- By David Keene
As one of the five Judges for the NEC-sponsored “Best of InfoComm” new product contest here at InfoComm (the other judges are Randy Lemke, Lyle Bunn, Chuck Wilson, and Gary Kayye), I’m wearing not just my digital signage hat, but a bigger AV hat. There is a lot of digital signage on the show floor of InfoComm this week in Las Vegas, but of the five “finalists” in the NEC Best of InfoComm contest, just one is a digital signage product. That product is the media player from Spinetix. 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, energy and memory-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.
Of course, Spinetix is no Apple. But their approach is catching on. Geffen now also has a SVG-based media player, and AMX has one (but the AMX unit is really meant to be integrated with other AMX components to utilize all its features.)
But adding to the intrigue, and giving Spinetix a leg up on those other entrants, yesterday at InfoComm Spinetix and Scala announced that their systems can now be integrated together to “create cost-effective, flexible and reliable digital signage solutions without the need for a PC”.
This is the news release from Spinetix yesterday:
SpinetiX announce integration with Scala at InfoComm 2010
SpinetiX, developer of the Hyper Media Player hardware appliance, and Scala, the global connected signage company, have announced that their systems can now be integrated together to offer and create cost-effective, flexible and reliable digital signage solutions for a growing range of International markets.
Scala’s Content Manager 5 software platform can now deliver content to the dedicated open-platform SpinetiX HMP100TM hardware device. The HMP100 uses the SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics) family of open-standard specifications that allows XML-based file formats to describe static, dynamic and animated information. Dealers and systems integrators responsible for specifying digital signage rollouts have another strong alternative to PC-based platforms when deploying a Scala solution with dynamic content.
Serge Konter, Marketing Manager, SpinetiX, comments: “Our Hyper Media Player technology turns any digital display into an autonomous and networked device. The very small footprint and the minimal energy consumption of our HMP100 have very low installation and operational costs. Until now, many Scala users were obliged to use PC-based players to display dynamic content and were not able to deploy the HMP100 in their systems. We are delighted that our new integration with Scala technology is now being made available.”
Gerard Bucas, CEO, Scala, adds: “The use of hardware appliances such as the SpinetiX HMP100 has a number of advantages for our customers. Compared to PC-based player solutions they offer lower running costs, and with no fan or other moving parts, reliability in the field can expected to be much higher. We’re excited to be able to offer our customers more flexibility when specifying their systems, and look forward to a long and fruitful working relationship with SpinetiX.”
The integration between Scala’s software platforms and SpinetiX hardware will make its international debut at InfoComm in Las Vegas from 9-11 June. The integration was also shown to partners at Scala’s EMEA Connected Signage Conference in the Netherlands on 26-27 May.
