Pupils.Tv

[comedydave]

Hi all,
I have been asked to research digital signage for our school.
Just had a meeting with the local agent for Pupils.Tv about providing digital signage etc for our entrance hall and dining room.

It all seemed very impressive and the Head/Business Managers were very positive about it. So my next step is to see if any of you have encountered this company, if you have could you provide me with any feedback, positive and negative.
Also, could you recommend any alternative companies to me.
We want it to be a simple system that the IT dept can wash our hands of once its up and running, and allow reception/admin run it day to day.

Many Thanks in advance

CD

[Joanne]

connect a big LCD TV up to a pc and run powerpoints on it? Our admin staff do that on the hall projector and we don't have much trouble...

[webman]

The OneLAN NetTopBox is quite good, but costs about £1500.

[apoth0r]

As a cheaper solution we didd exactly the same as Joanne, simply a media pc with a large LCD in the reception area displaying a simple powerpoint with diary dates, welcome screens, short clips of events in and around the school area.
The powerpoint can be setup so that it only needs editing by the admin staff and overall can be supported by anyone.
The companies sound great but doesn't half cut into your budget for the equipment itself. (inc installation costs/cabling/etc)
If you need any help don't hesitate to pm me.

[comedydave]

The powerpoints option etc was one i suggested. But my bosses would prefer a managed system. The Head of IT would prefer to wash his hands of this project once its fitted

[AJT1]

Done this using an old win98 box fresh installed 98, powerpoint viewer, tightvnc, switchoff.
Setup sharing for a folder on the hd.
Put the presentations onto the box through the shared folder and use tightvnc to log in remotely and copy the presentation into the startup folder.

Machine switches itself on in a morning and off at 6pm.

Works a treat and was free (not got much money at my school).

[dhicks]

> Just had a meeting with the local agent for Pupils.Tv about providing
> digital signage etc for our entrance hall and dining room.

I did a quick Google search for Pupils.TV. I don't understand what their software does that Impress / PowerPoint / etc doesn't. Like the others have said, simply get someone to install a large LCD or projector screen for you and hook it up to a PC.

Also: how often does this site get indexed by Google? A search for Pupils.TV turned up this thread second in the search results, less than an hour after the original question was posted!

--
David Hicks

[EduTech]

Yup i can't see why they have a problem with the powerpoit idea.. it don't take muich to update it every now and again.. etc.

I did a search on Pupils.TV too and i also agree i dont really see whats so special what you can do on there you can do on powerpoint :P

regards

james

[sahmeepee]

When this particular white elephant last crossed our paths, we settled on the Samsung 400PXN screens. They run XP embedded or similar inside the screen and can handle all sorts of formats (video/ppt/web/flash/blah) fed from a standard PC over your network. They can also store a certain amount of content on local flash so it's not being streamed all day long. If you google MagicNet, that's the software they use.

Most of the systems that use CAT 5 use it as simple analogue cable so you can't run the signal through switches or more importantly fibre links. Running fresh cable around our sprawling site would've been a lot more expensive for us so we couldn't really entertain those.

Unfortunately the cheapest price isn't available for UK delivery:
http://www.google.co.uk/products?q=s...w=dd&scoring=p