DISPLAY TECHNOLOGY


UP CLOSE AND PERSONAL


Neeraj Pendse, Business Development Manager for Elo TouchSystems products at TE Touch Solutions, explains why interactive screens can deliver real benefits to venues as well as their customers


“In today’s world of media


overload, marketers are looking to engage consumers in more meaningful ways. Interactivity can drive significant enhancements to this goal. Interactivity gives a feeling of control over what they see – they are seeing what they want rather than what marketers think they want. The result is elevated user engagement. Interactivity can deliver


value-added services. And interactive technologies can record people’s preferences and even observe human behaviour in the environment, providing valuable metrics to marketers. However, while interactivity


provides deeper engagement with your audience, it also forces you to make a trade-off between quality and quantity. It is critical to think about your signage environment and deploy the right technology. A technology that can allow


interaction on a subtle scale is audience analysis. A camera mounted on the sign is silently surveying the environment in front of the sign, and adapting the messaging (for example, when it “sees” more women, it might show a fragrance advertisement). Touch is on the other end of the spectrum – explicit interactivity, as the user makes a conscious decision to approach the sign and touch something. This also means that the ability of the marketer to target is very high.”


42 APRIL 2011


displays in staff-only areas, or using the public-facing screens in parts of the facility when they’re closed, although this will not always be possible for 24-hour casinos).


And that only scratches the surface. Anywhere that


the casino needs to communicate anything more than the very simplest, never-changing information to its patrons, there is a strong chance that screens will achieve that more effectively than conventional signage, as long as the ROI – hard or soft – justifies the investment.


The numbers


Ah yes, that investment. How much are we looking at? The answer – of course – is that it is impossible to give a definitive budget figure, because screen networks vary so much in their size and complexity. For what it’s worth, the U.S. digital signage software provider WireSpring recently published some startling calculations which indicate that over a period of years, by far the bulk of the cost of running a screen network lay not in technology, but in staffing (including content production).


Granted, WireSpring based its modelling on a


hypothetical network with one screen in each of 100 different venues. The casino is much more likely to have 100 screens in just a single venue, so tech support and admin, for example, will be less demanding than in WireSpring’s example. However, its figures still give a general impression of where the money goes.


Installing and then operating the network for three


years would cost around $1.8m (or some $16 per screen per day), according to the firm, with more than $1.4m of that going toward staffing. Just $372,000 would be spent on technology, with the single biggest items being management software and tech support, followed by screens and media players. Installation, player software, project management and screen mounting would be smaller costs.


Let’s look at each of those technology elements in turn. The screens themselves are usually commercial- grade LCD devices (much more durable than the TV in your sitting room), less often plasma or LED. All the big screen manufacturers such as Samsung, LG, NEC, Philips, Panasonic and so on are actively targeting this market.


3D is, naturally, the fad du jour although it has to be said that acceptable glasses-free 3D is not yet here for most applications. Touch-sensitivity may well be a trend with more staying power, helped in large part by the spread of smartphones – consumers increasingly expect to be able to touch a screen to manipulate the content it displays and call up other content. Indeed, as Italy’s Worldtrade, a distributor for display brands including General Touch and Winsonic, puts it: “LCD liquid crystal panels, like all


touch solutions, are an integral part of our daily lives.” And it was not surprising that at the recent Enada trade show in Rimini, Worldtrade’s slick display of touchscreens was one of the most visually enticing in the entire event. If they can attract supposedly cynical gaming insiders who just can’t resist touching them, imagine what reception they’ll get from consumers.


Media players are, essentially, small dedicated computers which do the same job as a DVD or Blu- ray player – actually playing out the video and audio to the screens.


Depending on how the network is configured, one media player may be required for each screen, or it may be possible for a single player to serve a few screens. There’s a multitude of specialist manufacturers.


Management software is used to control the whole


network – for example, scheduling what is shown when and where – as well as for monitoring that everything’s running okay. This is a very fragmented market with a large number of (mostly) small suppliers, although there are a few big names like BroadSign and Scala.


The capabilities of the management software are fundamental to what you can and can’t do with your network, in many respects more important than the actual screen hardware, so it’s vital to get a handle on what’s available – all the more so because the software supplier, or their reseller, will very likely end up as the casino’s partner in designing and developing the network.


Some management systems include rudimentary


tools for creating content, but more sophisticated material such as moving video or animation requires specialist software, much the same as for film or TV production. There’s a growing number of agencies dedicated to producing content for digital signage, but larger casinos, in particular, may find they already have the expertise in-house.


Finally, don’t overlook the peripheral bits and


pieces like screen guards, screen mounts and cabling. They won’t make a network successful if the concept, the content or the management software are wrong, but they are essential to keeping it running smoothly – and bringing its benefits to both your business and your customers.


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