002 – Commercial vs Consumer Digital Signage: Which To Choose?

by | Jan 28, 2016

What is Commercial Digital Signage? Consumer Digital Signage? Which one should you choose for your digital Signage rollout?


Transcript:


ML: Alright, welcome to the Digital Signage Works podcast. I’m Martin Lindsley.

RM: I’m Robert Mullen. Here with Martin Lindsley.

ML: Hey, thanks Robb. Good thing. That I’m here with you. Otherwise that would have been awkward with me speaking and not being here.

RM: Yeah.

ML: So this week we’re going to talk about consumer digital signage verses commercial digital signage. What does that mean? What are the different types and how do you know what type you might need? What will be best for you and your organization? So Robb, let’s go through a little bit of this. First, let’s talk about consumer digital signage. What… what is consumer digital signage? What classifies as that?

RM: Well, consumer digital signage is…. well I don’t know how to classify it as a classification… but consumer digital signage usually consists of a homemade, uh, system. Usually consisting of just a regular TV that you get from Sam’s Club. Something like that or Walmart. And then some sort of homemade player system, be it a PC that you happen to have laying around, that um, had Power Point on it or perhaps you used a system that you sort of built yourself using something like Raspberry Pi.

ML: Okay, now what about, like Smart TV’s? Stuff like that, where you can just throw something on a USB drive… is that kind of… and stick that into the back of the TV. Does that kind of classify as consumer?

RM: Yes, absolutely.

ML: Okay.

RM: Yes.

ML: But, you don’t even have to get that at some Walmart place. Obviously Best Buy and…

RM: Yeah.

ML: Many other manufacturers. Like…

RM: Yeah.

ML: Target even?

RM: Target’s good.

ML: Okay.

RM: You can get it from Amazon.

ML: Alright good. So basically a TV that has the capability of throwing out some type of video signal and then you have some type of device to manage that. So, now you said Raspberry Pi. So what’s, maybe why some people might turn to Raspberry Pi as a digital signage solution? What would be one of the… the keys for that?

RM: Two reasons. One, they are techy and they like to create things. They like to build things from scratch. So Raspberry Pi is a good way to do that because you have to really build your own player, build your own circuitry. I don’t know a whole lot about Raspberry Pi, I’m not a engineer type. But those are the types of people who really like going for Raspberry Pi. In addition it’s also very inexpensive.

ML: Right, so if you like to tinker around with stuff, come up with your own system. That’s why Raspberry Pi is great for those types of people. They really like to get their hands dirty when it comes to the tech side of things. So…

RM: Right.

ML: And that’s a lot of times what, with consumer digital signage, that’s what you find. Something’s been cobbled together out of different parts, pieces, but with the end result of having something appear out on the screen. So when it comes to commercial digital signage, what’s the difference? What are maybe, are some features that we can expect if we’re looking for commercial, or industrial strength, digital signage?

RM: Well, for industrial strength digital signage or commercial grade industrial signage, there’s really two components and the first component is the hardware. You’re gonna have more robust hardware. You’re gonna have hardware that’s designed for longer use. Even twenty-four hour, seven day a week use. So that’s going to be the LCD display that’s designed for use with digital signage. Designed for use in little harsher climates and things like that. In addition, a player of some sorts. Some way to get that signal to the screen is going to be a little bit more robust and actually designed to do digital signage. It is going to be designed to do a lot more than, let’s say, a PC playing Power Point. The other half is going to be services and the company that provide that. With a commercial grade or industrial grade system, you’re going to have a company whose job it is to create digital signage. To create systems for you so that you can get your job done. What they are going to do is all the tinkering around. They’re going to do the inventing and they’re going to do the servicing of the system so that you can continue doing your job which is, if you’re working in manufacturing, building things. Or if you’re in a restaurant or something like that, you know, selling food.

ML: I think one of the things, too, that’s good to think about when it comes to commercial digital signage is also the networking capability. You have the ability to have a multitude of screens connected to one system and be able to manage those remotely or from one location. Whereas a lot of times with the consumer grade, you’re kind of hopping around from screen to screen and trying to maintain all that at one time. If you have several screens, that can present a little bit of a time issue as well as, you know, how do you make sure all the screens are showing what they’re supposed to at all times. You kind of have to rely on a second party or… Lewis and Clark out on an expedition…

RM: Right, right.

ML: …checking out your screens. Letting you know what’s playing on them. So those are some things that you kind of keep in mind as far as some of the differences between commercial and consumer.

RM: It probably, now that we’re talking about this, the biggest thing in my mind that will separate the consumer versus the industrial is automation. Really is what it comes down to. If you have to think of one word, what’s the difference between consumer and commercial, it’s gonna be how automated is it going to be. With consumer, it’s very inexpensive, it’s very easy to go out and build, but it’s not going to be automatic. You’re not going to be able to remote manage it. You’re not going to be able to have it update on its own very easily. With a commercial grade system, you’re gonna be able to pull from databases. You can have your sequel database, and your website, and an excel sheet, maybe a folder with a bunch of pictures in it. You can pull all that together and put it into one slide and have that appear every day and have it be slightly different depending on the type of data that you have. So it’s going to be all automated. And that networking plays a big part in it, in that and the software as well.

ML: Yeah, that’s a good point. Now, something else as far as consumer digital signage goes is, you know, that’s great if, let’s say you have just a couple people that are gonna always be managing the system, they can create their own system, go back to the Raspberry Pi, you know, they know all the ins and outs of how that works. Probably in a organization, unless you’re selling Raspberry Pies or dealing with them, you’re not gonna know a lot about how that works. As far as somebody else coming in and taking over that system. Now if you’re in a larger organization and maybe there’s a higher turnover rate, or multiple people are going to have access to the system, then you’re probably gonna want something that’s a little more standard. Or that can… and you can have that good support like you were talking about earlier as far as helping to give training, and you know, if one person moves on from working with the system and somebody else comes in to take their place, they know that they have a good support group behind them to get them up to speed quickly and not try to dig through ratty old notebooks with stuff scribbled on them that somebody used when they first invented their home brewed digital signage network. So it can work both ways. I guess that’s kind of the next question is, how do you determine really which system is going to be best for you? As far as, let’s say, I’m the end user and I’m like, “Hey Robb”. What do I want? Can I get away with consumer? Or do I need something more robust? What are some factors, do you think, that might come into play there?

RM: Well, uh, several factors are involved. One is the size of your organization. If you’re working a deli by yourself and you change your content once a month or once a year, then maybe a consumer grade screen with a USB drive will work. But if you’re a really large organization, you’re multinational or even just national with many locations, or even just a really big location, five hundred square feet, something like that, then you’re gonna want to go with a commercial grade screen.

ML: Now five hundred square feet is about the…

RM: Five hundred.

ML: …size of my garage.

RM: Five hundred thousand.

ML: That’s a very… that’s for my bikes…

RM: Yes.

ML: …that’s not for my car.

RM: Five hundred thousand to a hundred thousand square feet. You…you caught me on that, sorry.

ML: I’ve been waitin’. I’ve been waitin’ to find you on somethin’.

RM: The point being is you’re gonna end up with a lot of screens throughout. And something as simple as turning all of them off at the end of the day, if you’re not a twenty-four hour operation, could be a big hassle.

ML: Right, and that’s something that you need to consider is how much time do you want to put into your digital signage. And a lot of organizations don’t have a digital signage person. There’s no digital signage department.

RM: Right.

ML: That’s gonna all fall on somebody else within the organization. To learn all the ins and outs of it and daily operations, whatever, that’s going to happen with that. So, you have to take that into consideration too. If you’re going to have multiple people that need to know how to run it, and again, go back to the high turnover rate, which could present issues as well, then that’s something to keep in mind as to what your system is. I know a lot of us IT people, we like to get in there and see what we can make out of nothing.

RM: Oh, yeah.

ML: Paper clip and a credit card, what can I create?

RM: Yeah, it’s a lot of fun.

ML: Yeah, it is. And so, you know, but then thinking, for the good of the organization, once you get outside of that realm, if things have to continue on or I go on my extended vacation, I don’t want to get calls from somebody…

RM: Right.

ML: “Hey do I put up new content?” So that’s another matter to consider.

RM: Something else to consider is why would an organization be getting digital signage in the first place. And they want to communicate with the employees, they want them to be up to date. And what they want to do is replace the system that they already have which is usually a whiteboard system or a printed system which are both very manual. Many companies have called me looking for digital signage and they tell me, “Oh yeah, we print flyers out five times a day and we walk around this huge facility. We post them, you know, at various locations near the water cooler, near the bathroom and everything, but they’re not very effective.” Whiteboards, it’s the same thing. You have to re-write them every day or every hour, whatever you’re trying to do. So you want an automated system. You want to do better than what you were doing. So that’s another reason why you want to go with commercial grade system.

ML: Okay, very good. Well that’s a pretty nice capsulation. Capsulation… is that a word?

RM: We’re going with it.

ML: Okay, I did it in my Scrabble tournament last weekend. I got challenged. There we have it. Consumer. Commercial. Some of the things to consider and also it’s important to really think through the end use of what actually… who’s gonna be using the signage, what’s it actually going to be for, how often do you have to maintain it. Those will be huge factors in determining which way to go with that. So, I think that’s pretty decent on there, Robb. We’d like to invite everyone to make sure you visit noventri.com/blog. And there you’ll find our podcasts, listen to previous episodes and hear Robb and I ramble on about many other topics as well. So, we invite you to go there if you’d like and check that out. And also be sure to ‘like’ us, subscribe to us, and we’ll keep feeding you digital signage knowledge.

RM: That’s right. We’re on iTunes and many of the pod feeders out there, so pick your favorite one and subscribe.

ML: Very good. We’ll talk to you soon.

RM: Thank you very much.

 

 

 

 

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