- By David Keene
I was one of the five Judges for the NEC-sponsored “Best of InfoComm” new product contest here at InfoComm (the other judges were Randy Lemke, Lyle Bunn, Chuck Wilson, and Gary Kayye). As I reported from the InfoComm show floor two weeks ago, The Spinetix HMP100 media player has made a pretty big splash over the past year or so it’s been widely available. The unit represented a novel approach when introduced, as Spinetix uses SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics). Without overdoing the analogy, it’s something akin to Apple doing an end-run around Flash, to try to establish more small package, efficient video processing in its iPhone and iPad. Spinetix’ SVG approach makes for a small media player that has more horsepower than all the tiny Flash-based media players out there, and it uses very little power.
Again, with all the news coming out of InfoComm, and due to the fact that the winner was not chosen until the last day of the show, the winning entry was not well publicized. Here is the press release from Spinetix:
SpinetiX wins NEC Best of InfoComm Award 2010
HMP100™ Hyper Media Player from Swiss Digital Signage manufacturer SpinetiX received the esteemed NEC Best of InfoComm Award 2010. The award was received at InfoComm 2010 on the NEC stand with the judging panel and InfoComm representatives. SpinetiX donated the $25,000 prize from NEC to both the InfoComm Education Foundation and the National Systems Contractors Association (NSCA) Education Foundation.
Serge Konter, Marketing Manager at SpinetiX, says: “This prestigious award directly reflects our product’s innovation, recognition and acceptance in the U.S. and International markets. The features that make this product stand out from the crowd are its use of open standards for integration with third-party equipment from top AV companies. These open standards have the benefits of driving down overall system running costs (i.e. minimizing content creation costs). The player also encompasses high-end functionalities, such as the ability to create video walls and touch screens, and the technology is already widely used today across the globe, including several licensed OEM’s.”
The award is sponsored and run by NEC, and involved online voting over a number of weeks. SpinetiX was then selected as one of five finalists at the show by an esteemed panel of judges who spent considerable time in evaluating the products against their criteria.
Also at InfoComm 2010, SpinetiX announced the integration of the HMP100 Hyper Media Player with Scala’s Content Manager 5 software platform to deliver content to the dedicated SpinetiX HMP100 hardware device.
SpinetiX hosted a Manufacturers’ Training event at InfoComm to educate partners on the functionality of the hardware and software for the digital signage market, including “To-do’s,” best practices, and traps to avoid.
For information:
