The digital signage industry takes another step forward with the launch of the newest Digital Signage Evaluation Kit 12 (DSEK-12) by three companies — Intel, Kontron and Microsoft.
Digital Signage Evaluation Kit (DSEK-12) offers a simple application-ready media player platform that can work as a model for manufacturers, software developers and system integrators to develop other digital signage products.
This prototypical platform is specifically designed to abridge the development process of digital signage applications. It will help in trimming down the assessment and development effort in building a digital signage.
DSEK-12 comprises of a broad set of hardware and software elements from the tech experts – Intel, Kontron, and Microsoft. These features are presently available in the market, including the third generation Intel Core i5 and Intel Core i7 processors, which enable service developers to measure performance to fulfill the demands of compute-intensive applications.
These processors combine a memory controller and high-performance graphics engine that produces exceptional graphics, high-definition videos and 3D rendering and results in saving the expense of installing separate external graphics card.
Another feature is Kontron’s open pluggable specification (OPS)-compliant media player KOPS800 that simplifies device installation, usage, maintenance and upgrade of digital signage infrastructure. This feature carries the commonly used interfaces such as DisplayPort and USB.
Along with its varied features, the kit supports Intel’s Active Management Technology (AMT), which helps lower the total cost of ownership of signage. It has out-of-band management and repair functions that run even if the OPS-compliant media player is powered off or has a corrupt operating system.
In addition to the other characteristics, Intel’s AMT has keyboard-video-mouse capabilities that enable technicians to control the system as if they were in front of it.
DSEK-12 contains a six-month evaluation version of the Microsoft Windows Studio Embedded POSready 7 operating system (OS), which can be useful for developers to make run-time OS images that are best for digital signage applications. An image configuration editor, an image builder wizard and various other tools are used for prototyping and image development.
The kit includes digital signage content creation and management from Flypaper and Scala. It offers trial software that has preinstalled digital signage demos using high quality flash and six-month content management trial software to create content, play back content and provide anonymous video analytics. It also comes with editable templates for users to prepare quick content.
Flypaper studio can be used to produce high-quality flash and video for digital signage networks without customization and long production schedules. Digital signage agencies and customers can now create, reuse and manage content in signage networks by using Flypaper.
Scala, known for its professional content and advertising management services, offers solutions to retail advertising networks, corporate communications, digital menu boards and other diverse applications. Scala digital signage software is included in the DSEK-12.
It can be used to create content by the help of advanced computing performance and graphics of the kit. The DSEK-12 is a licensed Scala player.
Intel Audience Impression Metrics Suite (AIMS) software for targeted advertisements is one more element of DSEK-12. Intel’s AIMS software runs unidentified face detection to gather information on the number of people that viewed the advertisements, the time span they watched it for and their demographics. This information helps in creating advertisements for the right target audience.
The validated and fully assessed platform works with several connections through USB. It also has built-in WiFi and Ethernet and can blend with various external peripherals.
With DSEK-12 in the market, the solution providers can now only have to invest in designing digital signage, instead of investing in building a basic platform for customers in retail stores, hotels, banks and hospitals. This design will enable the digital signage products to provide services to a bigger segment of the digital signage market.
Solution providers will require lesser time to market their products and work on the standard platform. This kit allows signage developers to only focus on application software and content creation.
The general objective is to enable manufacturers to deploy interchangeable systems faster and in larger volumes.
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