Jobos Posted July 9, 2009 Posted July 9, 2009 HT is interested in digital signage for the foyer so I’ve been looking at the different systems available. I’ve seen a demo for the Sedao system which looked very impressive and I’ve read good things about the Navaho MediaCAT system, and not so good things about Samsung Magic Net. So out of the three systems which do you use and what problems (if any) have you experienced? We are on a budget of £3000 and due to space we are looking at a 40” screen.
mossj Posted July 9, 2009 Posted July 9, 2009 Not on the list but for software.... Xibo (can't find link) is free and the dogs, you can then spend 3G's on hardware (insert quagmire style alllllrighttt). Download it and have a play see if its much better/worse than the paid alternatives.
mossj Posted July 9, 2009 Posted July 9, 2009 Xibo Open Source Digital Signage Yup thats the one, have it installed here and once you get WAMP setup right, I honestly can't think of any more features I would require...
synaesthesia Posted July 10, 2009 Posted July 10, 2009 Have also seen the Sedao stuff in action, it's fantastic, and probably going to be the best option if you just need something running and may have staff editing/altering the content that you don't want to have to do silly amounts of training with. However with the price side of things, it's going to be easy enough to get hold of a spare PC or laptop to run Xibo, although not anywhere near as intuitive as Sedao, if it's you running it and can spare the time, it's going to save you an absolute shedload of cash
TechMonkey Posted July 10, 2009 Posted July 10, 2009 We are setting up a trial of Xibo over the summer to run next year. Installed it on my machine as a test and was so impressed we went with it. Buying a modest screen for reception & then will probably upgrade and buy more if it is a success.
Iain.Faulkner Posted July 10, 2009 Posted July 10, 2009 We run a digital signage provided by Matrix Education, onelan i think, does exactly what we want it to do, nice and easy to use. Wasn't cheap though.
Ric_ Posted July 10, 2009 Posted July 10, 2009 MediaCat fan here... the MediaCats have just been dropped in price too. Much better than Sedao IMHO and Navaho are an EduGeek supporter
Axel Posted July 10, 2009 Posted July 10, 2009 has anyone ever investigated the use of a thin client for signage. For example you could have an (old) PC running the "presentation" and running VNC server, and the thin-client configured as a VNC client to run keyboardless/mouseless to display the PC's screen remotely. (Could use RDP/ICA in same way and use shadowing to control the presentation) With thin clients being so small, supporting 1920x1200, providing auto-connection and auto-login, this could provide an interesting alternative and give a massive £ saving....
EduTech Posted July 10, 2009 Posted July 10, 2009 Another one for the MediCats, Spoke to Navaho about them at the conference there pretty cool!
plexer Posted July 10, 2009 Posted July 10, 2009 I've always been on the look out for small space and power saving boxes to run the digital signage. We'll also be going with Xibo when I get the go ahead and that copies all the media content to the local pc for playing so thin client ain't going to be so good? Ben
Axel Posted July 10, 2009 Posted July 10, 2009 @plexer, no reason why not, I don't claim to be familiar with Xibo, but if it copies the media content to the local PC, it should work, the local PC would be machine running a VNC server, and the TC connect to that, so whatever the PC displayed, the TC would display. The difference being the PC would not be embedded in the monitor, rather somewhere out on the network, and the connection between the PC and screen would essentially be network/VNC. The interesting part (cost saving) would be deploying a standard PC and standard monitor, rather than monitor with embedded PC, which seem to be very expensive. The same software (whatever) should work There is a school in Dulwich who 'designed' and deployed this implementation, I can put you in touch with them if you want to explore further....
Jobos Posted July 10, 2009 Author Posted July 10, 2009 Just orderd a Samsung with Magic Net. What bad things have you heard? It's is going to be a single screen soultion for reception and on with the inbuilt XP embeded means just two cables and its ready to go. That and it cost the same as just the one lan box being quoted by another supplier. Is being installed over the holiday so will hopefull have some time to put together a small review for forum members. Just what I've read on these forums in that it has problems with html. 1
plexer Posted July 10, 2009 Posted July 10, 2009 Axel: Ok I understand that way of thinking, thing is though with xibo and other solutions you can have groups or individual screens showing different content or running to different schedules all which can be changed from the web interface. Doing it as you've suggested would either require one host pc per screen or one host pc per group. Ben
Axel Posted July 10, 2009 Posted July 10, 2009 @ plexer. Without a doubt correct, this would be a compromise, although with embedded XP in the monitor there is still one host per screen. Would Xibo care (or even know) if the XP machine was embedded in the monitor or out on the WAN. I would imagine Xibo communicates with the XP machine over LAN (so both the equivalent), and VNC operates at the same level as VGA, so this should have no effect on Xibo....
TechMonkey Posted July 10, 2009 Posted July 10, 2009 @SYSMAN: I had a play with it & I think a small Samsung all in one PC screen. Found Magic net underwhelming really. Maybe I didn't play with it enough to get a feel for it but I didn't get on with the interface. YMMV 1
broc Posted July 10, 2009 Posted July 10, 2009 We have a Samsung Magic Info system, it does everything we need. The LCD screen is excellent. The only major problem we had was getting the screen to turn off & stay off! It seemed to be waking up all by itself within minutes of being told to shutdown. Samsung swapped out the box (their idea, not mine) but the replacement did exactly the same. If we removed the network cable it would turn off & on as per schedule, but stick a cable in & it would turn on all by itself. We eventually found some WOL settings enabled on the NIC as part of the embedded XP platform & turned them off. It goes off & stays off now! I don't much care for the software interface, but once it has its schedule loaded it does the job without issues. One minor nuisance, it will load a daily schedule, but could not find a way of choosing weekdays only. We are looking at plugging in a 7 day digital timeswitch to turn its power off over the weekend 1
OllieC Posted July 10, 2009 Posted July 10, 2009 We have a few of these Smart-E things that we use for our screens in the canteen... don't know how much they cost, doubt they're cheap but they're pretty solid. Manufacturers of Video Switches, Routers and Extenders.
synaesthesia Posted July 10, 2009 Posted July 10, 2009 One of my favourite things which is apparently unique (according to the sales blurb) about Sedao is the ability to chop n paste from any source - i.e. you can just literally "select" a section from a website such as video feed, news scrollers, chunks of text and show that, live, in the presentation. Obviously needs some work when said websites change but very useful indeed.
Mandy Posted July 17, 2009 Posted July 17, 2009 Guys, We are partnered with Navaho and can provide a quote on the whole solution including screens and installations! Also as Edugeek members you recieve 10% discount on Navaho MediaCat units when purchased through Westwood Associates! If any one would like a quote and/or demo, PM your details or call me on 01753 881810.
Jobos Posted July 22, 2009 Author Posted July 22, 2009 Anyone know of installers for Sedao systems that can give me a quote?
riskyburden Posted July 22, 2009 Posted July 22, 2009 We have MyTV-media it does everything we want. check it out here TERACUE**** Encoders - STBs - De and the brochure here: http://www.ohd.no/downloads/pdf/mytv/MyTv_brochure.pdf
nickholme Posted September 25, 2009 Posted September 25, 2009 We are using xibo and have 4 large screens with acer veriton n260g units on the back of each. The acer is about 6 in square (although it's not strictly square) and has wifi (but no cd drive). They come with a plate to screw onto the back of a monitor and the veriton clips into place. We have them set to automatically start up so no KB or mouse required. We also have vnc for remote access to the clients if required.
dhicks Posted September 25, 2009 Posted September 25, 2009 for the £3k budget mentioned you can get a very nice 40 inch LCD, professionally installed, and a site license to put Sedao on every single PC in the whole school What can you do with Sedao that you can't with a web browser? There are thousands of programs, systems, templates, etc, around to let people design and edit nice-looking web pages, what does your software do that's better than all of those? -- David Hicks
sahmeepee Posted September 25, 2009 Posted September 25, 2009 Freeware is appealing if you have no budget at all, but for the £3k budget mentioned you can get a very nice 40 inch LCD, professionally installed, and a site license to put Sedao on every single PC in the whole school (and have a good bit left over). Or two professionally installed 40 inch Samsung MagicInfo screens (which have been pretty good for us!)
Recommended Posts
Create an account or sign in to comment
You need to be a member in order to leave a comment
Create an account
Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!
Register a new accountSign in
Already have an account? Sign in here.
Sign In Now