Digital Signage Spanning the Campus
West Virginia University has nearly 30,000 students (as of the Fall 2012 enrollment), roughly 2,500 faculty and over 4,500 other employees. The main campus is in downtown Morgantown, West Virginia, about 70 miles south of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, with the Evansdale and Health Sciences campus about three miles away, and regional campuses elsewhere in the state.
Digital displays are currently installed throughout WVU at places in key pedestrian locations such as the reception desks and cafeterias in seventeen student residential complexes; as outdoor signage at some of the platforms of the university’s PRT rapid transit monorail system; and an outdoor sign at the WVU Coliseum basketball arena. Displays range in size from 12 inches to 46 inches, from Samsung and other vendors. (Size, vendor and model depend on each individual deployment.)
The displays are connected to media players — small computers housed in secure data closets at multiple locations. The players receive content from WVU’s central digital signage content management system (DS CMS) via the campus LAN, and push the content to displays, through a broadcaster device that converts the computer video streams into TV-like signals that the displays can be tuned to receive.
The media players are custom-built to meet WVU’s demanding specs for video content. “We use a lot of video, so our players are configured with a powerful video card and a lot of RAM,” says Graham. “Each player gets a small 16-port ‘broadcaster’ box next to it. Each port can connect to a CAT5 run that in turn would go to a digital signage display. Some buildings may have 6 to 8 signs, and we’re prepared in case we need to accommodate more.”
For the digital signage content management system (DS CMS) to create and manage content, and send it to the media player computers, WVU Information Stations currently use X2OMedia Xpresenter software.
WVU Information Stations selects the products to use, going through integrators and resellers. Each department, college or building getting digital signage pays for the displays, player, and broadcaster, along with the installation costs, going through Graham’s group. Deployments in campus “common areas,” along with the content provided by Graham’s group, are funded directly by the administration.
Hardware costs for two displays, a media player, and a broadcaster are around seven to eight thousand dollars, depending on the size of the monitors, according to Graham. “Plus installation, which depending on the location, can be the biggest cost, more than the hardware, since you’re often retrofitting existing facilities to provide the networking and power.”
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