Rocking the Tobacco Dock: NEC Showcase preview

Now in its fifth year, the NEC Showcase 2013 will be held at East London’s Tobacco Dock, seeing NEC partners teaming up once again to demonstrate how their digital signage offerings work in different ecosystems. Visitors will reportedly be able to see more than 100 solutions represented through the two floors of the show across eleven applications zones: DOOH, retail, education, transport, 3D and leisure, 3D cinema, media, healthcare, control rooms, corporate communications and the NEC innovation zone.

London's Tobacco Dock was built in the 19th century as a secure warehousing for tobacco arriving from the New World

London’s Tobacco Dock was built in the 19th century as a secure warehousing for tobacco arriving from the New World



Since its conception, the showcase has focused on providing end users with a tangible example of what it possible in a real-world situation, and an opportunity to talk directly with manufacturers and system integrators in each vertical market.



“The showcase is a unique event; where else can you see more than 50 different AV and IT vendors working together to show complete solutions?” asks Simon Jackson, vice-president at NEC Display Solutions. “We already have 600 people registered to visit.”


NEC itself is using its event as a launchpad for an 80″ (203cm) screen in its entry-level E series, plus the new P series 70″ (178cm) display with NFC and NEC NOC, a remote service network operating centre. Also new this year is a sensor-driven signage offering, the NEC Leaf Engine, co-developed with NEC Laboratories in Heidelberg.


“We’ve added a couple of NEC zones so we can show off our new technology but the really exciting zones are where the collaboration takes place,” enthuses Jackson. “Look out for retail and 3D – they should be fun.”



Ultra or 4K will feature heavily at the showcase, promised as a complete workflow. Content will be filmed live, edited, exported and displayed around the event. This will be shown on 2×2 and 3×3 video walls and a new high-end laser projector. What content? Watch out for the dancing girls!


Welcoming visitors at the entrance hall with a projection-mapped tunnel will be 7th Sense. Using its Delta media server solution it will show fully uncompressed 4K content on the NEC 4K projector. Richard Brown, principal engineer at 7th Sense, comments: “This is our first showcase and it provides us with an opportunity to demo our products as an integrated solution with NEC’s displays. The uncompressed nature of our video servers means that we can show them off at their best.”


Regular exhibitor PSCo will exhibit a videowall using five different screen formats. Driven by a Harris player, the wall will be arranged in a structure designed by Unicol and put together by PSCo’s engineers. It’s not all about what’s flashy, of course: Unicol is supporting NEC Displays throughout the show with its mounting solutions. There will be a number of coloured Axia lectern stands supporting 46″ (117cm) screens and Axia Titan stands built to carry 100″ (254cm) screens on different videowall arrays.


A newcomer at the showcase is Monster Media, whose managing director Liam Boyle is excited by what the event can offer. “Partnering with NEC is the perfect marriage of intelligent technology solutions and practiced content creation. One thing is to have the shiniest-looking kit on the block; another is to provide a valuable experience for the consumer.”



Exhibiting for the fourth time, White Space will be showing its latest version of 3D-Hub at the retail, education and events zones. 3D-Hub is an interactive media player with 3D content. Its features include rotating, exploding, animating, highlighting and labelling media. The 3D-Hub also works with regular 2D displays, which can be viewed in stereo 3D using Anaglyph or ColorCode 3D technology.



Also looking to take advantage of NEC’s outstretched arm to end users, IHSE will have a presence for the first time. IHSE is a manufacturer of advanced KVM and video extenders, which allow the remote location of auxiliary computer consoles at very long distances from device. Its KVM matrix switches enable different computers to be accessed through one or more consoles – all equipment vital to larger installations.


NEC is also giving visitors a voice. Attendees can submit questions upon registration or at the show via touchscreens, which will be displayed on screens across the show, offering food for thought. Running alongside the Showcase will be a conference organised by DailyDOOH, with ten speakers, in morning and afternoon blocks. And when the show’s done, don’t forget to prepare for a well-deserved drink reception after 4pm – which, some say, is when the business really begins.

First published 13 May 2013 – Output

Hardware habits: digital signage changes shape at ISE 2013

 

 

Curved screens were amongst the hardware innovations at IS

Curved screens were amongst the hardware innovations at IS

Digital signage at ISE 2013 in Amsterdam occupied three halls and had 273 companies exhibiting. But DOOH also extended beyond it. Big players such as Samsung, NEC, LG and Christie took large stands showing their display propositions to a record 44,151 attendees – an eight per cent rise on last year’s numbers.

The focus on the end user experience was apparent throughout the show, with companies presenting new smartphone interactivity applications, multi-touch surfaces, transparency and unusually shaped screens.

Also following end user habits, there was a big Twitter presence. Prysm, Scala and NEC all used twitter feeds to populate their screens with content. Prysm’s 3D graphic twitter shuffle tower in the press office was particularly clever; the company partnered with software developer X2O Media for this application. Meanwhile, Scala presented an interactive screen communication solution that consumers can manage using mobile and tablet devices, also integrated with Twitter. There were more than 7,000 tweets generated at the show on the official hashtag, #ISE2013.

Screen shapes no longer need to be rectangular. On display we saw the beehive shape of Eyevis’s rear-projection modules, Distec’s triangular TFT models and elongated rectangular displays, like LG’s. More flexible arrangements, such as Mitsubishi’s OLED and Prysm’s Laser Phosphor Display (LPD), allow for curved screens.

The emphasis on shapes didn’t end there. Size factor is increasing, not just in terms of the individual display but also in combined displays and videowalls for larger format installations used to stun the passerby and capture their attention. A solid example was the array of screens on Samsung’s stand, arranged at an angle and creating a virtual wall without actually being mounted. NEC also featured the Pixel Machine – a videowall of 23 X55UN displays, powered by Hiperwall.

The main thing to consider for these large and creative displays is that the requirement for a decent image at this sort of scale takes us beyond full HD. There was a lot of talk about 4K resolution (or Ultra) for large video walls. 4K is commonplace in cinemas, but it’s still to come to signage – although some manufacturers, including Planar, launched screens to anticipate this need.

On their search for life-like experiences screen manufacturers have been investigating colour-accurate displays. An example of this is the SpectraView range from NEC, some of which is Fogra-certified. Simon Jackson, vice-president at NEC Display Solutions in Northern Europe, explains: “Being able to show exactly the same colour on screen as the one displayed at a store is very popular amongst retailers. The customer can see a sweater, for instance, and at the same time a screen will show a model wearing it.”

Even though 3D is still not widely spread in DOOH, many companies were showing 3D technology with and without glasses. These included Eyevis’s 3D active stereo rear-projection display OmniShapes, Alioscopy’s 42″ (106cm) thin bezel screen and Phillips, which had increased viewing autostereoscopic viewing angles since ISE 2012.

There were also some interesting box displays using translucent screens and interactive technology: SiComputer showcased its Explora Vitra and Crystal Display Systems set up a massive 70″ full HD, TFT LCD panel with touchscreen interaction via IR.

Gesture-based interaction and multi-touch were also popular in both vertical and horizontal configuration; leading the way on ease-of-use are kiosks solutions such as Pyramid Computer’s Polytouch models, capable of detecting 20 simultaneous touches at an ultra-fast 10 millisecond response time, now with modular auxiliary functions, such as swipe card and receipt printing. ISE had its own interactive pathfinder touchscreens, but they were slow and not very intuitive. Omnivision provided the software and Prestop the hardware, but they’ll have to try harder for next year to win over visitors.

New partnerships included the news that content outfit ComQi has given hardware company Kramer exclusive rights to manufacture, sell and market its media distribution products; ComQi will also be able to market and distribute the Kramer range. Scala’s collaboration with StreamAlot will see music incorporated into its solutions, while it is also integrating its enterprise software with the plug-and-play Samsung Smart Signage Platform. Signagelive is also working with Samsung in a new bid to offer off-the-shelf applications. AOpen announced its OpenService, a consultancy model previously launched in North America, hoping to deliver custom digital communications to provide better interconnectivity and an improved end user experience.

There was nothing totally new at ISE: we saw, in the main, advances of what’s been tried and tested. Moving forward, the industry needs more thought leadership and cross-platform standardisation to allow more effective project deployment.

First published 8 February 2013 – Output