Digital Signage Forum - Noventri

Is there a way to display odbc records as scrolling text across the bottom of page? I am trying to create a news ticker that pulls records from an ODBC source.

I would highly recommend cycling ODBC records between pages (simply change the message / formatter out every time a page switches). This would ideally be achieved with Dynamic Pages. Essentially, a different news story could appear on each page until no new news remains.

There is no plan at the current time to include scrolling movement functionality (physically moving from one side to another).

Through our research when designing and developing the Eco-Series SF-100e and Noventri Suite, we found that scrolling text is more difficult to read for viewers than still text.

We broke digital signage viewers into two main categories - viewers that are moving, and viewers that are still. Moving users are generally busy, or in a hurry- they want to find the important information on the digital signage and then move on about their business. Animation and even crawl motion appears to detract people from finding what they need. Still users- ones waiting in a line or sitting in a waiting room- can track motion much better because they are not moving.

While yes, movement does draw attention, we have found that it generally leaves the screen feeling busy and detracts from the message. Most of the time, it isn't necessary at all because the viewer is already looking at the screen.

Even with stationary users, crawls and motion are not always the answer to get viewer's attention. For example, in a line outside of a food stand, we have to remember that patrons plan to order food from the digital menu. We don't want to put anything on the screen that prevents them or distracts them from doing so because this can slow the line down. If they are ordering food or planning on ordering food, we already have their attention.

More and more digital signs and even TV stations continue to remove moving crawls and replace them with still messages. Even CNN and Headline News have removed their crawl animations, and now opt instead for a minimal transition that does not feel busy.

We have a blog post entitled "3 Reasons Why Your Digital Signage Doesn't Need Video, Flash, and Animation" if you're interested in reading up a bit more on our motion research.

Please let me know if you have any additional questions.

Wow, you guys are on the same page as Apple then; "You don't want scolling text. We've made the decision for you and decided its not good to use". Gee, why don't you, I don't know, let the customers decided what they want to use. You can discourage it, provide a 'best practices' guide, but in the end, it shouldn't be up to you to withold features from your end users.

There, its off my chest.

Hello vagreville,

It is nice to hear from you and thanks for posting on the forum! I agree with you, the more choices the better! And there are myriads of options when it comes to digital signage.

We have given much consideration to scrolling text. So why have we chosen to approach this feature as noted above? You may have noticed the absolutely horrible, stutter, jittery, flat looking scrolls that are available on other solid state DS players. This is because a smooth CNN scroll is very "expensive" in terms of processor power and other resources. This means we had a choice of making a player that is cost effective for people that are going to use it in a best-practice, non-scroll fashion or make it much more expensive and have it appeal to the few that need a smooth scroll. We opted for the former.

There are plenty of other players that will do a horrible scroll on the cheap and some very nice expensive ones. We decided not to fall into either of those two extremes.

Kind Regards,