Tagging Can Save Tonsof Time: Why did BrightSign make Tagging a big part of its BrightSign Network service and available on all players? Users can do “media tags” assigned to individual and groups of content; they can make tagged playlists creating them automatically by setting media tag criteria; they can do player tags assigned to individual or groups of players for media playback or network management; and they have the ability to match player and media tags to enable playback of a subset of content from a single playlist.
It all adds up to big time-savers for whoever is managing a large digital signage network, Hastings says. “It’s a way for our computers to really reduce their workload for creating playlists.”
Users Need to Be Able to Play Lots of Videos Simultaneously: While BrightSign emphasizes that there is a higher expectation of video quality these days—you’ll note that it no longer has one model called BrightSign 4K because both XD and XT feature 4K in the new lineup—consumers want to also be able to play a multitude of smaller resolution videos simultaneously that add up to the maximum video resolution of the player. The line’s Mosaic Mode allows users to play an HTML feed containing multiple videos in a single zone as long as the HTML feed resolution matches the player’s maximum resolution.
Mosaic Mode:
It’s Good If One Player in a Network Does the Heavy-Lifting: BrightSign’s XD and XT pllayers can encode and stream a running presentation to enable monitoring remote displays in a network. Then remote playback can be done using local networking via the BrightSign App and Diagnostic Web Server or BrightSign Network via BrightAuthor or the web user interface. This is a big deal, Hastings says, because “you can use an XT player combined with a bunch of LS players to get that same experience with other players streaming what’s on the XT. One device does the heavy lifting and it’s a great way to save money.”
It’s a Software AND Hardware World: Hastings’ comment that BrightSign engineers spend about 20 percent of their time developing hardware and 80 percent working on software is a reflection of where the AV world is heading but it doesn’t mean hardware is going away either. The new and improved capabilities of the new line “doesn’t really make the hardware design more complex,” he says. “On the software side all these things are expanding at a much more rapid, non-linear pace than what the hardware side is. We actually don’t [expect that] hardware is going to disappear. We actually thing it’s quite the opposite. We think the media player market and hardware player market is actually a great market and will continue to be great with the focus on the software of those players continuing to be more robust.”
Hastings added that continued software updates make digital-signage-as-a-service viable selling model for integrators and a valuable option for customers.
Photos: Closer look at BrightSign’s 4 new lines
