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Digital Signage
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Websign from DVC is a complete solution to
networked digital signage. Software development for this product has
been ongoing at DVC since 2002 and now includes a fully functional
web portal, media player software and hardware, and sophisticated
data transfer and remote messaging and diagnostics to track and
manage remote playback units installed anywhere with a broadband
internet connection.
Websign is an ideal solution for an AV
integrator or Digital Signage market developer. It can be customized
and integrated to provide an individual solution and is scalable to
thousands of players in thousands of locations, while allowing each
unit to be individually programmed with a combination of global,
regional and local content.
DVC has developed and manufactures Digital
Signage Media Players specifically designed for this application. In
a deployment players can be shipped to site, installed and once
connected to the internet they pull the schedules and content and
begin playing and reporting their status to the server.
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DVC Websign includes a wide range of software
and hardware components developed at DVC to support this application. Here
are some of the highlights:
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Websign Player software
The schedule contains sequences of web pages, Shockwave
animations, and compressed video (MPEG, H.264, etc). The Websign
player software plays each component for the required duration.
This application software is also available as a standard
Windows install package for a different choice of hardware |
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Cache Manager
Internet connections are not always reliable. The cache manager
is able to 'look ahead' in the playlist and pull content into
the cache so that the Websign player runs in 'offline' mode.
Some webpages can contain live data like news and weather and
the cache manager makes sure it is up-to-date before its
displayed. In the event that the internet goes down, Websign
continues to play. This is a key feature which enables DVC to
play web page sequences reliably. Note that the web pages
could come from any server anywhere on the internet. |
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Render Engine
Providing clean animation sequences without tearing, glitches
and black gaps between videos has been our goal from the outset.
The latest versions of the render engine use double buffering to
provide seamless switching and smooth video playback and flash
animations. |
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High Definition(HD)
Websign software is extensible to High Definition graphics and
video content with sufficiently powerful hardware. |
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Multi Channel Video Walls
Installing specialized Graphics display hardware in a suitable
computer allows an extended desktop, over several monitors and
Websign makes use of this technology to provide a networked,
monitored and remotely managed video wall solution. |
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Websign Server
The DVC Websign server is available as a service, ideal for
small installations. User permissions allow separate
institutions to maintain their own content libraries and
schedules. DVC understands that larger installations maybe
better served by an individual server installed on the
customer's own hardware. Running on Windows Server 2003 and
Microsoft SQL Server, ASP .NET is used to provide customizable
webpages providing the functionality needed to maintain the
whole system. |
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Web Portal
Using SSL which encrypts all the internet traffic, users login
to manage their systems. Differing levels of authority separate
users from working on different aspects of the operation, and
the functions are highly customizable. |
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Websign System Monitoring
As the players connect, interact with the database and play
content on their screens, they send messages to the server,
updating status and logs so that users can keep track of each
player's performance. DVC developed using MSMQ so that messages
sent are held on a queue, ensuring that messages are delivered
after a network outage, and that the system is scalable -
hundreds of messages each second can be queued up and processed
in sequence. Player system parameters are also monitored and
logged, such as cpu and disk temperature, operating voltages,
and the video monitor status also. |
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Desktop Websign Player
A new development under way at DVC in 2008 is to provide a
windowed desktop player, which will install a 'lite' version of
the player on the desktop, and without the detailed monitoring
of a normal player, allow users to pull and watch a 'network
channel' of signage on their own desktops.
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