subject: Solid State Digital Signage - Is it worth it? [print this page] Solid State Digital Signage - Is it worth it?
I remember years ago when I was a kid going to a museum in London where they had an exhibition on a famous restored building. The exhibits were beautiful, the lighting amazing, in fact the whole experience was great. Then I got to a touch screen monitor with some interesting buttons on it, but there was a really annoying whirring sound coming from nearby, so when I saw another one I went to try that, but it just had a big blue screen with a message I didn't understand on it. So, deflated I left the room. It's sad to say, but a lack of consideration of which technology to use for public display can lead to some very negative impacts.
'How does this relate to solid state,' I hear you asking. The thing here is when it comes to displaying digital media properly in public spaces there are some considerations that you may not think of right off the bat. One of these is, 'Should I be using solid state devices, or can we use one of our PCs or a DVD player?'. Now companies like Dell, make great and fairly inexpensive desktop PCs, whereas companies like Digital View make dedicated media players. So what's the difference? Well, PC's are typically loaded with big operating systems and stacks of software as well as spinning hard drives that require fans to cool them when they get too hot (this is where the noise comes from). A solid state dedicated digital media player on the other hand has no internal moving parts, is optimized for the scheduling and playback of media with interactive options (sometimes).
Looking under the hood, solid state refers to digital storage and media devices that have no internal moving parts. A few years ago these got a pretty bad rap for inconsistencies, but nowadays they are much more reliable and only getting better and cheaper. There are a few advantages to using solid state technology (for an exhaustive comparison chart go to http://www.digitalview.com/products/benefits-of-solid-state-players) but the main highlights are the following:
No Moving Parts - whereas PCs have a delicate spinning hard drive that has a noisy fan to cool it, a solid state drive is motionless. This has the advantage of being more robust and completely silent
Instant Media Access - The speed at which information can be accessed and read is limited only by the processor and not the speed of the hard disc, so in theory information access should be instantaneous. As processor speeds increase so will the amount of and speed at which data can be read
Low Power - an important aspect of solid state is that they typically save on power and generate less heat compared to conventional hard disks. And when you are continuously running content on multiple players this can become quite a significant consideration
Although solid state drives are gaining ground, they are currently more expensive than traditional hard drives. For desktop PCs it makes still makes sense as the chassis is built to hold and keep cool a traditional spinning disc hard drive, but with Apple's recent inclusion of solid state options for it's computers we can see that the benefits are beginning to come to market. Certainly in tougher environments/working conditions there are obvious advantages, and for signage setups that demand great quality and sometimes stuff media players into tight spaces out of view, it makes sense to have a device that won't over heat and is reliable even when left on day and night.
More information on solid state digital media players can be found at www.digitalview.com
