensed some 4 million times for WordPress websites - allowing everyone from expert WordPress developers to total newbies to build and launch animated, dynamic digital signage shows for very little money. If you want a sense of what sliders can do, visit the website, it has multiple sliders on the landing page.
SmartContent just came out of beta and is now marketing a solution that runs on $60 Amazon FireSticks and costs about $15 a month to use,.
In this episode, I have a chat with David Douglas-Beveridge, co-founder of SmartContent, to talk about the roots of the product, how it’s used, and where it’s going.
Subscribe to this podcast: iTunes * Google Play * RSS
Wednesday Aug 02, 2017
Hacking Dangers In Digital Signage, with Gary Feather, CTO, Nanolumens
Wednesday Aug 02, 2017
Wednesday Aug 02, 2017
I’m changing up the podcast a little bit this week.
I have my own rule that I want to talk to a bunch of other companies first before I talk to one a second time.
I’ve also made this podcast about people and not issues.
But this week I am talking to Gary Feather, CTO of the display company NanoLumens, even though I spoke with his boss Rick Cope last summer.
Here’s why. Feather is running a webinar next week on security, and the steps he thinks any substantial digital signage operator out there should be taking to ensure their screens and systems are not compromised by hackers.
The risk is not just about keeping some teenagers from getting naughty movies up on the screens in a store, though that’s definitely not good. It’s also about ensuring the connected media players driving screens are not the side door access into private and mission critical systems within businesses. Target’s big hack three years ago came in through the HVAC systems.
It’s an important subject, and we spend this podcast previewing a little of what he plans to talk about August 8th.
Subscribe to this podcast: iTunes * Google Play * RSS
Wednesday Jul 05, 2017
Steve Rickless, Tripleplay
Wednesday Jul 05, 2017
Wednesday Jul 05, 2017
Steve Rickless, one of the founders of the UK firm Tripleplay, believes likes a lot of people that technology is converging, and thinks his company is in a good spot because it has already converged its technology.
The company started in IP television for the corporate market, but by 2008 was doing a blended hardware and software solution that did IPTV and digital signage off the same user experience, and running off the same boxes.
While start-ups have been trying to adapt low-cost Android set-top as signage players, with mixed results, Tripleplay has for years been using the kinds of commercial-grade set-top boxes you’ve seen behind hotel TVs as digital signage players. They're not necessarily small or pretty, but they just work and work.
From the perspective of Rickless, Tripleplay's CEO, the way forward is one solution doing many things for enterprise customers. He doesn't see that great a future for companies with silo'd technologies that just do one thing.
We spoke recently at InfoComm about the company’s roots, the size of business these days, and where things are heading. The chat was on the show floor, so there’s lots going on in the background.
Subscribe to this podcast: iTunes * Google Play * RSS
Wednesday Jun 28, 2017
Meric Adriansen, D3
Wednesday Jun 28, 2017
Wednesday Jun 28, 2017
I find, more and more, that some of the more successful companies in this business are a bit like stealth submarines. They run silent and deep, and you don’t hear much about them or see them around.
That would apply pretty nicely to D3, a New York company that is in the LED display business. D3 started outside in New York’s Times Square - with some iconic LED boards. Now the company is indoors, with narrow pixel pitch displays in some premium retailers. I’d say who, but that will get the company in trouble with certain publicity-wary clients. Suffice to say, you’d reply, “Oh really …”
D3 is also doing corporate, including a job it CAN talk about - the amazing 13K lobby of the new Netflix offices in Los Angeles.
I saw D3 recently at InfoComm, and asked why the company just had a teeny booth and no LED displays, when it was surrounded by less successful companies with massive displays.
The management team did that because LEDs are already becoming a commodity, D3 Co-Founder and Managing Partner Meric Adriansen told me. The real secret is in the video processing and software and, of course, the idea and the content. It’s also, of course, waaaay cheaper to pull off, and easier for set-up and teardown.
Adriansen and I went to the back of a noisy InfoComm hall to chat, and you can hopefully hear us over the guys who decided to tear down some nearby scaffolding right after we started.
Sigh.
Subscribe to this podcast: iTunes * Google Play * RSS
Wednesday Jun 14, 2017
Eric Henry, Tightrope Media Systems
Wednesday Jun 14, 2017
Wednesday Jun 14, 2017
Tightrope Media Systems has been around the digital signage business for 20 years, and if you’ve heard of the company, there’s a decent chance you thought, like me, that the Minneapolis company was a broadcast software firm that also did a signage CMS.
Turns out it was the other way around, and Tightope started as a digital signage software company doing digital menu boards on old CRT screens for schools. The big driver was coming up with a dumbed-down application that people with more important things to do around a school could use.
That early platform seemed to have another likely home with community broadcasters, which is how Tightrope found its way into that side of the business. These days, it’s about 50:50 digital signage and broadcast.
Tightrope is in Orlando this week for InfoComm, and the big thing the team is showing off is an integration that turns $150 Apple TV boxes into managed digital signage players. It’s something that’s only really been possible in the last few months, and Tightrope President Eric Henry fills me in on how that happened, and the broader story of the company.
Subscribe to this podcast: iTunes * Google Play * RSS
Wednesday Apr 26, 2017
High Coghill-Smith, ONELAN
Wednesday Apr 26, 2017
Wednesday Apr 26, 2017
ONELAN has been around the digital signage market for many, many years, but the company is far better known on its UK home turf, and in other parts of the world, than it is in North America.
That’s changing, as ONELAN starts to build into the US and Canada with a really well respected software and hardware solution, as well as what Hugh Coghill-Smith calls the wrap. That’s the company’s managed services piece.
Coghill-Smith, ONELAN’s longtime sales and marketing director, sat down with me at ISE back in February to talk about the company’s past and present, how they work with jumbo clients like Dubai Duty Free, and the big spike ONELAN is seeing in the meeting room signs market.
Subscribe to this podcast: iTunes * Google Play * RSS
Wednesday Apr 05, 2017
Jerome Moeri, Navori
Wednesday Apr 05, 2017
Wednesday Apr 05, 2017
I’ve known Jerome Moeri, the CEO of Navori, for more than a decade, but we’ve never had much of a chance to have a good long chat. That changed at ISE a few weeks ago, when we slotted half an hour to talk about how the Swiss software company got started and where it is going.
Jerome’s a soft-spoken guy, but if you lean in to listen, the story is quite interesting. Navori’s been around for 20 years and the company’s first backers were LVMH, the luxury goods conglomerate that has brands like Louis Vuitton. We get into how the company got started and has grown, and how it now has well in excess of 100,000 software licenses out in the field, including 25,000 on one network in the Middle East.
Jerome talks about the five keys to good software, including a good explanation of native signage players versus web-based ones.
We also talk about Navori’s plans, which include possibly buying some competitors.
Subscribe to this podcast: iTunes * Google Play * RSS
Wednesday Mar 15, 2017
Francesco Ziliani, SpinetiX
Wednesday Mar 15, 2017
Wednesday Mar 15, 2017
SpinetiX has been on the digital signage scene for more than a decade now, and if you are in the business, you may know them as the Swiss guys who market a really nice little aluminum-clad, solid state playback box. They had that 10 years ago, when a lot of signage networks were still going in with desktop PCs.
What always stumped me was the price - which seemed really high. But in talking to the guys for the last couple of years I came to understand a couple of things - the boxes come with a slick software platform installed and included in the price, and the things last and last. There are SpinetiX boxes that were installed in 2007 that are still happily doing their thing 10 years later.
In a world of $45 Raspberry Pis and $100 Android boxes, a $700 box will seem high. But Spinetix says a really good Total Cost Of Ownership number realized when an operator starts thinking in terms of four, five and even 10 years of operation. Amortize a box and software over five years and it gets pretty affordable.
I met with CEO Francesco Ziliani to talk about his company, when we were both at Integrated Systems Europe a few weeks ago. It was a bit of a cliche, but he brought along chocolate because at trade shows, that's often also known as lunch.
Subscribe to this podcast: iTunes * Google Play * RSS
Wednesday Mar 08, 2017
Jose Avalos, Intel
Wednesday Mar 08, 2017
Wednesday Mar 08, 2017
Jose Avalos has been leading Intel’s digital signage practise since 2009 - evangelizing for the use of Intel chipsets and related technologies for the devices that play back content. When he got started, he says Intel was inside about 10 percent of the boxes used in digital signage. Now it’s more like 75 percent, he says. So from that measure, it worked.
But since 2009, smartphones and then smart TVs really bubbled up, and Intel has seen low cost ARM processors being touted and used inside set top boxes and sticks and smart displays as media players - cutting out the need for Intel CPUs.
In our chat, we talk about Intel’s role in this sector, the implications of ARM processors and system on chip displays, and what they’re doing about it. We also get into Intel’s dabbling in the software side of the business, and talk about IOT.
Jose’s a talker, but I did get a few words in here and there. Enjoy.
Subscribe to this podcast: iTunes * Google Play * RSS
Tuesday Feb 07, 2017
Special Episode: Chats From ISE 2017’s Exhibit Halls
Tuesday Feb 07, 2017
Tuesday Feb 07, 2017
This is a special edition of 16:9 Podcasts - interviews recorded in and around the RAI Amsterdam at Integrated Systems Europe this week in Amsterdam.
I am doing a bunch of sit-down podcast recordings this week in and around the giant pro AV show, to be streamed in the coming weeks, but I also wanted to grab some quick interviews about things I see in my travels around the many exhibit halls here.
On this episode, you will hear from a series of companies, large and small, including Sony, Sharp, NodeArk and Condeco. These interviews were recorded today and I am posting this as I wait for the press room happy hour to start.
Oh, it has! Yay.
I'm heading back home this weekend, and next week's podcast will be the normal format.
Also, look for a new 16:9 Projects Podcast, with Michael Tutton, coming this Friday.
Subscribe to this podcast: iTunes * Google Play * RSS
Wednesday Sep 14, 2016
Luka Birsa, Visionect
Wednesday Sep 14, 2016
Wednesday Sep 14, 2016
This week, I’m speaking with Luka Birsa, the CTO and co-founder of Visionect, a Slovenian tech company focused on solutions that use Electronic Ink.
If you’ve got a Kindle or Kobo e-reader, think of that display but used instead for updated bus schedules at stops, or for telling people whether a meeting room is booked or free. Or on the back of an 18-wheeler.
In our chat, we talk about the origins of the company, and what e-paper is all about. We also answer a big question - Where’s Slovenia?
Luka will fill you in on why end-users would choose e-ink displays over LCDs or other tech, and where it’s a fit and where it’s not. He also talks about what’s coming for the technology - like larger, full color displays that could happily run just off solar power.
Subscribe to this podcast: iTunes * Google Play * RSS
Wednesday Aug 17, 2016
Jeff Hastings, BrightSign
Wednesday Aug 17, 2016
Wednesday Aug 17, 2016
If you're looking for concrete evidence that the digital signage business is now doing some serious volume, consider the word on this latest Sixteen:Nine podcast from Jeff Hastings, the CEO of BrightSign. His shipping department is packing and moving roughly 1,000 units a day.
Let me repeat that ... a day.
BrightSign designs, builds and markets little purple boxes used by a LOT of network operators as media players. In our chat, Hastings talks about BrightSign’s direct ties to another purple box company in Silicon Valley, Roku, and how that relationship has evolved.
One of the really sharp guys in this industry, Hastings talks about why the company is moving so much product this year, and how it will soon have more than 1 million units deployed. He also talks about where the company and industry are headed.
This was a Skype chat, so you'll hear the odd network hiccup and scratchiness. But it is 99% solid sound.
Wednesday Jul 27, 2016
John Wang, IAdea
Wednesday Jul 27, 2016
Wednesday Jul 27, 2016
In this episode, John Wang, the CEO of Taipei-based IAdea, talks about the roots of his company, which primarily makes commercial-grade media players and all-in-one devices for the digital signage market.
He recalls starting up the business right out of school in Taiwan, and unfortunately timing that startup right when the first Internet bubble burst. Wang talks about the idea of Information Appliances - the IA in IAdea - and the journey taken by the company to today.
Now a trusted supplier for many signage software firms and network operators, Wang talks about staying on top of emerging technologies and where his company, and the business as a whole, are going. He also goers into the perils of cheap devices and the importance of commercial, rugged product for the signage business.