Cisco unveils digital signage kit

Cisco announces its entry into the digital signage market with two media launches

Comms giant Cisco has moved into the digital signage market with the launch of a Digital Media Manager system and a Digital Media Player for businesses.

Cisco’s digital media to business vice-president, Thomas Wyatt, said, “This is a comprehensive system for playback of high definition media over IP networks on LCD and plasma displays. These products are enhancements of systems we acquired after our takeover of digital signage vendor Tivella in December 2006.”

Cisco has signed a deal with LCD vendor NEC Display Solutions to use its monitors, but will use its own reseller channel to market the digital signage products.

Wyatt said that with the cost of LCD and plasma technology falling, and investment by advertisers in in-store media growing, the value of the digital signage market is expected grow from about $400m today to an estimated $2bn by 2010.

“It’s best to get [your advertising message] to customers when they’re thinking of purchasing products, which means when they’re in the store. Basically, we’re getting the right info to the right customer at the right time,” said Wyatt.

The Cisco Digital Media Player is an embedded Linux device weighing about one pound and has 1GB of Flash storage, good enough for one hour of standard definition video or 30 minutes of high-definition video.

The Digital Media Manager (DMM) is software that can run on one of Cisco’s Media Convergence Servers, similar to that running Cisco’s IP Telephony software. DMM comes pre-installed, and can be used to manage thousands of media players. After the initial configuration files and environmental variables are set up, the system could be up and running within 30 minutes, Wyatt said.

Wyatt added that the lack of a hard drive made the Digital Media Player a more secure and reliable platform for digital signs than PC-based alternatives

A 50-media-player bundle with associated hardware and software costs around $150,000 (£76,000 + VAT), said Wyatt.